2019 Hot Docs presents Push

Push (2019), directed by Fredrik Gertten, is a fascinating documentary on the global housing crisis affecting cities across the globe from Toronto to London, England to Harlem, New York to Berlin, Germany to Barcelona, Spain to Valparaiso, Chile to Uppsala, Sweden where housing, whether buying or renting, is becoming increasingly unaffordable and out of reach for the middle to lower classes.

It’s a gripping documentary that reads more like a whodunit with Leilani Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, playing the female protagonist and heroine, determined to get to the heart of the matter.   Ms. Farha examines cases across the globe of forced evictions and skyrocketing rents.   Some of the most powerful scenes in the film are her interviews with people who are under threat of eviction and who have been evicted.  The narrative of evictions by citizens across the globe is juxtaposed by a multiplicity of viewpoints on the global housing crisis and Ms. Farha’s initiatives to affect political change including spearheading a movement, The Shift, to get stakeholders to take back the city.

Some of the experts that weigh in include the American economist and recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System,the noted Dutch-American sociologist Saskia Sassen, and Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona.  Gertten weaves together many visual elements to create a compelling and insightful film where the right to housing meets corporate greed set against the cityscapes and neighborhoods of the cities featured in the documentary.

As the documentary clearly demonstrates, the global housing crisis isn’t caused by gentrification although it may have led to an escalation of housing prices in the past but by hedge funds and the financial community who use opaque financial laws and regulations to their benefit that turns housing into a commodity like gold which in turn is converted into a financial asset that can be sold on the financial markets as an investment to pension funds, and the use of tax havens to launder illicit capital into real estate purchases.  And until housing is considered a basic human right by the state, the global housing crisis will continue unabated.

Push has tremendous educational value and is a documentary that can change the world and promote social justice.  It not only provides insight into the global housing crisis but provides a wealth of information for the layman to understand what’s really going on.  I highly recommend it for you won’t be disappointed.

Push will be playing during Hot Docs at Various theatres:
TIFF Bell Lightbox 1 on May 1 @ 1:00 p.m.
Hart House Theatre on May 4 @ 9:15 p.m.

Tickets for Push can be purchased here!