Blue Bayou, however, beautifully personalizes a part of the broken immigration system that isn’t talked about nearly as much as others, exposing the plight affecting children adopted from foreign countries, brought to America and then never naturalized by their guardians or adopted parents.

Writer/director Justin Chon lays out this particular situation through Antonio LeBlanc (played by Chon), a Korean American living in Louisiana.

Covered in ink and riding a motorcycle, Antonio is the fun dad that plays hooky with Jessie and works in a tattoo parlor.

Those bad feelings are what usher in a cataclysmic downward spiral for Antonio as he’s provoked into a fight that gets him arrested and then picked up by ICE for not being naturalized.

His urgent situation to find money and bolster his immigration case creates a tangential friendship with Parker (Linh Dan Pham), a Vietnamese immigrant dying from cancer who comes to Antonio for a tattoo.

Chon’s Antonio sounds like an authentic boy from the bayou, but he’s not and he knows it as he continues to navigate his otherness from childhood into adulthood.