Sean Baker’s (co-writer, director, editor) excellent film focuses on the hidden homeless warehoused in the cheap motels just outside Disney’s ever-joyous Magic Kingdom. Theirs is a community of the marginal poor, one step away from the street itself, struggling to survive in the insanely purple Magic Castle Motel, a welfare hotel managed by Bobby played with genuine empathy by Willem Dafoe. Most are women with children or grandchildren struggling to stay out of the clutches of DSS and a system that makes their residencies illegal if they stay in Bobby’s protective castle one day too long. Everyone is on the knife blade of: one day from the street, one bust from jail, one call from state intervention. And yet, its summer, and the kids are running wild without school as a tether. Moonie (the amazing. Brooklyn Prince) leads her friends Scooty, Dickie, and Jancey on ‘adventures’ – including some that are quite horrible – outside the tourist universe, while the adults including her loving but furious, foul-mouthed mom Halley (Bria Vianite) struggle and fail to provide both sustenance and care. The love is there, but the skills and resources (both economic and cultural) are often lacking. The kids are growing up in an environment that’s almost guaranteed to reproduce their poverty, marginality, self-destructiveness, and anger. It is both beautifully filmed and excruciating in its pain as children and adults (including Bobby) struggle for joy and meaning while hidden in plain sight. Their perpetual struggle to survive is both exhausting and invigorating as Baker takes us through fragments of their days. The film has a neorealist aura as it moves back and forth between poverty, the ludicrously free-spending world of Disney tourism, and the natural beauty of Florida. The features included with the DVD help in looking at the making of the film and interviews with the actors, most of whom have never acted before yet are real naturals in front of the camera. The latter is a testament to Baker’s skill as a director and in his casting the roles. You can see the impact of the “Our Gang” comedies that Baker memorializes in a credit and his interview, but this is “Our Gang” for ‘our time’. It is raw, loving, and very painful