
25 Aug 2019

Nightcrawlers
For five years, Stephen McCoy documented street life in Boston. This is what he captured.
An account of the life and love of a homeless couple who live in a cemetery and their resilience in the face of social indifference.
Filmed over a number of years, David Vondráček’s powerful documentary records the lives of Jan and Jana, a homeless couple who find refuge in a cemetery in the Prague borough of Strašnice. Living on food from garbage containers and trading the books and porn magazines they find there, they nonetheless live lives of independence, love and humour. Jana, a former prostitute, tries to visit her daughter while Jan visits his aged mother after many years, but both fail to re-establish links with their past. Through identification with their everyday world, Vondráček reaches the human reality and complexity beneath the surface, a world not so different from that of the supposedly successful. Eventually, they are expelled from their temporary home with heartbreaking consequences. Vondráček’s award-winning documentary reveals the breadth of experience – even vibrancy – surviving in the world of the dispossessed.

25 Aug 2019

For five years, Stephen McCoy documented street life in Boston. This is what he captured.

06 Oct 2006

49 Up is the seventh film in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when UK-based Granada's World in Action team, inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-old children from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. Michael Apted, a researcher for the original film, has returned to interview the "children" every seven years since, at ages 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and now again at age 49.In this latest chapter, more life-changing decisions are revealed, more shocking announcements made and more of the original group take part than ever before, speaking out on a variety of subjects including love, marriage, career, class and prejudice.

30 Aug 2000

A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.

17 Apr 2008

In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, filmmaker Murray Siple follows men who have turned bottle-picking, their primary source of income, into the extreme sport of shopping cart racing. Enduring hardships from everyday life on the streets of Vancouver, this sub-culture depicts street life as much more than stereotypes portrayed in mainstream media. The films takes a deep look into the lives of the men who race carts, the adversity they face, and the appeal of cart racing despite the risk.

07 Dec 1984

This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.

23 Oct 2020

Stonewall veterans (including prominent trans activist Sylvia Rivera) and HIV-positive New Yorkers take up residency on the Hudson River piers as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.

15 Nov 2019

Following director Rotimi Rainwater, a former homeless youth, as he travels the country to shine a light on the epidemic of youth homelessness in America.

05 Apr 2025

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 she leaves, Mariem’s view of the world will have changed forever, enriched by all the women she has met along the way.

05 Aug 2005

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 present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky. Eight-year-old Sasha, eleven-year-old Kristina, thirteen-year-old Misha and ten-year-old Andrej all dream of living in a communal home. They spend winter nights trying to stay warm by huddling together on hot water pipes and most of their days are spent begging. Andrej has found himself here because of disagreements with his family. Kristina was driven into this way of life by the hatred of her stepmother and twelve-year-old Roma by the regular beatings he received from his constantly drunk father. "When it is worst, we try to make money for food by prostitution," admits ...

01 Oct 2014

Each night in Silicon Valley, the Line 22 transforms from a public city bus into an unofficial shelter for the homeless in one of the richest parts of the world.

03 Jun 2021

For two decades, Cine Marrocos, a movie theatre in the heart of São Paulo, was one of the most popular and opulent of the city. After it was closed, in 1972, it was occupied by a homeless workers' movement. The documentary tells the story of the people who lived there, alternating scenes from an acting class with those of the movies exhibited there in the past.

27 Feb 1968

SFRJ is officially a place where everyone have a job and a house. The story follows hard labored workers who can't find a job, who bathe in public bathrooms and sleep in homeless centers.

22 Feb 1971

Director invites six homeless men to his flat for a few days (surprising his wife). He asks officials and people on the street if someone can help them, this being SFRJ, a state officially without those left on their own.

07 Dec 2012

Los Angeles' Skid Row is home to one of the largest homeless populations in the United States. And we found, inside that community, the remarkable and enormously moving stories of Olympic athletes, Harvard attorneys, accomplished musicians, scholars. We found poverty, drugs and mental illness, of course - but more importantly we found life, hope and incredibly powerful human journeys.
10 Jun 2006
Award winning feature documentary about an art program for homeless people.

01 Jan 1988

Promises to Keep follows agitator Snyder and the Community for Creative Non-Violence by showing film-fragments, news-bulletin images from records, and newspaper headlines about the fight to force the government to live up to their promise to provide the homeless of Washington D.C. with proper shelter.

01 Dec 1986

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 power of community organizing to fight injustice.

15 Jan 2009

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 from the formation of the squad to the end of the championship. The young people are from Timisoara and Arad, runaway children who now live in abandoned houses or who have managed to get a job and live in rented accommodation after going through orphanages or prisons. After taking a beating from many teams, the young Romanians manage to beat the USA. They are happy. They are all thinking of never going "home" again. It's warm and nice here, the people are nice. "In case I stay, I kissed you all!" says one of them cautiously. But after taking pictures of themselves on the beach with the ocean behind them and beautiful girls by their side, the seven return to Romania and get on with their lives.

09 Mar 2019

Community First! Village is designed to lift the chronically homeless off the streets of the Austin, TX, offering them a place to call home, helping them to heal from the ravages of life on the streets, and allowing them to rediscover a purpose in their lives. This documentary explores the events that cause homelessness and the heartwarming stories of being welcomed into a nurturing environment where dignity and self-worth are restored.

01 Jan 2001

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 the daily rewards for those who work to serve others.