A Crisis Close To Home: Our Review of ‘Push’

Posted in Movies, VOD/iTunes/DigitalDownload by - April 15, 2020
A Crisis Close To Home: Our Review of ‘Push’

Watching Push, the new documentary about the human right to housing, seems almost quaint now. When this Canadian-Swedish coproduction had its big North American premiere at Hot Docs last year, it was hailed as a necessary call to action for governments around the world to protect the basic rights of their citizens from unscrupulous landlords and corporate interests. Now, with the COVID-19 crisis leaving a large population of people unable to pay their rent and fearing eviction, the situation has become even more dire than it already was.

Directed by Fredrik Gertten (who tackled another fraught urban social issue in 2015’s Bikes Vs. Cars), Push largely follows the work of Leilani Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, as she travels to cities around the world documenting the plights of low-income people and small businesses alike as they deal with being pushed out of their homes and neighbourhoods completely. Whether in Toronto, London, New York, or Barcelona, the accounts are more or less the same – ordinary people who have lived in communities all their lives are being increasingly forced out of their homes by faceless rental corporations who end up building luxury condos instead. As more and more residents get forced out of the places they call home and many of these new buildings just sit unoccupied anyway, the film begins to ask a simple question – who are cities really for anymore?

It’s certainly inspiring watching Farha wage a seemingly one-woman war against this crisis, steadfastly trying to get through to uninterested politicians and uncaring businessmen. At only 92 minutes, however, Push bites off a little more than it can chew, raising many interesting points that it can’t quite pursue in as much depth as we’d like. Gertten includes valuable talking head interviews with leading scholars like famed sociologist Saskia Sassen and economist Joseph Stiglitz, even taking a brief detour to spend time with Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano as he explains how the Italian mafia rapidly buys up real estate in order to have shell buildings to launder money through. But just as we’re getting sucked in, the film moves on to something else. Since the housing crisis is so inextricably linked to unchecked capitalism, a longer series may have been able to expand on these points, akin to a show like Netflix’s current lightning rod Dirty Money.

But make no mistake, this is still urgent material and Push fires its shots where it can. As more tenants organize rent strikes and tensions inevitably escalate in the next several months (and years), it’s a good primer of rage.

  • Release Date: 4/14/2020
This post was written by
After his childhood dream of playing for the Mighty Ducks fell through, Mark turned his focus to the glitz and glamour of the movies. He's covered the extensive Toronto film scene for online outlets and is a filmmaker himself, currently putting the final touches on a low-budget (okay, no-budget) short film to be released in the near future. You can also find him behind the counter as product manager of Toronto's venerable film institution, Bay Street Video.
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