"Heaven knows what" will become of us, but for those living on the streets with addiction, their every day consumed with a search for food, shelter, and a fix, the future is far away. Joshua and Benny Safdie have made their most accomplished and fearless film yet with this fierce fusion of fiction and documentary realism. Blending real actors with fugitives, drug dealers, and street legends, it chronicles a young addict feeding her addictions and finding mad love on the sidewalks of Manhattan.

Based on the experiences of Arielle Holmes — a homeless teenager with a ferocious Jersey accent — the film stars Holmes as Harley, a fictionalized version of herself: a heroin-hooked panhandler unable to get either the junk or her wicked boyfriend Ilya (an unrecognisable Caleb Landry Jones) out of her system.

Adapted from Holmes's unpublished memoirs by the Safdies and Ronald Bronstein (director of Frownland and star of the brothers' Daddy Longlegs), spiked with intense and intermittent bursts of music (including a track by Ariel Pink), and shot on location in fluorescent-lit fast food joints, skeezy apartments, and the comparably sylvan oases of urban parkland, Heaven Knows What evokes the emotional rawness of Cassavetes and the dreamy desperation of Philippe Garrel. While the formal textures are indelible, the pace frenetic and dizzyingly intense from start to finish, it is the all-out performance by Holmes — a true talent-in-the-making — that gives the film its visceral, electrifying edge.

"Bold, brave film making" ★★★★★ Time Out

"an exciting, creative and exhilarating jolt of cinema" ★★★★★ The Guardian

"a beautiful film about beautiful losers" ★★★★ Little White Lies

"It is a good day for independent cinema when a new film can inject the genre with creative flare" ★★★★ The Upcoming

Please note that doors open 30 minutes before the advertised start time.