The Peanut Butter Falcon (filmsalon 2020)

Zak, a teenage boy with Down syndrome (newcomer Zack Gottsagen, terrific), escapes from the Virginia old folks’ home where he’s been forced to live, virtually imprisoned, since losing his family. Hitting the road, with his nurse, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) hot on his heels, he links up with down-at-heel fisherman Tyler (a soulful Shia LaBoeuf), who’s also on the lam. Together, they head to North Carolina with the dream of tracking down Zak’s hero, a washed-up semi-pro wrestler called the Saltwater Redneck… The pleasures are many in Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s picaresque, not least in the warmth that comes through as the relationship between Zak and Tyler grows. Gottsagen is a star in the making—remember when he makes it big that you so him here first!

‘[P]erhaps against the odds, this shambling buddy movie really works… It’s largely thanks to the casting. In the central role of Zak, a young man with Down’s syndrome… is newcomer Zack Gottsagen… [He]… delivers… an emotionally persuasive performance that anchors this backwater yarn… Stinging, raw and sinking into a deep, swampy sadness, LaBeouf is tremendous… Equally impressive is the sense of place that Nilson and Schwartz evoke.’—Wendy Ide, Guardian