Nomination:
Best Documentary Short Film
In the midst of the raging debate over mask mandates, food shortages, gas prices and empty grocery store shelves that have plagued us since the pandemic began, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk’s sobering documentary short Lead Me Home helpfully reminds us that our circumstances could be so much worse. Actually, they are worse.
Lead Me Home, which runs 39 minutes and is now streaming on Netflix is a sometimes devastating portrait of the rise of homelessness in the United States across three major cities: Seattle, San Francisco and L.A. and puts a face on many people whose circumstances have gotten worse and worse – not only a face, but also a name, an identity and a personal story of how they came to be homeless and the over-crowded institutions that are themselves helpless to give them hope.
What is special about the film is that it never employs a narrator. It lets the subjects tell their own story. Kos and Shenk lets the visuals tell the story – of tents lined up along interstate bridges and of smaller moments like a pregnant woman rubbing her stomach and of a man who beds down in the front seat of an abandoned car with his dog. The film avoids the “aren’t you ashamed” nattering of most films about homelessness. This one is more empathetic, and that approach leaves a much stronger impact.
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