Heaven Knows What (2014)

Young Harley is addicted to heroin and in a manipulative, brutal relationship with the wayward Ilya. Together with a loose-knit group of young people, they struggle to get by in the cold of New York. Impressively free-spirited in its approach, the film is based on the memoirs of Arielle Holmes, who plays Harley.

Harley lives on the streets of New York and is passionately in love with Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones). He is just as addicted and unstable as she is, and also malicious when he urges her to commit suicide as a proof of his love and tries to make her follow him unquestioningly. The raw opening of HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT sets the tone, even though the film repeatedly offers glimpses of humanity.

Josh Safdie encouraged Arielle Holmes to write about her life, which she did in the book *Mad Love in N.Y.C.*. Based on this, he and Benny made the film starring Arielle Holmes, who gives an impressive performance (she later appeared in Andrea Arnold’s *American Honey*), alongside a cast consisting mainly of non-professionals. Whilst in another early Safdie film, *THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED*, aimlessness was still portrayed as a youthful search for meaning, here we are in ‘hardcore’ mode, where the pursuit of money and drugs dictates everything. Upon its release, *HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT* impressed with its audacity and screened at numerous festivals.