Discovered on a beach during spring break: Sasha Lane in American Honey. Credit:Suppled The film runs to almost three hours, mixing chaotic on-the-road experiences with moments of beauty and the dark struggles of middle America. The cast includes Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough (Mad Max: Fury Road). Lane plays Star, a teenager escaping her troubled family who joins a young gang hustling magazine subscriptions door-to-door, a mag crew. Star falls for Jake (LaBeouf), the group's top salesman, as she learns how to sell subscriptions to hapless householders. Back at the beach, Arnold and two members of her casting team approached Lane and her friends. "They were just telling us about the film they were making and who they were," says Lane. "Next thing you know she's at my hotel room that night. I was supposed to leave the next day but I ended up staying a week and putting my suitcases in her car. By the end of that week, she just was like, 'I want you to do it.' And I was down."

Selling magazine subscriptions door to door ... McCaul Lombardi, Riley Keough, Verronikah Ezell, Shia LaBeouf, Crystal B. Ice, Shawna Rae Moseley and Kenneth Kory Tucker in American Honey. Credit:Holly Horner American Honey was shot on a 56-day road trip, with a small crew travelling from Muskogee in Oklahoma to South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, staying in cheap motels. "It was exciting but it was crazy, it was really, really exhausting and it was chaotic but all for good reason," Lane says. It took Arnold three days of beach combing to find her new star. "When we first met her it was pretty chaotic," she says. "With spring break, there were literally thousands of teenagers. It's quite hard to be chasing people around on the sand so we arranged to see her in our hotel later. We did some improvisation with her in her hotel, in the corridor, that evening and she was great at that. I asked her if she'd stay a few more days so we could hang out and try a few things with some of the other cast who came from Florida.

"As those days went on, I just became more and more sure that she was going to be able to do it and handle it. She's a special girl. In amongst a lot of people on the beach, she really stood out." Arnold read about mag crews in a 2007 article in The New York Times. "The whole mag crew subculture was very interesting to me," she says. "The image I had that made me want to pursue it was of all these kids from difficult backgrounds and difficult families and maybe no families joining the crew on the bus and making their own surrogate family." After a career as a television presenter, Arnold went to film school in the US but returned to Britain to launch her directing career with an Oscar for the short film Wasp in 2005, then the features Red Road (2006), Fish Tank (2009) and Wuthering Heights (2011). She found most of the cast of American Honey at state fairs, Walmarts and other teenage hang-outs, then aimed for a shoot that was as authentic as possible.

"I wanted it to be an experience for everyone, especially all the kids that we cast," she says. "We all went on the road trip together – the cast and crew – from beginning to end. Nobody came and went for a few days here or there; everybody stayed, and stayed in the same motels. It was a really bonding experience for everybody." Arnold says she wanted LeBeouf because she felt he fitted in with everyone else, despite starring in two Transformers movies and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. "I cast him because he was right for the part," Arnold says. "I wasn't thinking of using an actor in that role but I met him and he just felt like he fitted in with everyone. And it was nice to have someone who's done it before." Since starring in American Honey, Lane has shot a short film, Born in the Maelstrom, and is in pre-production for Shoplifters of the World, a comedy about four friends devastated by the break-up of the Smiths. She still finds it difficult to call herself an actor. "It's a weird thing to say," she says. "I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I act'. But if I can continue to do it the way that feels good with me, I want to continue it for sure. I just don't know how to call myself an actress yet."

American Honey is in cinemas now.