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Vancouver and Toronto are very different cities, but they share more than a few things in common. On the West Coast and on the east, the two urban centres shoulder some of Canada’s most pressing urban issues, including twin housing crises and the lasting impacts of a fractured social support system for people living vulnerably.
That’s where director Zack Russell goes to work in his debut documentary, Someone Lives Here. The film follows carpenter Khaleel Seivwright on a quest to build tiny homes for unhoused people living in Toronto. We move through grindingly slow municipal processes before the film comes to a furious head when the police descend to forcibly remove unhoused encampments, tossing both people and their belongings with no apparent place for them to go.
As the centre of the narrative, Seivwright provides both imminent practicality and a deep humanism. But his frustration with the situation hangs in the air like an unfinished sentence. It reminds me of the ongoing tension that we see in Vancouver, where people in the Downtown Eastside are routinely displaced with few clear options for what’s next.
But maybe part of the solution lies within us. That’s where we find director Asher Penn grappling in his documentary Physician, Heal Thyself, which tracks the life of noted Vancouver physician Gabor Maté.
On the day that I visited Gabor and Daniel Maté in their family home to do an interview about their new book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture last year, Penn’s documentary crew was also there.
It’s interesting to see the film in its final incarnation. Coming on the heels and success of The Myth, the filmmakers inject a number of quixotic elements into their narrative, including turning its subject into an animated character.
Maté is an extremely complex person, as the film makes abundantly clear through in-depth explorations of his childhood, his student days at the University of British Columbia and the beginning of his medical career. There are a great many fascinating perambulations here, not the least of which is Maté’s realization that his true passion was for writing. Equally engaging is the history of Vancouver itself as it grows and evolves alongside Maté and his family.
Maté narrates his own life story, and this makes for the occasional bit of awkwardness. Even the most enlightened of us all are apt to editorialize on our own experiences and versions of events. So it is here as well.
Ultimately, it’s Maté’s own understanding of himself that proves the most riveting material, whether in the form of his obsessions, career or marriage to his wife, Rae. I almost wish there was a film about her: she seems equally fascinating.
‘Physician, Heal Thyself’ screens at VIFF on Oct. 5 and 6.
‘Someone Lives Here’ screens at VIFF on Oct. 6 and 8. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
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