Miles Blayden-Ryall is a multi-award winning, double-BAFTA and Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker who reached out to us regarding his next project, ‘Home’ , a feature documentary exploring the homelessness crisis.'
WELCOME HOME!
We need your help to raise completion funds for our socially urgent feature documentary about homelessness and displacement.
FILMMAKER STATEMENT
As a filmmaker I’m driven by curiosity about people, choices, and the invisible forces that shape who we become and motivate what we do. No matter the story, my work always begins from the same place: empathy and fascination with what lies beneath the surface of a life.
Home builds on my previous work, bringing my practice closer to where I live and to the moral crises at the heart of modern Britain and the wider world. It’s more immediate and political than my previous films, but still deeply personal. Using vérité, master interview, archive, and animation, the film immerses us in the outer reality and inner world of a man rendered invisible by a broken system that’s failing so many.
Personally, my creative lens has been shaped by a lifelong drive to understand belonging: what helps people feel safe, seen, and connected. Challenges in my early life, and later learning I’m neurodivergent (including dyslexia and ADHD) alongside anxiety, helped me make sense of how I’m wired and how I work best.
The upside is that it’s given me a practical set of strengths: I notice what others miss, I’m sensitive to power dynamics, and I’m good at earning trust without forcing it. I listen carefully, I stay patient, and I try to create the kind of space where people can speak honestly, sometimes discovering something real as they say it out loud.
Artistically, Home’s success will be achieved by transcending its subject matter and connecting with audiences anywhere, regardless of their proximity to homelessness or to London. At its core, it’s a story about the things we all understand - love, loss, identity, meaning, safety, connection and belonging. The hope is that the film moves people not through spectacle but through empathy, and in doing so, moves something in the world too.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
We are currently raising money through investment, sponsorship and crowdfunding to complete our socially urgent feature documentary. A link to our crowdfunding page is at the end of this blog post, along with contact details of the film’s director if you wish to discuss the film, its impact campaign or funding.
THE FILM
HOME is a raw character-led story exploring displacement, homelessness and belonging through one person’s incredible journey.
Arriving in the UK as an 18-year-old refugee from the Bosnian war, ALEN built a new life in London with a wife and four children only to lose it all again due to forces out of his control.
In the aftermath of the Grenfell fire in June 2017, Britain’s deadliest residential blaze of modern times, Alen finds himself homeless, fighting to reclaim a place in the city that once took him in and then quietly began to erase him.
Following a gruelling eight-year mission for justice, the film bears witness to the human cost of political negligence, corporate greed, and systemic failure - embodied by Grenfell Tower, and echoed across the world.
As global displacement reaches unprecedented levels, Alen’s search for home asks us what that word really means, who gets to have one, and what is lost when safety, shelter, and dignity are treated as privileges rather than human rights.
The documentary is being produced by a diverse and multi-award-winning collective of filmmakers who share a singular united vision to do justice to the story we are telling, both artistically and with its social impact. This goal will be delivered not only by the end-product, but through the journey to get there.
COLLABORATING WITH HOMELESS ENTREPRENEUR
As we all know, displacement isn’t restricted to one city or one country, it’s a global issue. In recognition of that, we’re collaborating with Homeless Entrepreneur, an NGO that supports people experiencing homelessness to rebuild their lives. One way they do this is through their innovative HELP Program, a practical model that helps people become self-sufficient by supporting them to develop business ideas, find work, and reintegrate into society.
Our film’s subject, Alen, is now in a position to rebuild. He has a home, a job, and is working to reconnect with his family. And not only that, he has also volunteered to become a mentor to someone in the HELP Program.
Inspired by the way the film can begin contributing to real-world impact, we’ve offered to sponsor Alen’s mentee. This circular, community-driven collaboration reflects both the values behind how the film is being made and the message at the heart of the story.
We’re honoured to support Alen’s mentee, Eric Ross, as he navigates the daily obstacles of homelessness and takes steps toward stability, work, and home.
HOW THE MONEY WILL BE DISTRIBUTED
The money raised will help towards paying the post-production costs which include: editing, colour grading, sound design & mix, music composition, archive clearance, and creating a final master of the film ready for its launch. Funds raised will then enable the film’s impact and film festival campaigns, where we aim to attract distributors and broadcasting partners.
These costs can stretch into the tens and even hundreds of thousands, but due to the kindness and generosity of our collaborators and supporters we are able to keep these costs down. This means any contribution you make will go even further!
WHERE TO SEE THE FILM
We’re scheduled to complete the documentary by August 2026, followed by a premier at a world renowned film festival, and subsequent festival run.
Our goal is to then expand the film's reach, and its message, as far as possible via an international theatrical release, and transmission on a streaming service and/or international terrestrial broadcast channels.
THANK YOU!
Homelessness does not exist in isolation from the wider forces that shape our world. It is part of the same pattern of dispossession we see in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in every place where lives are uprooted by war, violence, or state failure - countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia, where wars even rage largely out of view.
Alen himself embodies this connection. He arrived in Britain as a refugee from Bosnia, where the collapse of a multi-ethnic society spiralled into ethnic cleansing and mass displacement.
Decades later, in London, he found himself once again without a home - this time not because of bombs or militias, but because of bureaucratic indifference and systemic neglect.
The continuum is chilling: whether through missile strikes in Mariupol, air raids in Gaza, or fire safety failures in West London, the result is the same - ordinary people made disposable, stripped of safety, belonging, and dignity.
Alen's story is not singular. We walk past hundreds of people just like him every day. But in a post-truth world drowning in disinformation and division, it’s easy to look away. Home urges us to stop, to listen, to question, to understand, to care. To confront the systems that decide who is visible, and to see perhaps for the first time, those they have tried to erase.
Ultimately, Home is not just a documentary. It's a call to conscience, a catalyst for change, and a powerful cultural document for a world at a moral crossroads. We all want to know we matter, so let's stop living as though some of us don't!
Home’s Crowdfunding Page - Help us Complete Post-Production:
Director’s Contact Details. Would you like to Sponsor or Invest in the film:
