If anyone who spent the summer in a cave wanted to know what’s brewing in Montreal in the fall of 2024, the documentary Cohabit would give him the right time: the search for a home is one of the great preoccupations of our time. Housing is so rare – and so expensive – that thousands of people resort to living in shared accommodation. The search for shared accommodation has even become a well-organized ritual.
In her film, which hits theaters on Friday, September 13, director Halima Elkhatabi tenderly observes the strategy of Montrealers from all walks of life to find “the pearl” with whom to share their cocoon. The filmmaker sets up her camera in about fifteen apartments where interviews between aspiring roommates take place.
The film shows the first meeting between people who had applied for roommates and others who raised their hands to occupy the coveted room. The 75-minute documentary highlights the scale of the housing crisis: some ads generated more than a hundred responses. We learn horror stories, like the tenant who had her rent increased by… $1,000 per month. Yes, a $1,000 per month increase. She chose to leave because of the scale of the battle that lay ahead.
The filmmaker was surprised by how easily the participants confided in complete strangers, and on camera, no less. It sometimes felt like a “shared apartment Tinder.”
“I was surprised by the ease and ability of people to define themselves, to establish their limits and their needs, and at the same time to open up to others,” says Halima Elkhatabi, contacted at the Toronto International Film Festival, where two of her films were screened — Cohabit and the short fiction film Fantaswell received by the public.
The sincerity of the protagonists gave the filmmaker hope. In this era that some call “woke”, where identity traits take on capital importance, the aspiring roommates reveal without hesitation large parts of their private lives. And they generously welcome the confidences of their counterparts. This gives rise to extremely respectful exchanges.
“The better we know ourselves, the better we can live with others,” sums up the director, born in France to parents of Moroccan origin. No fewer than 52 tenants were filmed for the creation of Cohabitwhich shows Montreal’s diversity in all its glory — cultural, ethnic, gender diversity, and more.
A reflection of the world
“I have hair under my arms and on my legs, I prefer to tell you,” says a queer tenant. “I am in polyamorous relationships, with both guys and girls,” explains another participant. “I have curly hair, it takes a long time to wash, I spend three hours in the bathroom,” warns a candidate for shared accommodation.
“I’m on the autism spectrum, I talk to myself sometimes,” reveals an endearing young woman, who has clearly learned to know herself well. Another says that an obsessive-compulsive disorder prompts her to get up at night to check if the doors are locked. A feminist studies student says that it’s likely that her roommates can hear her screaming “ fuck capitalism and fuck the patriarchy”.
A group of housemates recount one of the household traditions: preparing communal feasts using food collected from supermarket waste containers (dumpster diving). A night owl warns that she “looks like a raccoon ” and that it displays a ” resting bitch face ” before having his morning coffee.
The documentary highlights the English-tinged language of generations Y and Z, constantly connected to social networks. Halima Elkhatabi believes that this assiduous frequentation of TikTok and Instagram may have inspired the “benevolence” of these urban twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, who master the identity codes of their communities of belonging. As authentic “wokes”, one could say. In the positive sense of the term.
“Yes, it’s a woke film, but it’s not a choice on my part, it’s a reflection of today’s society,” says the director.
Need for social connections
Halima Elkhatabi had been interested in the theme of home as a refuge in this not-always-pretty world for several years. She was looking for an original angle to approach the subject. The housing crisis, which accelerated in the wake of the pandemic, imposed the theme of the balance of power between tenants — and not only between tenants and landlords.
To recruit participants for her project, the filmmaker responded to messages from dozens of people looking for roommates, posted on social networks. The director had to be persuasive: she had to convince the authors of the ads, their current roommates and those who aspired to join them to testify in front of the camera.
People in their forties and fifties were the most reluctant to share their experiences, mainly due to lack of time. Tenants under 40, who are used to showing off their lives on social media, were more comfortable participating in the exercise. A 65-year-old retiree also appears on screen.
Halima Elkhatabi asked her interlocutors for a meeting of at least an hour, to give people time to forget the presence of the three members of the film crew. Some meetings lasted three hours. We see friendships forming. Even before knowing if they will become roommates, people promised to see each other again.
“In a post-pandemic period of global housing and inflation crisis, this disarmingly human film shows, above all, beyond differences, the deep desire to forge a real bond with others,” summarizes the National Film Board, producer of CohabitThere is something beautiful about seeing these connections being made in our dark times.