Blue Balloons

A kind, intellectual family beloved by their devout community, the Kippson family has weathered hardships before, having been through their mother's first cancer diagnosis years earlier. But when Joanne’s cancer returns, past grievances start to surface. As Joanne begins the debilitating rounds of treatment and Henry, the father, maintains work as a physician, their two youngest children - Mara, a studious philosophy major, and Sam, an eager, soon-to-be driver - struggle to balance the pressures of school and caregiving, while Claire, the eldest child who lives far away, becomes torn between her responsibility to her family and her inability to conform to the community in which she was raised, forcing her to confront a deeper struggle within herself and threatening the only existence she's ever known. Blue Balloons is an honest, realistic story of characters caught in a world of opposites. Told through the perspective of a young adult caregiver, the story weaves elements of the fantastic and the absurd to strip clichés and portray not only the medical complexities of cancer, but also the joys and sorrows of one family's tender life together. (Twin Cities Film Fest)