I voted for The Florida Project! It was my 3rd favorite movie of the year (behind Spiderman: Homecoming and Lady Macbeth) and it really hit me hard in the end on an emotional level. I live a few years very close to where this movie takes place when I went to college down there and I do not drive so walked/took buses everywhere and walked past these types of lower class people all the time. I think this movie is not mockish or poverty porn like some dismiss it but more of a wake up call to the poverty issue is our country that effects all ages in all locations. The amount of homeless people on the streets of the Orlando/Winter Park area is really outrageous and the citizens have very gross thoughts towards them. I walked past many that sleep on the bench outside the library or use bus stop benches as beds and the local government were starting to put statues and things to block people from sleeping on them. They would rather pay for things to make the homeless lives more miserable than actually help them? Of course, the characters in this film are just a level up with a roof over their head but struggle to keep that roof there. I think this movie is a perfect companion piece to 2015's 99 Homes which comes from the other side with the government's side of eviction but giving us a character with similar struggles the chance to be in their shoes to see where they come from things. I don't know if any of this is cohesive but Florida Project just spoke to me the loudest out of these contenders and hit a place close to home. Sean Baker is such a great humanist director that captures corners of our day to day life that we just stroll past and gives them a voice. All the performances are just so real and natural as if he is making a documentary. It's a movie that hasn't left me since I saw it 3 months ago just as 99 Homes still is about similar issues.
