The Florida Project (2017) Is the Most Honest Film About Poverty in Years
Why Sean Baker's The Florida Project is one of the best American films of the 2010s and why it deserves a wider audience.
The Florida Project made $10 million on a $2 million budget, earned Willem Dafoe an Oscar nomination, and showed up on dozens of best-of-the-decade lists. Despite all of that, most people outside of film circles have never seen it. One of the best American films of the 2010s, still flying under the radar.
Why It Got Overlooked
The subject matter is a tough sell. A film about a six-year-old girl living in a budget motel near Disney World, on the margins of poverty, does not scream "fun Friday night." The marketing tried to balance the film's warmth with its difficult themes, but many potential viewers saw "poverty drama" and moved on.
Sean Baker was not yet a household name (that came later with Anora). A24 distributed the film, but in 2017 the studio's marketing power was still building. The Florida Project got attention from critics and cinephiles but never crossed over into the mainstream the way Lady Bird or Get Out did that same year.
What Makes It Worth Your Time
Brooklynn Prince was seven years old when she played Moonee, and she is astonishing. Raw, fearless, entirely natural. She plays a kid who does not fully understand her circumstances, and that gap between her joy and the audience's awareness of how precarious her life is creates an emotional tension that runs through every scene.
Baker shot the film on 35mm, and the colors pop in a way that mirrors the bright, oversaturated world of Central Florida's tourist corridor. Budget motels, waffle houses, gift shops, empty lots, all filmed with a warmth that dignifies the setting without romanticizing it. Baker finds beauty in places most filmmakers would treat as visual shorthand for despair.
Willem Dafoe as Bobby, the motel manager who watches over the families living in his property, gives one of the best supporting performances of the decade. Bobby is not a saint or a savior. A working guy doing his best to keep order while caring about people he cannot ultimately protect. Dafoe plays him with a quiet decency that grounds the entire film.
The final sequence is one of the most debated endings in recent cinema. Without spoiling it, Baker makes a choice that splits audiences and critics. Whether you read it as hopeful or heartbreaking depends on what you bring to it. That ambiguity is part of why the film stays with you.
Who Will Love This
Fans of Moonlight, Beasts of the Southern Wild, or Nomadland. Anyone who values naturalistic filmmaking and non-professional performances. If you want cinema that shows American life as it is actually lived, not as Hollywood usually packages it, start here.
People who need plot-driven narratives or want to avoid emotionally heavy material will have a harder time. The Florida Project asks you to sit with uncomfortable realities and find beauty inside them.
The Popcorn Verdict
Kettle corn. Sweet and a little salty, like the film itself. Not an easy watch, but a rewarding one. Pop a warm bowl and let Sean Baker show you something real.
Looking for more from this era? Browse our best movies of the 2010s.