Film

Kajillionaire

Name: Kajillionaire
Genre: Crime, Drama, Comedy
Released: 2020
Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Debra Winger, Gina Rodriguez, Richard Jenkins, Patricia Belcher

Kajillionaire is Miranda July's deadpan comedy about a woman raised by con-artist parents who've kept her deliberately poor and isolated to fuel their schemes. When a stranger enters their orbit, the family's carefully constructed logic begins to crack. It's tender and strange—a film about how love and self-invention can undo a lifetime of manipulation.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love deadpan, quirky family oddities where affection and grift are tangled together, and you enjoy a sharp, stylised film in the vein of Miranda July's offbeat, tender world.

Skip it if you need brisk plotting and clear emotional payoffs, since this film is more interested in strange moods and awkward silences than in propelling its story forward at a steady clip.

What it asks of you: It runs a brisk 105 minutes but lingers on odd, static moments, so it asks you to sit with its peculiar tone and to accept a flat, unhurried rhythm without much warning.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Moonlight2016

A quiet, luminous portrait of a young person discovering who they are despite the world's attempts to define them. Like Kajillionaire, it finds profound dignity in moments of small connection and understands loneliness as a shape that lives inside you.

But It's very slow and meditative. If you want plot momentum or clear answers, this will feel frustratingly open-ended.

The Florida Project2017

Follows a child navigating poverty and instability with imagination and joy. Both films reject pity and instead find resilience, humour, and strange beauty in economic desperation.

But The sadness creeps in quietly. It's not an uplifting film, just a true one.

Shoplifters2018

A Japanese family bound by crime and survival learns what real connection looks like. It shares Kajillionaire's dark humour about theft, its understanding of chosen family, and its heartbreaking final act.

But Subtitled, and the pacing is deliberately slack. Not for anyone hunting excitement.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Kajillionaire

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Last Picture Show1971

Both films mourn the loss of possibility and understand escape as a form of love.

A black-and-white elegy for a dying town and the people who have no better place to go. Like Kajillionaire, it's about young people trying to escape and the terrible gravity that keeps pulling them back.

But Made in 1971, it moves at a different speed entirely. Patience required, and it's genuinely tragic, not wry.

Hereditary2018

A family's dysfunction and secrets unravels in horror terms. Both films understand that families can be prisons, and that breaking free means breaking apart.

But Kajillionaire is a comedy by comparison. This one is genuinely frightening and emotionally devastating.

The Farewell2019

A woman caught between two worlds and two value systems within her own family. Like Kajillionaire, it's darkly funny about the ways families love each other wrong.

But A different register—lighter, more accessible. If you want something as formally strange as Kajillionaire, this won't scratch that itch.

Wendy and Lucy2008

Kelly Reichardt's study of a woman on the edge of homelessness. Both films are minimalist, kind to their characters, and understand that ordinary survival is dramatic enough.

But Very quiet, very still. Some will find it meditative; others will find it tedious.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always2020

Two young women navigate a system that doesn't want to help them. It shares Kajillionaire's attention to small, crucial moments of tenderness amid hardship.

But The subject matter—abortion access—is heavy. The film refuses to melodramatize, which is good but can feel distant.

Certain Women2016

Three fragmented stories of women struggling to connect in Montana. Both are meditative, formally inventive films about people who feel profoundly alone despite being together.

But Kristin Stewart's leading role is deliberately unglamorous. If you need character growth or plot resolution, you'll leave frustrated.

Eighth Grade2018

Both use a distinctive directorial voice and uncomfortable comedy to explore identity construction and the loneliness of self-invention.

Bo Burnham's intimate, unsentimental portrait of a girl trying to invent herself online and in person. Like Kajillionaire, it's about the gap between who you pretend to be and who you are, told with weird humour and real affection.

But If you don't remember cringe-inducing adolescence, you might just find it cringey. Also a bit more sympathetic to youth than some are willing to be.

Come and See1985

Both films refuse to look away from people who've been made strange by their circumstances, treating damaged characters with dignity rather than mockery.

A Soviet war film that uses a child's journey to ask why we destroy the things we love. Tonally opposite to Kajillionaire's dark comedy, but it shares the film's belief that a child shaped by cruelty deserves our full attention.

But Apocalyptically bleak and genuinely harrowing. This is not entertainment; it's an ordeal. Most people should not watch it.