Frameline50: Fire Within

At the epicenter of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood — proud home to the newly-created Transgender District as well as the reluctant symbol of the city’s intractable struggle against homelessness — stands the extraordinary community of Glide Memorial Church. Fire Within, an eye-opening slice-of-life documentary shot over the course of a year, takes us inside Glide’s walls and out into the streets of the Tenderloin to give us an intimate view inside the lives of four San Franciscans who intersect at Glide.

Some of them, like Tony Page, a Black gay man experiencing homelessness, grapple with the plight of being unhoused in an insanely expensive city, or are coping with long-standing mental health challenges; another, single mother Dawn, battles to overcome a substance abuse habit so she can reunite with her children. This compassionate, unflinching film puts a human face on all-too-familiar social issues, showing us the resilience and dignity glimmering below one neighborhood’s turbulent surface.