Director Johann Nertomb takes a look at one of Vancouver’s oldest neighborhoods, the Downtown Eastside. While poverty, the consumption of hard drugs and crime are eating away at this part of the city, his documentary, on the contrary, highlights without ever judging a resilient French-speaking community made up of homeless people and people in extremely precarious situations.
Live the Downtown Eastside thus tells the daily life of those who live and work in this place that no one wants to see. We learn there, notably thanks to Mary Ladril, dedicated social worker at La Boussole, the only French-language aid organization in the neighborhood, that there are between 4% and 8% of Francophones among the homeless population of Vancouver. According to her, if this figure is so high, it is because many of these people, including several Quebecers, would in fact never leave their tourist or professional visit to Vancouver… Why? In an attempt to answer this question, Johann Nertomb has, for months, questioned some of the inhabitants of this “drug ghetto of Canada”.
They and they are called Alexandra, Eric or Marc-André and, facing the camera, tell the story of what led them to the streets of the Downtown Eastside. This shock film restores, with dignity and respect, the rightful place of its people in society, but also makes the viewer aware of the scourge of drug consumption in Vancouver, where fentanyl, in particular, is wreaking havoc.
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