Flophouse America is an intimate portrait of a boy growing up on the margins, a meditation on the unseen tragedy of housing insecurity and generational hardship. It doesn’t promise easy comfort, but it insists on being heard.
Flophouse America unfolds over three years inside one cramped motel room, where 12-year-old Mikal lives with his parents, Tonya and Jason. Monica Strømdahl’s background in photography surfaces in every frame, she moves with restraint, foregrounding quiet moments of resilience amid the chaos of addiction and poverty. The camera is rarely obtrusive; at times nearly invisible, it observes the rituals of survival: shared breakfasts, schoolwork done on whatever surface is available, arguments muffled by drink, lullabies swallowed by insomnia.
Monica Strømdahl is a Norwegian director and photographer whose work gives intimate access to people living in liminal spaces. Her first feature documentary turns a decade-long photographic interest into a sustained, empathetic cinematic witness.
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