Movies: Homelessness

A documentary that chronicles Pras Michel's 9-day experience as a homeless man in downtown Los Angeles. Given a dollar a day to live, his worldview is shattered as he sees firsthand the fight for survival on the violent streets....

Respected banker Karel Brand is seen as a marketable emblem of probity. When he loses 350,000 guilders, his reputation is tarnished – without the respect attached to it, he loses his job. Brand becomes unemployable, and his creditors suddenly start c...

How do seven young people, former street children from Romania, get to see the Pacific Ocean? On 1 December 2008, a Romanian national team participates for the first time in the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. The film follows the team fr...

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the presen...

Homeless veterans find family as they rent rooms from an eighteen-year-old girl struggling to support her thirteen-year-old brother while discovering her voice in Americana music....

Through the eyes of a young drifter who rejects society's rules and intentionally chooses to live on the streets, Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang explores the meaning of personal freedom – and its limits....

From her childhood, Nadia felt responsible for her mentally disturbed and recently homeless mother, Irene. For a while Nadia had cut off all contact with Irene and tried to live her life, until Irene suddenly appears drunk at the wedding of her son, ...

A gothic tale of mysticism and violent crime. Two women go out into the fringe of rural culture to seek a revelation. They get trapped in a fierce place, and one murders a man with an ax after she has a vision that he is an evil thing....

Drama, entirely in verse, following three men who sleep on the streets of Manchester in their vehicles, having lost all their economic and social power....

The recession of the 1980s split the country into the haves and have-nots, from family farmers to factory workers and homeless people forced to live in decrepit welfare hotels. On the verge of losing everything, courageous Americans discover the powe...

This documentary portrays the front-line street workers who serve the needy under the umbrella of the Salvation Army. Shot in Toronto at Christmastime, the film chronicles the small hopes and tiny victories of life lived below the poverty line and th...

This feature-length documentary by Alanis Obomsawin examines the plight of Native people who come to Montreal searching for jobs and a better life. Often arriving without money, friends or jobs, a number of them quickly become part of the homeless po...

Chronicles the modern-day David and Goliath tale amidst North America's housing crisis. During the pandemic, Khaleel Seivwright, a young Toronto carpenter, builds life-saving shelters for unhoused people facing the winter outside. His actions attract...

Inspired by real stories, a young pastor, through a harsh winter in a small Texas town, follows his mission to help the homeless is faced with resistance by his congregation, exposing deep-seated prejudices and systemic failures....

A woman arrives in Paris with her little girl to look for work. With limited funds and no luck, they end up penniless, homeless and dependent on the rare kindness of strangers....

COMEDY CONFESSIONS takes you on a journey into the lives of three struggling comedians who have decided to pursue their dreams of careers in stand-up comedy despite the harsh realities of being homeless. For these comedians, their cars are lifesavers...

A homeless man living in a encampment in Minneapolis tells his perspective on the ongoing crisis of homelessness....

A homeless, gay 17-year-old, fleeing Mormon conversion therapy, is taken under the wing of an 18-year-old, brash, Black trans sex worker. They create a competition to see who can first contract HIV, in order to secure state benefits and escape the vi...

After a failed relationship, a deadbeat man tries to live off the land in a beach town on Long Island....

Mariem, 53, a former estate agent, has been living at a shelter for several months. Surrounded by women in far more precarious circumstances than herself, she tries to regard her unprecedented social downfall as an immersion in real life. By the time...