Film

American Honey

American Honey turns a magazine-crew road trip into a nearly three-hour fever dream: handheld camera, sunburnt colour, a soundtrack that swings from Rihanna to gospel. Andrea Arnold cast real drifters alongside professionals, so the hustling and hookups feel less staged than caught. It's for anyone who wants cinema that breathes—long, loose, unresolved—rather than one that ties a bow on youth and poverty.

TMDb rating6.8

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Spring Breakers2013

Same hunger for escape and reinvention on the road, but pushed into neon, candy-colored excess—girls in ski masks chasing freedom through crime instead of magazine sales. The pulse is identical; the aesthetic is turned up to eleven.

But The style is glossy and ironic where American Honey is grubby and sincere—if you wanted grit, this can feel like a music video.

Spring Breakers poster

Fish Tank2009

Andrea Arnold's earlier film, and you can feel her fingerprints everywhere—a teenage girl in a cramped, hostile home reaching for something bigger, shot with the same restless intimacy.

But Smaller and colder than American Honey's sprawl—one girl, one estate, no open road to lose yourself in.

Fish Tank poster

The Florida Project2017

Sean Baker finds the same sun-bleached poverty and stubborn joy, just seen through a six-year-old's eyes instead of a teenager's—America's margins rendered in gorgeous, aching colour.

But Told through a child's perspective rather than a teen's, so the danger lands more obliquely, more heartbreaking than visceral.

The Florida Project poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Honey Boy2019no page yet

Shia LaBeouf plays American Honey's wild, magnetic crew boss Jake—then two years later wrote and starred in this confessional account of the abusive father who made him that way. Same charisma, turned inward and interrogated instead of performed.

LaBeouf, playing a fictionalized version of his own father opposite Noah Jupe as his younger self, turns his real damage into something devastating and precise—a reckoning American Honey only hints at.

But Claustrophobic and painful where American Honey is expansive—this stays in motel rooms and old wounds instead of open highways.

More like this (8)

Nomadland2021

Swap the magazine crew for seasonal warehouse workers and RV nomads, and you get the same portrait of Americans drifting for survival and dignity, blending real nomads with a movie star.

But Quieter and more elegiac—closer to meditation than the loud, hormonal chaos of American Honey's van.

Nomadland poster

Kids1995

Larry Clark's raw, unglamorous document of teenagers left to their own devices predates Arnold's film by two decades and shares its refusal to judge or protect its cast from consequence.

But Uglier and far more nihilistic, with none of American Honey's stray tenderness or flickers of hope.

Kids poster

Into the Wild2007

The same itch to vanish from a broken home into the vastness of America, chasing a purer kind of freedom on the road, with real landscapes doing a lot of the talking.

But More romantic about solitude than community—there's no crew here, just one man against the wilderness.

Into the Wild poster

Palo Alto2014no page yet

Gia Coppola's woozy teen ensemble captures the same drift and boredom of American youth, minus the poverty—suburban kids doing damage to themselves for lack of anything else to do.

But Softer stakes and a slower pace—nobody here is hustling to survive, just to feel something.

Beach Rats2017no page yet

Eliza Hittman's Brooklyn teenager drifts through hookup apps and drugs with the same restless, wordless longing that drives Star—another kid figuring out desire and identity with nobody steering.

But Much smaller in scale and scope—one summer, one boy, none of American Honey's sprawling ensemble energy.

Waves2019no page yet

A very different family and crisis, but the same saturated colour and pulsing soundtrack turning ordinary teenage feeling into something operatic and overwhelming.

But More melodramatic and tightly plotted—this is a tragedy with a shape, not a drift with no destination.

Wanda1970no page yet

Nearly fifty years before Star climbs into a stranger's car, Barbara Loden wrote, directed, and starred in this micro-budget film about a woman drifting away from an unhappy home into dependency on a small-time crook. Same restless female drift, same refusal to romanticize the men she follows.

Shot guerrilla-style on grainy 16mm with a non-professional feel decades before it was fashionable, it's a quietly devastating portrait of a woman who keeps choosing the wrong ride out of nowhere to go.

But Bleaker and far more static than American Honey—no crew, no party, no music, just one woman's slow drift toward nothing.

Streetwise1984

This documentary follows real teenage runaways hustling and sleeping rough on the streets of Seattle—the same economy of survival, seduction, and makeshift family that Arnold fictionalizes with her mag crew, except nobody here is acting.

Martin Bell's unflinching camera catches actual homeless kids scraping by through panhandling, sex work, and petty crime, decades before American Honey borrowed its texture—raw, funny, and unbearably sad in equal measure.

But No fiction's mercy here—these are real kids in real danger, and the film doesn't soften what happens to some of them.

Streetwise poster

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