What happened to our cities to make them places where we can no longer afford to live? This is the question haunting filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and the primary subject of his film, Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing. The two bring us around the world on a quest to understand the secret operation of globalized real estate under capitalism.

The film’s relevance to current events is striking. As we find ourselves witness to an unprecedented overheating of the housing market and a housing crisis with no end in sight, we offer this film in an almost desperate effort to see political documentary cinema meet one of its objectives: to give us the sensitive conceptual tools needed to understand reality and then transform it. The film’s comprehensive overview makes it easily the most didactic of this weeks’ works, but Push remains a must-see if we really want to reflect on the epidemic spread of concerns about keeping the roof.

One of the film’s strengths is how it reconfigures our understanding of the role gentrification plays in the affordable housing crisis. The concept of gentrification is central to one of the most widely accepted views on the affordable housing crisis. Yet it is pushed to the side as we discover the forces at work behind this crisis, which reframe housing not as a fundamental human right but as an investment product. If you come to this film ready to hate on the trendy cafés and hipsters that are ruining your neighbourhood, be prepared to redirect that energy to speculative investment funds, white-collar criminals and off-shore banking schemes.

Stéphanie Bourbeau
Philosophy teacher