Heaven Knows What
All actors and roles (10)
Short description
Heaven Knows What follows Harley, a young woman living on the streets of New York and dependent on heroin. She spends her days panhandling to pay for her next dose, while her boyfriend Ilya, himself an addict, moves in and out of her life unpredictably. The two share a volatile bond that shifts between affection and hostility depending on whether they have drugs, and their situation moves toward a breaking point. Josh Safdie directed from a screenplay he wrote with Ronald Bronstein, and Benny Safdie also directed; it sits between their earlier features Daddy Longlegs and Heartland and their later Good Time and Uncut Gems. The film draws on Arielle Holmes's own diaries, with Holmes playing a version of herself as Harley, alongside Caleb Landry Jones as Ilya. Eléonore Hendricks, Buddy Duress, Necro and Isaac Adams appear in supporting roles, among a credited cast of 71 and crew of 47.
The film was released in 2015 and runs 97 minutes. It is a crime drama produced in the United States and France by Elara Pictures and Iconoclast, produced by Sebastian Bear-McClard and Oscar Boyson. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 7.5/10 from 71 reviews, while on TMDB it has a rating of 6.5/10 from 204 votes, a gap suggesting critics responded more favorably than the broader audience.
What's left behind the scenes
- Arielle Holmes, who played Harley, lived on the streets of New York before this project. When she was discovered by director and screenwriter Josh Safdie, she shared the details of her former life of drug abuse and the tragic history of her relationship with Ilya, played by Caleb Landry Jones. Holmes remained sober throughout the entire filming period.
- Ilya was actually alive when the film was released, and the accidental self-immolation scene was invented specifically for the movie. Ilya found it very amusing that his character dies in the film.
- At one point, Ezra Miller was planned for the role eventually played by Caleb Landry Jones.
- Cinematographer Sean Price Williams shot some scenes using a telephoto lens from a great distance. The film crew operated without official filming permits.
- During the filming of the movie, actor Buddy Duress (who played Mike) was a fugitive; he was finally arrested the day after filming ended and was behind bars on the day of the film's premiere. He was briefly released a few days before filming for 'Good Time' began in February 2016, and by the time the dramatic thriller 'Uncut Gems' was released in the fall of 2019, he was imprisoned again. Since the late 2000s, he has been jailed about ten times on charges including possession of heroin, petty theft, identity theft, threatening others, and possession of brass knuckles.
- Robert Pattinson contacted brothers Benny and Josh Safdie after accidentally coming across a poster of Arielle Holmes under a pink neon light online. The image radiated such energy that Pattinson wrote to the Safdies, telling them he wanted to work with them. It was then that the brothers began writing the script for the thriller 'Good Time' (2017) specifically for Pattinson.
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