Director Sean Baker is committed to using his art to give voice to the members of society who are too easily diminished. That’s what he did with the marvelous Tangerine, from 2015, and that’s what he does with The Florida Project. In depicting the day-to-day grind of people living in poverty in a motel close to the pricey fantasies peddled by Walt Disney World, Baker rejects the maudlin and manipulative. Instead, with care and respect, he shows the aching survival mechanisms everyone must construct in a place and time where hope is the snowball that keeps melting away before it can build on a downhill roll. The films seems episodic, briefly catching moments with a disarming intimacy. But all those shards of narrative add up to a complete picture, emphasizing the way lives accumulate even when they seem to be sitting painfully still. Lovely, heart-rending, and casually funny, The Florida Project honors the characters it depicts by meeting their heavy troubles and briefly blissful triumphs with bruising truthfulness.