Seattle is Dying

Homelessness in the United States takes many forms. For Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima and their four children, housing instability has meant moving between unsafe apartments, motels, relatives’ couches, shelters, the streets and their car. After 15 years of this uncertainty, the family moved into their first stable housing — an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Max Ramsey, an advocate for those experiencing poverty, uses what he has gone through to serve the impoverished community of Milwaukee despite internal struggles and disapproval from the city.

1994 at the Ambassador Hotel, 55 Mason Street in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, California. From 1978 to 1996, the hotel was managed by Hank Wilson, a San Francisco LGBT activist who made the hotel a model for harm reduction housing. 134 run-down and exhausted rooms populated by homeless men and women, sometimes even children. All of them in urgent need of care, compassion and humanity. Nobly provided by voluntarily working professional health care and social workers staff, various benefactors, volunteers, neighbors, and community contributions.

In 1971, after being rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to his parents’ homeland of Hong Kong to complete four iconic films. Charting his struggles between two worlds, this portrait explores questions of identity and representation through the use of rare archival footage, interviews with loved ones and Bruce’s own writings.

Initially embarking on an unplanned personal filmmaking project, Ilias Boukhemoucha finds himself drawn to the overlooked corners and marginalized communities within Canadian cities.

This year, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) challenged five local production companies to create a love letter to Seattle in a compilation affectionately titled, 'Seattle, I Love You'. The five shorts within this omnibus production are: Sea Folk, Fresh Pair, Open Mouth, Hannah & Otto, Secret.

Where we come from shapes who we are, and how others see us. Home gives us a sense of belonging and stability. It’s so much more than just a physical structure. It’s our safety, our refuge, our launch pad. Yet, so many people in the U.S. face housing instability and homelessness. A shocking 76% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. They are just one accident or injury away from losing everything. Losing a place to call their own. Our Journey Home explores how home shapes us and challenges our perceptions about people in need of public housing. The film examines the role we all play in supporting those who struggle in having a stable place from where they can grow and dream.

One of the most controversial writers of our times, join Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh as he undergoes a remarkable trip to find new meaning in his work, life and legacy.

Heroin anti-drug educational film

For almost half of his life, Kenneth Viken has been in prison, and he does not know how many times he has been released, only to soon return . In January 2016 he is released again.

Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".

A homeless musician finds meaning in his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.

Award-winning documentary maker Bryan Bruce investigates New Zealand's housing crisis and what might be done to solve it. Bruce consults with recognised world experts (in Canada, Ireland and Germany) to discuss their global research – this time on foreign capital and housing affordability and the effect of immigration on house prices. Bruce also looks at some of the many possible solutions (available particularly in Germany) that would provide families with stability of tenure that don’t involve private ownership.

The true-life story of a Harlem's notorious Nicky Barnes, a junkie turned multimillionaire drug-lord. Follow his life story from his rough childhood to the last days of his life.

This documentary follows three women — a fire chief, a judge, and a street missionary — as they battle West Virginia's devastating opioid epidemic.

Filmed on location in Montana and Washington State, this 1976 biography of poet and teacher Richard Hugo features readings of some of his most famous poems as well as interviews with his family and friends.

Quiet towns across rural Australia are in the grip of an Ice epidemic. Major international drug cartels are working with local outlawed motorcycle gangs to push crystal meth to a captive market of children.

Wes Hurley's autobiographical tale of growing up gay in Soviet Union Russia, only to escape with his mother, a mail order bride, to Seattle to face a whole new oppression in his new Christian fundamentalist American dad.

Cocaine has always gotten a bad rap, and for a reason. It is a drug used by the rich and the poor legally and illegally, Mexican cartels fought over it with Colombia once associated with the brutal cocaine wars, and a source of tension between the American and Mexican borders on the people who are illicitly bringing in cocaine from one side of the border to another and will do anything to do it. So it can be surprising at times to the viewer throughout the course of the documentary special, that it was never always like this.

On January 18, 2019, 17-year old Nick Sandmann, a student at the affluent Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, was internationally villainized on social media and in the 24-hour news cycle as he and his classmates appeared to confront Native American elder Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. during a March for Life rally. Video clips of the interaction went viral overnight and Sandmann and his classmates faced worldwide outrage as the entire Covington Catholic community became the center of uncomfortable conversations about racism, privilege and politics.