Film review of ‘PUSH’: A documentary by Fredrik Gertten

Abstract

Push is a film of great ambition and great skill. Director Fredrik Gertten takes on the global housing crisis, and aims to uncover and expose the systemic forces that increasingly make contemporary cities unaffordable to working and middle class residents. The concept of gentrification no longer seems useful in this quest, and Gertten is looking for a new language to speak of the phenomenon. It is notoriously difficult to make cinematic, gripping films about the inner workings of the economy, and Gertten skilfully uses every trick in the filmmakers’ hat to produce an engaging and relatable work that carries the audience along and makes a complex but digestible argument.