2019 / drama / 1hr 28min / directed by Sam de Jong / country: USA / language: English
Goldie is a star – well, not quite yet, but at least in the eyes of her little sisters Sherrie and Supreme she is. The rest of the world is bound to take note soon too. Her big break surely awaits, she’s just got to pick up that golden fur coat she’s had her eye on first. And land a role as a dancer in a hip-hop video. And keep child welfare services from separating her from Sherrie and Supreme, after their mother is locked up. Holding onto those dreams isn’t easy when fate has placed such daunting obstacles in her path. With Goldie, Dutch director Sam de Jong has delivered a real New York film: raw and glamorous, unflinchingly realistic and relentlessly optimistic, with a ton of heart and at least as much attitude.
“Written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Sam de Jong (“Prince”), who shoots the upper tip of Manhattan with a vaguely foreign sense of dislocation, “Goldie” explodes with energy and hope . . . [De Jong] flakes “Goldie” with a pop style that speaks to its heroine’s natural buoyancy even when she’s adrift in some very choppy water.” –Daviod Ehrlich, Indiewire
“Sam de Jong’s 2015 debut Prince was an appealingly rough-hewn account of a Dutch-Moroccan youth experimenting with low-level crime while dreaming of a fairy-tale life beyond the Amsterdam housing projects. The director adopts another starry-eyed striver in Goldie, about an 18-year-old daughter of the Bronx who’s already a celebrated hip-hop dance sensation in her own mind, even if she’s just busting her moves at the local community center, with her kid sister working the smoke machine. That suspension between can-do spirit and come-down reality pumps blood into the irrepressible heart of this scrappy tale, along with the natural charisma of model Slick Woods, making a disarming feature debut in the title role.” –David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
LUMIERE CINEMA 