LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL

Feature Documentary | 80 / 58 min, 2022

A group of misfits, artists, and drug users operates a renegade safe injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Love in the Time of Fentanyl is an intimate portrait of a community fighting to save lives and keep hope alive in a neighborhood ravaged by the overdose crisis.

Love in the Time of Fentanyl had its World Premiere at the 21st DOXA Documentary Film Festival, where it was featured as the Justice Forum Special Presentation and took home the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director!

Director, Editor, Producer: Colin Askey

Producers: Monika Navarro, Marc Serpa Francoeur, Robinder Uppal

Cinematography: Colin Askey, Eric D. Sanderson

Executive Producers: Sally Jo Fifer, Lois Vossen, Sean Baker

A co-production of Castle Mountain Media, Lost Time Media, and ITVS, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as the Sundance Institute (with support from Just Films/Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations)

The filmmakers encourage donations to Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Society

SCREENINGS

Watch on Kanopy or with PBS Passport!

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Download the discussion guide.

PRESS

  • "The film captures the mundane, pragmatic reality of these spaces, how they are neither glamorously hedonistic nor hellishly depraved, and certainly nothing to fear. Although LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL is not meant to evangelize, its warts-and-all depiction could be the key to changing minds."

  • "LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL follows OPS staff, volunteers, and community members as they discuss the radical power of harm reduction, demonstrate the care they hold for the space, and support each other through the burnout and grief of the overdose crisis."

  • "These are real people coping with monumental challenges. They deserve to be heard and not judged. LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL gives them that."

  • "LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL is painfully relevant, not just because the death toll has continued to rise with the toxic drug crisis, but because the people who are fighting to save their friends and their community seem so much more fragile."

  • "Shows that drug users, to whom the drug crisis is more than an abstract idea, are perhaps the most capable of creating solutions to the overdose epidemic."

  • "One of the most powerful films that I have ever seen."

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