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The Florida Project and Ladybird, Ladybird are films from opposite sides of the Atlantic about families living in difficult and disadvantaged circumstances, the relationships between parents and children, and the role of the state in protecting children from parental neglect and abuse. The Florida Project, directed by Sean Baker (2017), is a highly acclaimed independent American film, while Ladybird, Ladybird is a British social realist film by esteemed, long-time director Ken Loach. The two films take very different approaches to this subject matter, for while The Florida Project foregrounds, and celebrates, the experience of childhood within poverty, Ladybird, Ladybird centres on the experience of one woman who has both been in care in childhood herself and has then had her own children removed by social services following protection orders.
The Florida Project is a film about families – mainly single mothers and grandmothers and their young children – living on the breadline in budget motels just across the highway from the tourist mecca of Disneyworld, Florida. But this is also a film about the fun and dangers associated with childhood freedoms. Young single mother Halley lives with her precocious six-year-old daughter Moonee in the ‘Magic Castle’ motel. Moonee’s friend Scooty lives there too with his mother Ashley, Halley’s best friend, who works in a local fast food restaurant. Next door in the ‘Futureland’ motel is recent arrival Jancey, quickly assimilated into Mooney’s anarchic gang. Jancey lives with Grandma Stacy as her mother has been drug-addicted and in prison.
Halley spends her days smoking and watching TV in the motel room. In one conversation with a welfare officer, we learn about her difficulties in finding reasonable employment. Her only income stems from hawking knock-off perfume to tourists (until she turns to prostitution). Halley ‘watches’ Scooty while Ashley works; but the children are mainly left to their own devices in the