Lean on Pete is a 2017 British coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Andrew Haigh, based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin.

It stars Charlie Plummer, Chloë Sevigny, Travis Fimmel and Steve Buscemi, and follows a 15-year-old boy in the American Northwest, who begins to work at a stable and befriends a racehorse.

[3] It was screened in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress for Plummer.

[4] While out on a morning run by a race track, Charley Thompson, a 15-year-old who has just moved with his dysfunctional single father Ray to Portland, Oregon, finds casual work looking after a racehorse named 'Lean On Pete'.

Pete's owner, Del, is an ornery man who assigns all the grunt work at the stables to Charley, but also attempts to bond by gifting him a pair of boots and teaching table manners.

He visits his aunt in her room, confesses the crimes he has committed throughout his journey, and reveals that he suffers from nightmares about the deaths of both Pete and Ray.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Lean on Pete avoids mawkish melodrama, offering an empathetic yet clear-eyed portrayal of a young man at a crossroads that confirms Charlie Plummer as a major talent.

[31] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3+1⁄2 stars, saying "I marveled at the humanist depth of the world Haigh creates, one that can only be rendered by a truly great writer and director, working near the top of his game.

"[32] Charlie Plummer received widespread praise for his performance,[33][34][28][25][29][35] with Stephanie Zacharek of Time writing his "unstudied grace is the movie’s greatest gift".

[36] Haigh's direction and Magnus Joenck's cinematography was similarly lauded, with Jeffrey Bloomer of Slate commending how the film "slowly becomes a riveting chronicle of survival" and captures moments that are "observational, stoic, but also quietly tender".

[36][34] Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "As Charley's situation becomes increasingly precarious, the movie also becomes a meditation not just on what it is to live on the social and economic fringes in America, but how easy it is to slip through the cracks entirely.

That may feel like a bait and switch to viewers who just came for some nice boy-and-his-horse uplift, but Pete is no kind of fairytale; instead, it’s something far sadder and better and more real.