Living On is an experimental film project series that brings together young people who use(d) drugs, researcher Danya Fast, and filmmakers in Vancouver. Imagined in collaboration with the youth narrator, these short films allow young people to author and illustrate their own stories about drug use, recovery, care, overdose and living through loss. They move beyond familiar, often stigmatizing, images of drug use in Vancouver in order to develop alternative visual vocabularies for telling these stories.
Episode 1: BFF
2020, Directed by Leah Nelson, Kiddo Films
In our pilot film, images and words are used to evoke the joy and pain of childhood, friendship, drug use, and recovery. Idyllic images such as a birthday party were inspired by the narrator’s own childhood, as well as more recent experiences of “taking a cake” to mark one year of sobriety in Twelve Step programs.
Episode 2: Family
2022, Directed by Sebastian Hill-Esbrand, Kiddo Films
Our second episode explores how things come together and fall apart as new families are created over time. This film won the Young Director Award at the Cannes Lions International Film Festival.
Episode 3: Home
2022, Directed by Darcy Hennessey, Kiddo Films
Our third episode focuses on the sense of home that can be found in another person (even when they are gone), and how tremendous loss can be tied to new beginnings.
Episode 4: Light
2024, Directed by David Ehrenrich, Kiddo Films
Our fourth episode captures the three-dimensional personalities of young people with dependencies – often left absent from news reports.