The Hill is a short documentary that offers an in depth look at a community of people experiencing homelessness in the Creekside Encampment in Santa Barbara, California in 2024-25.
This documentary provides a unique and powerful perspective on the complexities of homelessness, offering a poignant human story that goes beyond headlines and statistics. The documentary, which has been submitted to the 2026 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, aims to be a tool for community discussions on how to improve the experience of people living in homeless encampments.
The movie poster for The Hill, shown here, was designed by Santa Barbara based artist Kestrel Tseng of Bird in Hand Press.
These movie posters, and postcards, are being printed on request by Kestrel using Riso printing technique.
Seattle based Fortress of the Bear Band provided the musical soundtrack for The Hill. The music and lyrics, by Matthew Doohan, is about growing up in Santa Barbara amidst escalating wealth disparity, climate change (fire/drought), and homelessness. “Battle Lines” is on their Heroes Around album, listen now!
Fortress of the Bear Band members Matthew Doohan and Keola Kapulani Holt recorded additional music for The Hill soundtrack and Greg Hagstrom mixed the sound for the film.
