Joe Quint’s latest documentary is different from his other projects.
For years, the Temple University alum has produced work that shines a light on the experiences of survivors, loved ones of victims, and witnesses of gun violence through his long-term project It Takes Us: Stories of Gun Violence from Across America.
Hello, Sunshine takes a step away from that and tells a different story that’s a part of an equally tragic American crisis.
The fifteen-minute film, which premieres today at the Philly Latino Film Festival, profiles Rosalind “Roz” Pichardo, a longtime activist in Kensington whose work seeks to end the heroin and opioid crisis in Philadelphia. Pichardo, who has lost her sister to suicide and her brother and a former boyfriend to gun violence, was originally photographed for Quint’s It Takes Us project.
After her brother’s killing in 2012, Pichardo started Operation Save Our City, which works with families who have lost loved ones from murder. Over time, she realized that gun violence wasn’t the only epidemic in the city: Heroin and opioids were taking the lives of hundreds of Philadelphians every year, especially in Kensington. To heal herself from the trauma she endured, she set out to help those living with addiction.
“I find myself helping the most broken people because I was broken and nobody came to fix me,” Pichardo confesses in the film.
Since 2018, Pichardo has reversed over 600 overdoses. She’s also the lead educator for Prevention Point Philadelphia, a Kensington-based health organization, where she hosts workshops teaching people how to use Narcan.
“If there was ever somebody who deserves to have their story brought to life,” Quint tells News Break, “it’s Roz.”
The short takes a respectful and engaged approach to covering the heroin and opioid epidemic in Kensington, one that Quint believes is missing from a lot of the media coverage of both the neighborhood and those living with addiction. In the opening of the film, for instance, Pichardo rushes to a person she sees overdosing; Quint doesn’t join her, to not exploit and sensationalize the event and protect the privacy of the individual Pichardo is assisting.
“I detest lazy, exploitative photographers and journalists who always take advantage of people who are really sick and really deep in their addiction to feed their own egos,” he says. “I wanted to make sure that this was the furthest thing from that.”
The film is a reminder for how we should walk with compassion and treat those going through some of the worst moments of their lives with the same dignity and respect we’d want ourselves.
“I never would lose sight of the fact that all these people were something else before they were [addicts], and that none of them thought they would be that guy or that woman who fell so deep into their addiction, which is why I've always treated the subject with a tremendous amount of empathy,” he says.
When asked about his next plan for continuing to tell Pichardo’s story or the stories of those battling addiction, Quint tells News Break that it’s impossible to know - that these stories are too complex with no clear beginning, middle, or end: “I think my next thing is to really just see where the story goes.”
Local screenings for Hello, Sunshine are happening from June 4 - 6 at the Philly Latino Film Festival. You can get tickets here.
Can’t attend this week’s festival? Not a problem. See if you can attend one of the several national and international screenings by joining the film’s mailing list here to be made aware of future screening dates and locations.