Heaven Knows What

Harley lives on the streets of New York, uses heroin and is in love with Ilya. The relationship is violent and destructive; the film opens with her being admitted to a hospital and then follows her return to the same circle. The day passes between finding money and finding a fix. The subject is not addiction but addiction and love becoming impossible to separate. What Harley feels for Ilya is also a form of use, and the film neither judges nor romanticises it. The form is built on long lenses: the camera shoots from a distance, through the crowd, and the characters are often behind passing people. The music is electronic and loud, deliberately crushing the scenes. The source was Arielle Holmes' then unpublished memoir. The Safdie brothers met her in New York and asked her to write down what she had lived through; in the film that came out of it, Holmes plays Harley herself. Others in the cast were genuinely living on the street. Caleb Landry Jones plays Ilya. Who it is for: viewers who like hard, formally ambitious American independent cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting distance from drug use and violence; the film never pulls back.