Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, both a fictional drama about growing up and a wonder-rousing cinema experiment, deserves all the accolades it has been receiving since its appearances at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals earlier this year. Presented in 143 scenes shot in 39 days over a dozen years with the same cast, the film explores that permeable border between drama and documentary in a way that evokes recognition, melancholy and joy, while sticking to the mundane experiences of one boy’s life.

The subject of Boyhood is played by Texas actor Ellar Coltrane, and we see him travel from the age of six to 18, from a cherubic child, to a pudgy, uncertain adolescent, to a bony, deep-voiced man. His head and body pop and lengthen over the years along with the length and complexity of his sentences. It’s like a time-lapse photo of an expanding consciousness.

Back in 2001, having most recently released the 86-minute real-time camcorder drama Tape, Richard Linklater conceived an “impractical idea” that would, in contrast, sporadically absorb him for the next 12 to 13 years: “the story of a parent-child relationship that follows a boy from the first through the 12th grade and ends with him going off to college”. Unique in scope and potential pitfalls — would he find actors who could commit for so many years? What if his lead child evolved into a sub-par performer? Would he be able to fashion a coherent narrative around such a nebulous notion? — Linklater’s gamble, revisited for a few scenes each year and becoming, in his words, like a “summer camp art project”, is in fact an absolute gem, possibly the director’s masterpiece to date.

Casting long-time collaborator Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as his young protagonist’s divorced parents, and his own daughter, Lorelei, as older sister Samantha, the hunt was on for the child who would play Mason from age six to 18, a pretty immense undertaking. Linklater would eventually select first-time actor Ellar Coltrane and, happily, as Mason grows from reserved, whimsical youngster into very much his own man, Coltrane emerges as a true talent, uncannily convincing as Hawke’s son and, by the film’s end, a performer of such languid charisma that he could be Hollywood’s next heartthrob, should that be where his ambitions lie.