Benny (Keir Tallman) is a city kid: a proud San Diego resident who loves action figures and Fleetwood Mac, and who can speak with nonchalant ease about the benefits of an annual pass to Sea World. So when his parents — including his beloved mother (Owee Rae), the very same person who encourages his Fleetwood Mac-based dancing and soap opera-esque action figure playing! — decide to send Benny to his grandmother’s house on an out-of-state Navajo reservation for the summer, he’s rightly put out. And when he finally arrives at the local bus depot (neat, dusty, isolate), the plucky 11-year-old turns right back around and tries to zoom promptly back to San Diego.

But, as becomes a constant theme throughout Billy Luther’s winning first narrative feature “Frybread Face and Me,” Benny’s family is there to catch him, whether he likes it or not. Set in 1990, and smacking of period details that never feel over the top (a Walkman here, a VHS player there, endless chatter about Fleetwood Mac’s current tour), Luther’s film may be built on his own coming of age (the filmmaker wrote and directed the film, and narrates it as an elder Benny, “Wonder Years”-style), but there’s both specificity and universality to this story, something for everyone who was ever a kid, Native or not, to connect with.