WATCH: This Saturday marks the Coldest Night of the Year, an annual walk for homelessness and CHEK is proud to present the broadcast premiere of a documentary set on the streets of Victoria. Krista Loughton followed four homeless people for a number of years trying to give the viewer a glimpse into their lives. Luisa Alvarez reports.
Over a period of ten years, the documentary ‘Us and Them’ follows four people experiencing chronic homelessness and aims to bridge the divide.
“That’s why the film is called ‘Us and Them’ because every single homeless person that I’ve ever talked to says they feel invisible, they don’t belong in society, everything else is going on around them and they aren’t part of it,” said the film’s creator, Krista Loughton.
Loughton befriended four homeless on the streets of Victoria and using a compassionate lens gives viewers a glimpse into their lives to tell their story.
“If you’ve ever walked down the street and wanted to ask that person ‘hey, what happened to you? What made you be in this situation where you are living on the street?’ You experience that with four people,” said Loughton of the film.
Loughton said the film was made to humanize the homeless problem, challenge perceptions and change the way society views them.
“When you get to see the struggles and understand what people are dealing with, that will go a long way to just provide more empathy and a little more compassion for people that are struggling on our streets,” said Our Place CEO Don Evans.
Loughton started with the goal to help the subjects in the film but throughout her journey, they ended up helping her.
“Some of my own emotional issues came to surface that they pointed out and in a very wise and unexpected way they sort of council me,” said Loughton.
Inspired by what she saw around her, the Victoria-based filmmaker set out to make a difference at home.
“We can work towards changing the world but I think we can all make an effort to change our square footage of the world and that’s what I tried to do,” said Loughton.
On Feb. 23, CHEK will broadcast and live stream ‘Us and Them’ at 8 p.m. commercial free. After the broadcast, CHEK will hold a panel discussion on the homelessness crisis in our community moderated by news anchor Ben O’Hara-Byrne. Let us know if you are tuning in here.
Luisa Alvarez
