The Human Shelter Documentary Asks What Makes a Home from Japan to Uganda

The Human Shelter: Expedition into What Makes a Home is an exploration of the feeling of home. Directed by Boris Bertram and funded by IKEA, the film looks at present ways of living in Norway, Iraq, the United States, Nigeria, Japan, Uganda, and Iceland, interrogating the role of home in order to project it into the future. Through imagery and personal narratives, the documentary connects the concept of home with landscape, movement and settling, time, migration and security, vulnerability, and nature. How do displaced populations create a home? When does a shelter become a home? Portraits, stories, and shelters across four continents give viewers a glimpse of an answer to these big questions in a one-hour film tour.

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Over more than two years, Boris Bertram traveled to nine countries to collect place-based perspectives on creating shelters and feeling at home. Part of the aim was to build an idea of home for the future, in the face of climate change, globalization, and migration. Two realizations emerged from this process: everyone has the ability to speak poetically about home, and poetry becomes a source of empowerment. Through the cinematography of Henrik Bohn Ipsen and Adam Philp, viewers can appreciate a variety of landscapes and gain insight into challenging geographical circumstances and contexts of isolation, remote living, and city life.

The film's method was inspired by Danish poet and filmmaker Jørgen Leth's approach and what he called "the presence of coincidence." Locations are chosen to surprise the audience; every chapter has a central story, and every contributor is invited to express their feelings and thoughts on home and belonging. The film's seven chapters show the views of Sean Anderson, curator at MoMA in New York; Elle Marja Eira, a Sámi nomad and artist from Finnmark; Kim Bindsted, a professor at the HI-SEAS Mars habitat, a NASA-funded research project; Suhad, a 13-year-old poet from the UNHCR refugee camp in Kurdistan, Iraq; Johan Karlsson, a designer of refugee shelters at Better Shelter; Yuri, a female art photographer from Tokyo; Andri Snær Magnason, an Icelandic writer; and Godfrey Kato, an environmental activist from Uganda.

For me, documentary filmmaking is very much about people and about what it means to be human. Through my many journeys into conflict zones, I finally got the idea for a film exploring how we create homes on the edge of the world, where the world is most challenged by climate change, migration, and a lack of resources. And in that way, gather new knowledge about how we can create better homes in the future. ― Director Boris Bertram

Boris Bertram is a Danish filmmaker, producer, and educator based at Zentropa Film in Copenhagen. His filmography centers on conflict resolution and humanitarianism, in contexts of war, natural disaster, migration, and displacement. In addition to The Human Shelter, he has directed the award-winning films The Photographer of War, Bush, Blair and Fogh – The War Campaign, and Tankograd. His work is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and, beyond film, includes video installations and documentary series. He is the showrunner, director, and scriptwriter of the Nordic documentary series Putin's Shadow War (2023), produced by DR, NRK, SVT, and YLE.

It is interesting, because a shelter is our first concept of home. A physical place where, first and foremost, we as human beings need to feel safe and secure. Under extreme living conditions, the body itself can become our shelter. For example, a homeless person lying on the bare ground will often use their body to shield themselves from their surroundings and from nature, and will lie in the foetal position. ― Director Boris Bertram

The Human Shelter, an exploration of what makes a home, was screened at MoMA in New York in 2020 and presented by UN-Habitat as part of its global "Housing for All" campaign in 193 countries. The film will also be screened in Copenhagen on October 29 at the launch of COBE Notes: Edge Conditions. The Human Shelter is available to stream for free on ArchDaily from October 29 to November 29, 2026. Subtitles are available in six languages (English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish) by clicking the subtitles icon in the Vimeo player.