The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

A homeless musician finds meaning in his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.

The Street

Every day, on the streets of Canada's cities, we pass them on our way to work or school. Bums, beggars, winos, bag people we call them. But who is the person at the end of that outstretched arm? What is life on the street really like? Is there a way off the street? For six years, director Daniel Cross followed the lives of three homeless men who spent much of their time in and around a Montreal subway station. Filmed in a cinema verité style, the film is unique: it humanizes the homeless, breaking down the barrier between us and them, neither moralizing nor offering easy answers. This is a gritty, compelling look at life on the streets that moves beyond the media stereotypes to show both the humanity of the homeless and the street-toughened aspects of their existence.

Et glas vand til Johnie

20 Cans of Chunky Beef Soup

Documentary tells the story of Maxim Vakhmin, a veritable alleycat of a man. Revered as both an angel and a devil, Maxim (once known as a successful artist in his native Russia) is losing friends and finding new ones as a homeless person in the USA.

Tell Them We Were Here

Tell Them We Were Here is an inspirational feature-length documentary about eight artists who show us why art is vital to a healthy society and reminds us that we are stronger together.

Someone's Daughter, Someone's Son

Now a successful filmmaker, Lorna Tucker was once a teenage runaway sleeping rough on the streets of London. For this frank, forceful and inspiring documentary, she returns to her former haunts and speaks to current and former homeless people about why, twenty-five years later, record numbers of people are still reduced to living on Britain's streets.

The Salt Mines

Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".

49 Up

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.

Lockedout

A short documentary about a homeless couple who face the ban on being on the street during 2020 quarantine. Just through their eyes, the two protagonists show us a different Milan, silent and suspended.

Dark Days

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

We Were There to Be There

On June 13, 1978, the punk bands the Cramps and the Mutants played a free show for psychiatric patients at the Napa State Hospital in California. We Were There to Be There chronicles the people, politics, and cultural currents that led to the show and its live recording.

ORCA: A True Story

Would you fall in love with a homeless person? Six years after Occupy Wall Street, Jehan is 42 years old and homeless on the streets of New York City. As she works to save money, get an apartment and return to a "normal" life, she decides that she would also like to get married. Would someone willing to put a dollar in her begging bag also be willing to fall in love with her? Can she find true love with a "normal" person?

What You’ll Remember

Homelessness in the United States takes many forms. For Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima and their four children, housing instability has meant moving between unsafe apartments, motels, relatives’ couches, shelters, the streets and their car. After 15 years of this uncertainty, the family moved into their first stable housing — an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

No Country for the Poor

What if democracy fails citizens by not serving them all equally? What if inequality becomes the norm and the most vulnerable citizens are left behind with no money, no home, no rights, and no country of their own? In Hungary, the government has slashed social benefits and criminalized homelessness, but a group of activists, homeless and middle class, is confronting authorities to defend social justice and their right to be citizens. After the tragic death of two of its founding members, the group feels that Hungary is growing more hostile and their struggle is more important than ever. Despite all odds, their own community keeps them going—a mini-society with democracy and solidarity at its heart, an island of hope, belonging and dignity in a society gradually shifting the other way.

Lead Me Home

Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame this cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis.

This is an Address

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.

Outside

The film explores the turbulent lives of homeless persons in Cologne, Germany. Through their personal belongings the homeless share with the viewer their memories and emotions, and provide insight into the secrets of survival on the street.

Streetwise

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.

The Children of Leningradsky

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 ...

Lost in America

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.