Heading West is a lovely study of everyday life, or, more specifically, the life of Claire, a 38-year-old woman living in Amsterdam whom we follow over the course of a single year. During this time, she cares for her young son, teaches at a school for deaf children, argues with her ex-husband, and flirts with a stranger. She has dinner with friends, visits her mother, goes shopping, checks up on the elderly neighbor, and makes her way from place to place in the city on her bicycle—even after an accident in which she breaks her arm. None of these experiences may be exceptional in their own right, but when taken together, they form a constellation of the highs and lows, large and small, that make up a life, and illustrate a whole which is more than the sum of its parts in this carefully observed, deeply personal film.