Hoard dazzled the Venice International Film Festival back in 2023. It nabbed several prizes, including Best Directing and Screenwriting (Authors Under 40 Award), the Verona Film Club Award, The Film Club Audience Award, and a Jury Special Mention for its star, Saura Lightfoot-Leon. The actress is a commanding presence on screen in a film that finds her as a foster home teenager suddenly confronting the childhood she had with her mother, who used to be a hoarder.
It’s a powerful film all around. Some of its characters may not be all that relatable, but one theme is: grief and trauma. It’s the thread that writer/director Luna Carmoon weaves through her debut feature which, despite feeling disjointed on occasion, is a marvel to watch. It’s altogether heartbreaking and hopeful. It asks: can we truly move beyond our challenging past? Maybe we’re not required to go on default and replay those experiences?
Grabs the Audience from the Onset
Hoard begins as a hauntingly claustrophobic film. Young Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) and her mother (Hayley Squires) have a “landfill” in their living room. They create a magical world of wonder tenting themselves under bedsheets. They sleep in a tub. Yet, for them, every day is Christmas. There’s an adventure to be had. Something new to collect. The duo often jaunts to South East London to scour for left-behind objects like crumpled paper, tin foil balls, and other scraps. It’s a lot. But it’s so little, overall, in comparison to the expansive lives they could be living.
Director/writer Luna Carmoon captures these tricky nuances to winning ends, and from the get-go, you wonder if the entire film holds the same kind of fragmented pacing as its earlier parts. It doesn’t. Curiously, the beginning of the film feels physically overstuffed in the physical world yet imaginative broad in the minds of the mother and daughter. The mood flips thanks to a 10-year time jump that finds teenage Maria (now played by the brilliant Saura Lightfoot-Leon) experiencing more order and spaciousness in her physical world while living in a foster home. Soon enough, her inner world begins to quickly shrink into uncertainty and despair.
Maria can thank Michael (Joseph Quinn) for that. A previous resident of the foster home, he suddenly reappears much to the joy of the loving foster mom, Michelle (Samantha Spiro). Maria and Michael share a spark initially and he inspires her to revisit her childhood memories and passions. It’s a noble thought, but as Maria begins to ruminate on the past, it unleashes unresolved issues of abandonment, loss, grief, and heartache. It’s only a matter of time before she secretly begins acting out a version of her former life.
When Trauma Knocks on Your Door
Initially set in the 1980s, the film’s time jump takes us into the ’90s, where the filmmaker effectively captures working-class London. The mood is ho-hum. The skies are gray. There is much fizz. We see that Maria has established order in her life. She calls Michelle, “mom,” forgoing “foster” completely. She’s moved on from her troubled past. We think.
There’s a remarkable moment in the second half of the film that triggers Maria deeply, forcing her to confront her past. The filmmaker handles it with such grace. The scene is so subtle, yet everything that follows it brilliantly captures how easily unresolved trauma can be unearthed and flutter around like a live electrical wire.
The scenes between Lily-Beau Leach and Joseph Quinn are bold, real, and deeply moving. Michael himself comes from a troubled past and his choices are questionable. Like Maria’s mother, codependency comes into play. The filmmaker so aptly captures the never-diminishing ache of “must have.” For Michael, it’s suddenly Maria. For Maria, it’s a mother she never really had a chance to say goodbye to.
A Different Kind of Coming-of-Age Film
If you appreciate dramatic films, and even coming-of-age movies like Boyhood and Boy Erased, that realistically capture time, place, mood, and persona, Hoard is worthy of your attention. There are some fine B players here, particularly with Maria’s best friend, Laraib (Deba Hekmat), whose mere presence — and love — juxtaposes Maria’s past and, although hidden, her inner world.
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Ultimately, the filmmaker brings us to a grand opus where avoiding the past and confronting it offers two different kinds of anguish. Which will Maria choose? There’s a moment toward the end of the film that’s a jaw-dropper, exposing a secret that is both inexplicable and shocking. Tune in for the premise. Be mesmerized by the actors. Hoard opens in select theaters on September 6. Watch the trailer below.