EDMONTON AND ALBERTA

 

Hidden Homeless: Edmonton's Invisible Crisis (2018) - 25 minutes

Created by Boyle Street Community Services, this film shares the wisdom and stories of downtown Edmonton's unhoused, asking viewers for kindness and understanding.

 

Surviving Edmonton (2024) - 25 minutes 

A Global News investigative series from March 2024 that followed four unhoused individuals for over a year, offering a raw, personal look at homelessness in the city, from extreme weather to life in shelters and encampments, highlighting the struggles and challenges in finding stable housing, with follow-up reports exploring potential solutions and government/agency responses.

 

Through My Eyes (2015) - 60 minutes 

Through My Eyes profiles homeless and formerly-homeless Edmonton youth telling their stories in their own way, in their own words. It also offers the perspective of front-line support providers and others who work directly with at-risk youth.

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Intersections of Identity (2025) - 50 minutes 

Intersections of Identity, a powerful documentary by Damian Abrahams, explores the lived experiences of individuals facing homelessness in both rural and urban Alberta.

Through the transformative power of art, this film follows a groundbreaking fourteen-month initiative (January 2024–March 2025) that engaged low-income citizens with intersectional marginalized identities in creative beading workshops designed to inform systemic change.

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inVisible Persons: Stories from Boyle Street (2022)

Created by Boyle Street Community Services, this film shares the wisdom and stories of downtown Edmonton's unhoused, asking viewers for kindness and understanding. 

 

Us & Them (2015) – 1 hr 22 min

Filmed over a decade, US & THEM is a powerful documentary composed of striking portraits of four extraordinary individuals as they struggle with homelessness and addictions.
 

Home Safe Calgary (2008) – 1 hr 39 min

Home Safe Calgary is the first of three documentaries that focuses on children and families who experience poverty and homelessness. This film reveals the contrast between the promise of Calgary’s booming economy and the vulnerability of those families who seek their place in their community — where even parents with decent-paying jobs are unable to put a roof over their family’s heads. The film strongly challenges the myth that parents struggling with poverty are bad parents. 

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OTHER CANADA

 

Homeless People in Canada - A series of short (less than 5:00) videos

Each tells the story of an individual - not all of them in Edmonton or Alberta

 

Push: The Film (2019) – 1 hr 32 min

In November of 2016, award-winning filmmaker Fredrik Gertten reached out to Global Director Leilani Farha, then UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, on Twitter to learn more about her work. Three years later, the feature-length documentary Push premiered globally in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Push follows Leilani as she investigates why cities around the world are becoming so unaffordable. Housing is a fundamental human right, a precondition to a safe and healthy life, and is recognized by law in many countries. But in cities all around the world, finding and keeping a place to live is becoming increasingly difficult. Who are the players, and what has made housing one of the defining crises of our time?

 

Street Nurse (2007) – 46:05 

Cathy Crowe is a familiar name. For years as one of Toronto’s 50 or so street nurses, she has visited the habitats of the homeless tending to their blistered feet, infected wounds and often fragile psyches. She helps find night shelter for them when temperatures reach lethally low levels.​