The housing crisis regularly makes the headlines in the media. Evictions, fraudulent increases, speculation and the real estate bubble are deciphered and analyzed by all sorts of experts who present these phenomena as fatalities that cannot be reversed. All these issues remain off-screen in Ève Lamont's film. Instead, the filmmaker's benevolent camera reveals the daily life of her mother Rachel's housing cooperative and her 40 neighbours. Without hiding the challenges that this represents, the filmmaker unfolds a moving portrait of a small group of individuals who have chosen to rely on the model of "living together" as a response to the problems of the right to accessible housing for all. A model of hope and human warmth that deserves to be better known and, why not, widely emulated.

 

Colette Loumède
Documentary Programmer
Rendez-Vous Québec Cinéma