While the Apocalypse – Blog

Overtaking the U.S. in its urgency, Vancouver finds itself at the epicenter of Canada’s opioid epidemic, against the ongoing fentanyl crisis and an upturn in drug-related tragedies. With thousands lost to accidental overdose each year as a direct result of its toxic drug supply, British Columbia became the first province to decriminalize drug possession for personal use, while access to drug testing and safe injection sites are reangling the response to the crisis through harm reduction.

Seeking to combat the stigma attached to addiction and humanize those lost to it, director David Ehrenreich paints a raw picture of Vancouver’s drug crisis through one boy’s tragedy for short film Light. Collaborating with research scientist Danya Fast and youth harm reduction advocate Kali Rufus-Sedgemore, whose voice and story lead the film, Ehrenreich explores the work of CPDDW (Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War) in the city’s Downtown Eastside, capturing the three-dimensional personalities of young people with dependencies – often left absent from news reports. 

Straddling the line between fiction and documentary, Ehrenreich gathered real people from the community for the dinner scene: an unscripted documentary of young people with dependencies, who also act as youth harm reduction advocates in Vancouver. Making considerations on-set to allow connections and conversations to unfold, Light illuminates the complex realities of those at the core of the fentanyl crisis, developing an alternative visual vocabulary for telling their stories. 

 Nowness RSS Leer más