After troubled 17-year-old Sam (George Ferrier) is suspended from school, his father Robert (Martin Csokas) picks him up and offers another bit of news that isn’t any better: Sam’s grandmother Ruth (Charlotte Rampling), whom he’s never met, has broken her leg and is coming from England to stay with them in New Zealand where Sam is expected to look after her. Despite his best efforts, the boy’s teenage petulance is no match for his acerbic alcoholic grandmother. Soon the source of Sam’s grief and accompanying dark thoughts are revealed, and while Ruth feels no compulsion to coddle him, she does shake up the hollow predictability of his life. Juniper is not a platitude-ridden narrative about intergenerational family connections – it’s about a highly intelligent, bitter and unrepentant old woman who challenges a depressed young man to claim his life and live it large.