Lead Me Home

PG-13
39m
- Documentary
- Short

Release Date: Nov 30, 2021

100%
58%
6.3

More than 500,000 people are homeless in the US. A few of these real-life stories give the audience a rare, in-depth look at the scale, scope, and diversity of the problem while questioning uninformed attitudes and outmoded policies.

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Director & Top Cast

Pedro Kos
Director

Jon Shenk
Director

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby SR

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English

Summaries

Plot Summary

On any given night, LEAD ME HOME reports, more than half a million Americans experience homelessness. This documentary focuses on a formally declared homelessness "state of emergency" in Los Angeles and Seattle. Problems in Oakland and San Francisco are included in this overview that takes pains to give faces and individual personalities to a group often dehumanized under the umbrella designation "the homeless." The footage was filmed between 2017 and 2020.They are moms diligently raising kids and people with jobs. We see them doing things everyone else does, brushing their teeth, doing their laundry, sending their young kids off to school. The stories are heartbreaking and horrific. They live in tents and have zero privacy. They go to NGO stations where they can get a free shower. The system is designed with negative incentives to seek any sort of formal employment. If you report your income, the food stamps stop coming and all the money for rent goes towards food.Sanitation, health, public safety, violence, all sort of issues associated with homelessness. Dedicated Nonprofits that carry out cleanliness drives at the sites where the homeless stay. People become homeless due to losing a job, disability, drugs, mental health, family issues. A transgender lost all family support after coming out. They have use public laundromats. Everything is expensive. Noise pollution is a real problem for the people living on the streets. One girl gets pregnant while living on the streets. She needs to find a shelter for the upcoming baby. They have been molested, Stabbed, shot, run over. The rent is $700 /month, which is out of reach for most people. One girl Patty is being beat up by an abusive homeless at her homeless site.In one case, a social worker, who has seemingly heard and seen it all, cries right along with her client as she tells her terrible story. She was stalked by her ex, who pistol whipped her and sexually assaulted her. She is 32 weeks pregnant as a result of that. An agency moved her to the hospital and then to a hotel. Because she was in a hotel, she was not considered homeless, and did not qualify for any support services. She stayed in a shelter, where she slept on the mat with her kids. She took her kids to Safeway to eat and bathe her kids in the washroom.State laws require police to close homeless sites due to unsanitary and hazardous conditions. Many people oppose the cities idea of allowing homeless shelter in every city neighborhood. Homeless people have no help in applying for low rent housing programs across the city. Without a home, the homeless can't think of any other financial or personal goals. They have nothing. They have the same needs as everybody else, but they are ignored and at worst prosecuted for being homeless. Homelessness has doubled in 4 years. If you are African American or have a criminal record, you are more likely to be homeless. Covid-19 hits and homelessness soars. There is no right to housing in California. Many simply sleep in their cars.

Storyline

Lead Me Home is a short film that follows several people living on the streets in West Coast cities. Conceived to be a cinematic study of contrasts, the film will be familiar and shocking; intimate and vast. By weaving individual stories with aerial vistas, time-lapse photography, and evocative details of contemporary urban life, Lead Me Home aims to spark a national conversation about the epic scale of this alarming and ever-growing problem. Shot over the course of three years in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, this short presents the epidemic of homelessness in America with a show-don't-tell approach, featuring candid testimonials from those who rest their heads in shelters, tent cities, and anywhere a night's sleep can be found. A poetic and dignified portrait of our culture's fraying edges and the people who inhabit them, Lead Me Home is filled with bracing humanity. — Anonymous In Lead Me Home, tents become bedrooms; trucks become washrooms; parks become kitchens. Love occurs, as does strife and violence. People make homes for themselves wherever they end up. When directors Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk set out to tackle the subject of homelessness, they had one goal: to humanize the experience, in whatever form that might take. The pair set out to depict the stories of people living on the street who, were it not for a vast set of unfortunate circumstances-addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, homophobia, healthcare costs, disability-would be living no differently from those sleeping comfortably mere blocks or even just floors away. In the shadow of boundless real estate development proliferating in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, Kos and Shenk filmed the daily lives of more than two dozen subjects over three years to provide a slice-of-life portrayal of what it's like to experience homelessness in America today. Conceived as a two-part visual symphony shot in distinct production periods, the film opens a window into a parallel world hiding in plain sight and challenges the audience to feel the scale, scope and diversity of unsheltered America.