Halima Elkhatabi’s Living Together (Cohabiter), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, has finally come home courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada. The doc, which is now streaming on NFB.ca, explores the tangential impacts of the pressing housing crisis by filming a scattered group of tenants interviewing potential roommates in Montreal. These interviews forgo formal inquiries, depicting the microscopic examinations that people conduct (and need) in an effort to “sign” a housemate that they can exist with in harmony.
A majority of the film’s participants are Gen Z, perhaps owing to this generation’s familiarity with being documented online. Discussions between these presumed strangers are doused with an unexpected vulnerability as they inquire about mental health issues and consider sexual orientations with the emotional ease of reciting one’s Tim Hortons order. These exploratory interviews periodically unravel how the specificities of hunting for a roommate have changed over time, with honest and timely communication being essential requirements for those looking to cohabit a space. Living Together examines how bringing on a roommate can be an intimate affair for many, especially those individuals with hyper-specific lifestyles looking for compassion and not compromise.
In this manner the doc (and its participants) privilege genuine inclusion, an attitude which is otherwise irrationally dismissed as ‘woke’ culture. In an interview with POV’s Rachel Ho last year, Elkhatabi described the film as “A Polaroid of our time,” and she’s not wrong. The film is a near-perfect encapsulation of the desires and the trials that manifest within and for those who are seeking a cohabiter today. By structuring the film’s messaging around conversations that aren’t explicitly about the housing crisis, the doc sidesteps acting as a vessel for social messaging and instead functions as a layered humanist portrait of the behavioural and emotional impacts of one of today’s paramount crises.
Watch Living Together below from the NFB.
Living Together, Halima Elkhatabi, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
