Our Journey Home

The Street

Every day, on the streets of Canada's cities, we pass them on our way to work or school. Bums, beggars, winos, bag people we call them. But who is the person at the end of that outstretched arm? What is life on the street really like? Is there a way off the street? For six years, director Daniel Cross followed the lives of three homeless men who spent much of their time in and around a Montreal subway station. Filmed in a cinema verité style, the film is unique: it humanizes the homeless, breaking down the barrier between us and them, neither moralizing nor offering easy answers. This is a gritty, compelling look at life on the streets that moves beyond the media stereotypes to show both the humanity of the homeless and the street-toughened aspects of their existence.

Wood Street

Two unhoused men turned community leaders— John and LaMonté —organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system.

49 Up

49 Up is the seventh film in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when UK-based Granada's World in Action team, inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-old children from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. Michael Apted, a researcher for the original film, has returned to interview the "children" every seven years since, at ages 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and now again at age 49.In this latest chapter, more life-changing decisions are revealed, more shocking announcements made and more of the original group take part than ever before, speaking out on a variety of subjects including love, marriage, career, class and prejudice.

Dark Days

A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.

Motel

As Niagara Falls transformed from honeymoon capital of the world to Las Vegas North, corporate hotel chains and casinos cast a long shadow over the independent motels that once populated the town. The Continental survived the transition by converting its rooms into affordable housing units, becoming a home for those with few places to go. The night manager, Brian, once a freelance photographer who survived the horrors of war in Vietnam, shares his duties with his colleague Linda. Together they manage both the Continental and the individual struggles of its tenants, providing more than a roof over the heads of those who live under their supervision. Bringing a fresh focus to one of the most photographed places on Earth, director and cinematographer Jesse McCracken develops an intimate and caring portrait of the residents of this modest micro-community set against the backdrop of neon-lit tourist attractions.

This Beggar's Description

It's a sensitive, moving doc chronicling the life of Tétrault's brother Philip , a Montreal poet, musician and diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. A promising athlete as a child, Philip began experiencing mood swings in his early 20s. His extended family, including his daughter, share their conflicted feelings love, guilt, shame, anger with the camera. They want to make sure he's safe, but how much can they take?

A Home with the Street Inside It

People experiencing homelessness, social work professionals, and film artists join forces to transform fragments of real life into fictional short films.

Someone's Daughter, Someone's Son

Now a successful filmmaker, Lorna Tucker was once a teenage runaway sleeping rough on the streets of London. For this frank, forceful and inspiring documentary, she returns to her former haunts and speaks to current and former homeless people about why, twenty-five years later, record numbers of people are still reduced to living on Britain's streets.

Et glas vand til Johnie

20 Cans of Chunky Beef Soup

Documentary tells the story of Maxim Vakhmin, a veritable alleycat of a man. Revered as both an angel and a devil, Maxim (once known as a successful artist in his native Russia) is losing friends and finding new ones as a homeless person in the USA.

Down in Dallas Town

Through interviews with people on the street and songs recorded to memorialize JFK in the mid-1960s, the film explores the impact of the November 22, 1963 assassination on issues in today’s world, from lingering conspiracy theories to the proliferation of gun violence, homelessness, and the scourge of K-2.

We Were There to Be There

On June 13, 1978, the punk bands the Cramps and the Mutants played a free show for psychiatric patients at the Napa State Hospital in California. We Were There to Be There chronicles the people, politics, and cultural currents that led to the show and its live recording.

Gatwick - The Last Chance Hotel

Intimate true stories from St Kilda's Gatwick Private Hotel. Meet the incredible characters including sisters Rose and Yvette who dedicated their lives to caring for the forgotten.

The Hotel of Waifs

Waifs, homeless, derelicts, almsmen, others, forgettens, outcasts, unwanteds. The Hotel of Waifs; a temporary resting place far from home, an amusement in a pale fun fair, an enthusiastic trip on roundabout ways of soul.

The Homestretch

Three homeless teenagers brave Chicago winters, the pressures of high school, and life alone on the streets to build a brighter future.

Disco'd

“Set against the rattle of shopping carts and the white noise of L.A. traffic... “Disco’d” is an unvarnished, moving look at the lives affected by the rising crisis of homelessness.” —Los Angeles Times

Nightcrawlers

For five years, Stephen McCoy documented street life in Boston. This is what he captured.

Do Lado de Fora

Boca

Un jour ça ira

Djibi and Ange, two teenagers living on the streets, arrive at the Archipel, an emergency shelter in the heart of Paris. This documentary is a look at the Archipel, a shelter offering an innovative way to welcome families living on the streets.