In the summer of 2021, Khaleel Seivwright, a carpenter, decided to build tiny homes for Toronto’s homeless population. Soon afterwards, the city told him that he wasn’t allowed to build them, citing safety issues, despite a lack of available shelter beds. Someone Lives Here, which won the Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs 2023, is deftly told by first-time documentarian Zack Russell, who captures this Kafkaesque story in a humane and empathetic way. We see how people living in the tiny homes were harassed by some members of the public who were worried they would bring down the area’s property values. Police-enforced evictions reach a dramatic climax as organizers in favour of the tiny homes lock arms in the face of violence and arrests. An important story for our time, as housing insecurity across Canada reaches new heights and people look to find solutions in the face of bureaucratic road blocks.
Audience Award, Best Canadian Documentary, Hot Docs 2023
Presented by
Series Media Partner
Canada
2022
Northern Lights
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
William Goldbloom Marianna Khoury, Tinu Shina, Will Lomoro
Producer
Zack Russell, Andrew Ferguson, Matt King, Marianna Khoury
Cinematography
Chet Tilokani
Editor
Marianna Khoury
Original Music
Bram Gielen
Director
Zachary Russell
Zack Russell was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He has directed and written for television, and made two award-winning narrative shorts. His first short film, She Stoops to Conquer, premiered at SXSW and went on to win the 2016 Canadian Screen Award. His work has been screened at film festivals around the world, including TIFF, SXSW, VIFF, and New Orleans. Someone Lives Here is his first feature documentary.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Tokyo Godfathers
Shinjuku, Tokyo, Christmas Eve. Middle-aged has-been Gin, aging drag artist Hana, and teenage runaway Miyuki are three homeless friends who stumble across an abandoned baby and do their best to care for the infant over the course of a long and perilous night.
Auction
Inspired by a true story, writer-director Pascal Bonitzer has crafted an inquiring, witty drama about the art market. When a long-lost Egon Schiele masterpiece reemerges, art appraiser Alex is initially skeptical. And yet...
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
Sinners
This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.