(USA, drama, 109 minutes, rated PG)
After living off the grid in a Pacific Northwest park near Portland, Oregon, a father (Ben Foster) and his 13-year-old daughter (Thomasin McKenzie) struggle to adjust to a new life when authorities find them, and prepare the girl for a “normal” life. Directed by Debra Granik (“Winter’s Bone”).“The director has a gift for cinematic spaces that are vibrantly, palpably alive, and for putting you in places, whether modest homes or the great outdoors, that make you feel as if you’re standing right alongside her characters… When the movie opens, the young teenage girl and her father aren’t just living in the forest, they are existing in a state of willed invisibility. Ms. Granik explores what it means to be so far on the margins you might as well not exist at all, at least as far as the larger world is concerned. It’s a familiar concern for Ms. Granik, who’s drawn to American outsiders living in what are often blandly called poor and marginalized communities. These are the people who populate her stories and bring them to tangibly real life in dramatic movies like ‘Winter’s Bone,’ set in the Ozark Mountains in rural Missouri, and in her documentary ‘Stray Dog,’ which centers on a gruffly warm biker and Vietnam veteran who radically defies stereotype.” — New York Times
