Youth and Poverty: The Florida Project

The Florida Project was released in 2017 to quiet acclaim. Despite being overlooked on the festival scene, it was one of the most unique films of the year. The story revolves around a mother and child making ends meet in Kissimmee, Florida. Living in a motel complex, Mooney and Halley are always on the edge of homelessness. As they navigate poverty together, the omnipresent Disney World looms nearby in all its artificial glory. The dichotomy is piercing as it is painful. As middle-class families enjoy parades and gorge on warm churros, the rest view the fireworks from afar.

"Excuse me. Could you give us some change, please? The doctor said we have asthma and we have to eat ice-cream right away." Mooney

William Dafoe plays the hotel manager, Bobby Hicks. The rooms of the Magic Castle are not occupied by typical hotel guests, but makeshift tenants. They're not allowed to stay in one room for an extended period of time, so the tenants are shuffled to avoid breaking motel policy. Bobby Hicks cares for them like family, kicking out predators to protect the children and fixing electrical problems.

"I can always tell when adults are about to cry." Mooney

The Florida Project is beautiful, laden with soft pastel buildings and verdant backdrops, but hidden beneath this surface-level beauty is pain. It exposes the American paradox of poverty—how so many people can live in solid comfort yet others can barely scrape by. Even though The Florida Project does not shy from the harder truths of life, it also shows how kindness and imagination can bloom in the worst of circumstances. Mooney roams the neighborhood with her friends, exploring abandoned complexes and asking strangers for change to buy ice cream. 

Overall, The Florida Project poses a question about how desperate poverty can live beside such excess. It asks us to look beyond the magical gates of Disney World and towards the other side of town—the side we like to avoid. Sobering and sympathetic, the Florida Project is an underrated masterpiece.