The plot follows a military veteran father (Ben Foster) with post-traumatic stress disorder who lives in the forest with his young daughter (Thomasin McKenzie).

Leave No Trace premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and was theatrically released by Bleecker Street in the United States on June 29, 2018.

Will, a veteran suffering from PTSD, lives with his teenage daughter, Tom, in the old growth Forest Park in Portland, Oregon.

Will and Tom try to travel in a railroad boxcar but eventually catch a ride with a trucker who takes them to Washington state and drops them off, in a remote forest area.

Off-grid musician and former Dream Syndicate and Opal member Kendra Smith contributed the original song "Moon Boat" (her first solo recording since 1996), which plays over the end credits.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Leave No Trace takes an effectively low-key approach to a potentially sensationalistic story — and further benefits from brilliant work by Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie.

[19] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote: "In its best moments, Leave No Trace invites you to simply be with its characters, to see and experience the world as they do.

"[20] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it "Fiercely involving in a way we're not used to, made with sensitivity and honesty by director/co-writer Debra Granik, it tells its emotional story of a father and daughter living dangerously off the grid in a way that is unnerving and uncompromising yet completely satisfying.

"[21] The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw praised the movie as being a deeply intelligent story of love and survival in the wild, and gave it a perfect score of 5 out of 5.

[23] Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a mixed review: "There's a listless, almost meandering nature to the story.

The film's conflict is clear – this is no way to raise a child, and allowed to continue in this fashion, Will risks both his life and Tom's – and yet there’s no sense of where the script is headed, and no urgency to its resolution.