Avenue Zero is the first documentary to tackle this issue as it exists in Canada. The doc, which screens tonight through Jan. 31 at the NFB Cinema, is a revealing and provocative look at the plight of illegal immigrants who, for the most part, are hardly living the good life in these supposedly quaint parts. Many of the illegals, who have paid thousands of dollars to get here, discover soon enough our streets aren’t paved with gold as they had been led to believe.
Montreal director Hélène Choquette, formerly a photographer and camera operator, has covered a lot of turf in this probe and has uncovered some pretty grim pictures. Whether they’re Asian girls – not women – in suburban Vancouver massage parlours or Honduran boys – not men – selling drugs for Vancouver gangs, domestic workers in Toronto or teen prostitutes in Montreal, they have one thing in common: they are pretty much enslaved to their employers. Living conditions are, to say the least, brutal, with up to a dozen people living in squalid one-room apartments.

See the full article from “Montreal Gazette”