Arts & Culture

When Hugh Gibson, the award-winning filmmaker, wanted to make a documentary about how addiction affects the lives of people struggling with it, he decided to really take the time to get closer to these people.  He spent five years in the Regent Park neighbourhood making "The Stairs" , which brought him the 2016 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. 

"The Stairs" follows the lives of three social workers, Marty, Roxanne and Greg, as they help their clients, who are drug users, kick the addiction habit once and for all.  Marty, Roxanne and Greg understand too well what their clients are going through, as they themselves struggle with the same demons. When the film was first screened at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, it was welcomed as a nuanced, deeply compassionate examination of the struggles of people who play a never-ending balancing act between recovery and relapse in the course of their lives.  The film succeeds in challenging our prejudices and our preconceived notions of drug addicts and in doing so, it establishes a fresh new narrative to an old story.  Come and join us in a special screening of the film followed by a Q & A session with the filmmaker.  Date and time of the film screening is as follows:

Tuesday, February 6, at 6 pm, at the Beeton Hall, on the main floor of Toronto Reference Library.

Hope to see you all there.