Some Kind of Heaven

SOME KIND OF HEAVEN explores life inside the palm-tree-lined streets of The Villages, America’s largest retirement community in Florida. Referred to as the “Disneyland for Retirees”, this planned community is home to over 130,000 seniors. It offers residents a utopian version of the American yesteryear: wide, safe streets, perfectly manicured lawns, and countless activities all in service of enjoying their golden years.

While most residents have bought into its packaged positivity, we meet four residents living on the margins, striving to find happiness. Married couple Anne and Reggie wrestle with Reggie’s deteriorating grip on reality, Barbara, a widow, seeks second love, and Dennis, an 82-year-old bachelor living out of a van, looks for a way out of a peripatetic existence.

AroView: A stylish, Sundance-anointed doco set in a ‘utopian’ mega-retirement village in Florida, focusing on four residents who each have their own troubles in paradise. The beauty of their honesty is matched by the beauty of the images in what is a quietly sardonic yet compassionate exploration of the gulf between the American Dream and ever-elusive happiness.

[NZIFF2020]