Hanging On

You hear the phrase ‘home is where the heart is’ and it is really. It’s everybody’s favourite place. 

A short and striking film, Hanging On starts with long-time residents of Wordsworth Drive and Sugar Hill Close in Leeds narrating their story. The houses that they’ve made a home for more than fifty years are being demolished by private investors and that has left them with crippling fear.

The residents unite, put up a fight and try to hold on to what is theirs with the tips of their fingers (literally) as they await the eviction notice. Director Alfie Barker puts the residents up in the air, suspended between the life they’ve built and the uncertainty of what lies ahead. The film creatively captures this feeling of holding on while waiting for someone else to make a decision. The background score enhances this eerie, scary feeling of not knowing, of losing what is yours. 

Most people put their life’s work into building a home, decorating it with colours and objects that best define them. Homes are a canvas, a way of expression of the life spent and memories created, but when greedy, selfish businesses threaten the very existence of this home, it can be a life-shattering feeling. It is beyond comprehension how painful and fearful it must be to lose this sense of identity, of childhood and youth. Barker conveys this fear through his camera in the most precise detail.

The spaces we inhabit are more than just brick walls, they are our whole identities. A washer in motion, a garden that the summer birds frequent, a dog barking in the backyard, cats under the parked cars. It is about books, photo frames and first anniversaries, about countless happy gatherings and funerals. And evil businesses can do better than sending out a flyer to wash them away. They need to look elsewhere to make money rather than uprooting the lives of those who are harmlessly existing in their quiet part of the world.

Written by by Nikita Zankar