10th edition CIFF – 10-14 April 2024

American Honey (2017 Feature Film)

Andrea Arnold | United Kingdom, USA | 2016 | color | 163 min | English | d.s.

Pounding music; the youngsters sing, smoke weed, have sex and fight. The ragged Star (scintillating debut from Sasha Lane) falls for Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and jumps in his van to travel with him. A depressing look at the American economy, but an optimistic take on the strength of young people. First American production by British director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank).

“Anybody gonna miss you?” “Not really.” “Good, you’re hired.” This is how teenager Star (a striking debut by Sasha Lane) begins a career as a hawker of magazines when she leaves home and joins a motley group of young people (most of whom are played by amateurs) as they smoke weed, sing, make love, steal, quarrel and fight their way across the USA in a van, in the first American film by British director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights).
This energetically meandering On the Road for millennials has a soundtrack rich in hip-hop and is filmed in a hand-held, documentary style. Here, freedom is not (as it was for Kerouac) the dream, but the enemy. Like all road movies, American Honey is about an inner journey (along the way Star falls for her flirty colleague Jake, played by Shia LaBeouf), meanwhile giving a rare impression of young people trying to find their way in the underbelly of American society.

Place: CINEMA 6

Date: 5 April 2017

Time: 20:15

Duration: 2:02

Place: CINEMA 2

Date: 8 April 2017

Time: 15:45

Duration: 2:03

Year in
Festival

2017

Director

Andrea Arnold

Camera

Robbie Ryan

Cast

Sasha Lane
Shia LaBeouf
Riley Keough
McCaul Lombardi
Arielle Holmes
Crystal Ice
Veronica Ezell

Country

United Kingdom
USA

Editor

Joe Bini

Language

English

Length

163 min

Music

Clarence B. Hutchinson

Producer

Lars Knudsen
Jay Van Hoy
Pouya Shahbazian
Alice Weinberg
Thomas Benski
Lucas Ochoa

Production Company

Parts & Labor Films
Maven Pictures
Pulse Films

Production Design

Kelly McGehee

Sales

Protagonist Pictures

Scenario

Andrea Arnold

Year of Production

2016

Andrea ARNOLD (1961, UK) studied at the American Film Institute. In 1998, she directed her first short film Milk which has been shown at numerous international film festivals. For her short film Wasp, she received the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2005. After being awarded the Prix du Jury at the 2006 Cannes film festival for Red Road and again in 2009 for Fish Tank, she completed her first literary adaption Wuthering Heights. This title received numerous awards at international film festivals. Arnold’s American Honey (2016) premiered at the Cannes film festival in the Golden Palm competition.

 

Filmography

Milk (1998, short), Dog (2001, short), Wasp (2003, short), Red Road (2006), Fish Tank (2009), Wuthering Heights (2011), American Honey (2016)