“The film provides meaningful insight into a modern crisis, delivering it with genuine care and concern while being truly startling in the process.”

There are dozens of saccharine quotes about how none of us can choose our family, and how we should instead find a way to work through the flaws and find the beauty within any situation. This is a lovely sentiment, but one that doesn’t apply to every scenario, particularly when families are struggling with certain issues. At present, approximately 1 in 10 American children has at least one parent who suffers from alcohol addiction, a statistic presented to us by Monica Strømdahl in Flophouse America, her unique and provocative documentary in which she examines addiction. She tells the story of Mikal, a 12-year-old boy living in a small, squalid hotel room with his parents Jason and Tonya, who have both made many mistakes, including developing a dependency on alcohol that has essentially rendered them destitute. Living on the poverty line is not ideal for anyone, especially a child who is still attempting to find his identity – and throughout this film, Strømdahl makes some astute observations about the trials and tribulations of this family as they navigate addiction and its aftermath. Following a few days in their lives in 2020, and then a more recent update on Mikal and his life, the film examines their day-to-day routine, and in the process reveals some shocking but moving insights into the lives of people who are rarely afforded the chance to have their story told with this level of empathy and genuine warmth.

Flophouse America is committed to examining a vital and pressing issue, and unlike many filmmakers who leave the raw statistics for the final moments, Strømdahl presents them at the start, with the subject of the film speaking these statistics. This immediately establishes a close personal connection between the audience and Mikal, who becomes our guide through this story. Addiction is a challenging topic to approach from any direction, but it becomes even more harrowing when we see it through the eyes of a child, particularly one who is old enough to recognize the catastrophic effect substance abuse can have on families, but too young to escape such a domestic situation and start his own journey. He is a victim of a system that has let down far too many people, leading them into situations where any attempt at escape is futile. To explore his story, Strømdahl spends some time getting to know Mikal and his parents, structuring Flophouse America as a stark glimpse into their lives, and developing it in a blend of social drama and coming-of-age tale, two very different narrative avenues that she expertly reworks into the foundation for her documentary. Starting the film with facts and figures gets them out of the way, and allows Strømdahl to look at the people behind the statistics, showing the story of a family doing what they can to weather a harsh storm and embarking on their individual journeys to recovery (or their interpretation of it), even if it does not always yield the results they desperately crave,

When dealing with such a harrowing but sadly resonant topic, a large portion of the process involves choosing the right approach, particularly whittling down the various styles of documentary filmmaking that all make sense in the context of the subject. This is a portrait of addiction all seen through the eyes of a young man seeking some reprieve from his personal struggles, and it required a combination of sensitivity and genuine sincerity to be effective and avoid becoming merely exploitative of this family and their struggles. Ultimately, Strømdahl chooses to act as an observer, allowing the subjects to speak for themselves and guide the narrative, her role as director being to carve a meaningful film out of the raw material after these encounters. Keeping her distance, she allows Mikal and his parents to go about their routine, her camera merely a tool for peering into their lives and recording their interactions, something they seem to embrace. They aren’t inclined to show their scars – what we see of this family is what we get, which is a decidedly harrowing, unglamorous representation of the effects of poverty and addiction. The simplicity of the execution, and the fact that the director does not interfere and instead allows these interactions to unearth deep-seated tensions and personal quandaries, only makes Flophouse America a much richer and more compelling work. It is revealing without gawking for even the briefest of moments, and in handing a significant amount of autonomy to the subjects themselves, Strømdahl crafts a truly effective work.

Flophouse America is a surprising film – based on a cursory glance at the premise you would be forgiven for assuming that it would be a heavy-handed and dour affair. While Strømdahl is not flippant about the subject matter, she does approach it in a way that is far more dynamic and relatable, which ultimately serves to emphasize its underlying themes. Her fundamental purpose in exploring this subject, which was clearly fascinating enough to develop as a years-long project, was to provide a glimpse into the life of an ordinary family who – to refer back to one of the centerpiece conversations between the parents – have been betrayed by the false promise of the American Dream, since they never managed to attain the perfect life with a suburban home surrounded by a white picket fence. Yet, their imperfections and failings do not invalidate them from deserving empathy. Flophouse America is a film that prioritizes compassion above everything else, to the point that the fights between Mikal and his parents are heart-wrenching, and the inevitable tragedy which comes towards the end is deeply devastating, but viewed with extraordinary sympathy. Structurally nothing more than a portrait of a family that could be any of the 11% of modern Americans living in poverty, but where this simplicity fosters an environment in which the director can provoke and rework certain ideas to reveal as much about these people as it does about American culture as a whole, the film provides meaningful insight into a modern crisis, delivering it with genuine care and concern while being truly startling in the process.