The Florida Project (2017)
Sean Baker’s followup to Tangerine is another wild, brutally honest look at the life of a woman selling herself — one in perhaps even more desperate straits than the protagonists of Tangerine.
The film stars first-time actress Bria Vinaite as Halley, who works out of a cheap motel on the outskirts of Orlando’s magic kingdom as she tries to shield her daughter (Brooklyn Prince) from the hardship of her life and make their sad surroundings feel like the happiest place on earth.
Willem Dafoe (above, with Vinaite) earned an Oscar nomination for his role as motel manager Bobby, who doesn’t need money to have endless generosity. This is a real faith-in-humanity movie, even when things seem impossibly bleak.
Almsot every Sean Baker film is in some sense about the world’s oldest profession, and his latest, Anora, recently won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.