Digging to China (1997) on Netflix

Plot summary

In a New Hampshire town in the mid-1960s, ten-year-old Harriet Frankovitz lives with her older sister Gwen and their mother at a rundown motel whose cabins are shaped like tipis. Harriet is a lonely outcast who longs to escape the town. She tries a magic carpet off the roof, waits in the schoolyard for a flying saucer, digs a tunnel to China, and ties helium balloons to a lawn chair. Her mother drinks and sometimes drives along the wrong side of the road, and Gwen brings men into empty rooms. Leah Schroth, who is terminally ill, is taking her intellectually disabled son Ricky to an institution when their car gives out, so the two stay at the motel while it is repaired. To Harriet, Ricky is more interesting and kinder than anyone else she has met.