British writer and director Andrea Arnold takes her social-realist style of filmmaking across to ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ for her latest feature, an unorthodox coming-of-age road movie entitled American Honey. Newcomer actress Sasha Lane takes the leading role as Star, a teenager who, when we meet her, is foraging through a dumpster with the help of two children that she looks after. Desperate to escape her squalid standard of living and the abuse she suffers at the hands of the man she shares a home with, she looks for a way out. At a supermarket car park, she meets charismatic salesman Jake (Shia LaBeouf), who is part of a travelling crew that sells magazine subscriptions door-to-door. He pitches the trip as a ‘business opportunity’ and Star agrees to join them, taking to the open road on a journey of self-discovery across the Midwestern landscape.

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