Moses

Sharp quote “you say you care about the poor? Then tell me, what are their names?” is often attributed to the Latin American liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez. How many of us truly know the names of those on the margins? Moses, a documentary about a defiantly optimistic unhoused man in San Francisco who goes by the name of the biblical liberator, is the closest thing to a cinematic articulation of the famous quote. Fran Guijarro’s feature documentary is one of the most empathetic and humanistic documentaries I’ve ever seen.

Moses Carbins has been homeless for two decades. He is an incredibly resilient, patient, and forgiving man who calls a bench outside of a Starbucks his “office”. It’s where he works all day, sitting and greeting people who give him donations, as well as much more. They give him purpose. The unhoused are usually invisible and that’s by design. To truly see them for what they are – as people – should disturb the masses to action. They are a “people behind a fog” and only the power of communication, as the protagonist tells us, or maybe more specifically storytelling, can defog our vision. Moses disrupts this pattern of invisibility with his warmth and his sincerity. People line up to talk to him, a man of the streets. Some commuters have known him for 20-plus years, and they exchange information about their lives like old friends.

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