We Used to Own Houses

Rating:

Key Cast: Anthony Phelan, Thom Green
Director: David Robinson-Smith
Producer: Chloe Brennan, Nick Payne
Screenwriter: Alasdair Dunn, David Robinson-Smith
Cinematographer: Jaclyn Paterson
Composer: Wolf & Cub

Mud Crab (MIFF 2022) director David Robinson-Smith returns with a stirring cine-poem about the rental crisis, starring Thom Green (Of an Age, MIFF Premiere Fund 2022).

A landlord is confronted by one of the many tenants (Green) he has evicted, who forces him to read out a verse – repurposed from lyrics taken from the album Hostile Architecture by Ashenspire – about power, greed and culpability. Surreal vignettes depict the winners and losers of a rapacious property market, revealing the human cost of exploiting basic needs to maximise private wealth.