The Florida Project

In a Florida hotel just far enough away from the theme-park wonderland, a bunch of marginalised people just getting by live in a motel called The Magic Castle. During a summer, a six year old girl, Moonee, wanders around playing with friends, sometimes quite anti-socially (we're introduced to her as she and her friends are having a spitting contest onto a car in a neighbouring motel). But we soon discover that she can be as instantly accepting as she is destructive - striking up a friendship with a young girl who's living with her grandmother, the owner of that car she spat on. We explore this world through the viewpoint of an impulsive, playful six year old girl - as her emotionally disastrous mother slides into more desperate attempts to make money, as the motel manager balances his affection for his residents with his responsibilities as part of a business, as Moonee's friendships are endangered by some of the consequences of her reckless behaviour.

Willem Defoe as the hotel manager is one of the only name actors in this film (there are two other actors with a range of credits in minor roles) - it's a film that combines almost docu-drama reality with a stealthy sense of structure that explodes in the last ten-fifteen minutes as all the safety nets and all the other options drop away. This is another film that captures the kids-eye-view of what should be a horrendous topic (poverty in the US) in a way that stresses above all the character's humanity, in all the malformed and painful ways that emerges. Director Sean Baker's previous film, "Tangerine", was shot on an iphone and captured the messy lives of transgender prostitutes in LA in a way that refused to apologise for or condescend to its characters as purely victims or purely monsters. I talked to a friend afterwards and they described it as a film they'd find hard to rewatch (presumably becuase of the awful things that happen to the characters) - but I found it so very richly human that I'd love to get back in and spend time with this kid and these people again. It's one of my favourite films of the year.