Before the sun is up, Aroha is already on a mission. While her family sleeps, this imaginative young girl with Down syndrome packs her backpack, leaves a note by her bunny lamp, kisses her sleeping mother goodbye, and slips out the front door with a tub of sidewalk chalk and a plan no one else knows about.

By the time the house wakes up, her bed is empty. What follows is every parent’s worst morning: a mother going door to door, an older sister dragged out of bed to help search, neighbors who haven’t seen her, and a quiet street that suddenly feels far too big. Meanwhile, just around the corner, Aroha is hard at work, turning plain gray pavement into something her neighborhood has never seen.

Told with very little dialogue, this 11-minute family drama from New Zealand moves from heart-in-your-throat worry to pure delight. Writer-director Nicholas Riini, himself the father of a daughter with special needs, captures the fierce love of a family frightened for its youngest member, and the quiet determination of a child who sees the world in color and wants everyone else to see it too. When the neighborhood finally discovers what Aroha made on the walk to school, the result is a joyful, beautifully crafted surprise that viewers of every age will want to watch again.

In Māori, the indigenous Polynesian language of New Zealand, aroha means love. A Morning with Aroha is a story about exactly that: the love that worries, the love that forgives, and the love you can leave behind in chalk for others to find.