Honey Boy

Honey Boy follows a former child performer who, in court-ordered rehab, is asked to write about his past. The screenplay he produces becomes the film itself, moving between his adult breakdown and the years he spent on set as a boy managed by his unstable, ex-rodeo father. Shia LaBeouf, drawing on his own life, plays a version of that father opposite the child who stands in for him.

The film is a study in reenactment and working-through: the writer returns to painful scenes not to relive them but to place them at a distance where they can be understood, and the casting turns that process literal. It shows how a container (here, the writing and the shoot) lets someone approach what was previously unspeakable. The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Award.