Love in the Time of Fentanyl

As the number of overdose deaths in Vancouver, Canada reaches an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) opens its doors—a renegade supervised drug consumption site that primarily employs active and former drug users. Its staff and volunteers save lives and give hope to a marginalized community as the overdose crisis rages throughout Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The film follows Sarah, an activist who opened OPS without government approval, as she strives to raise awareness about the crisis; Trey, a graffiti artist and former heroin user who spends his days reversing overdoses and memorializing lost community members; Ronnie, a seasoned frontline worker nicknamed “Narcan Jesus,” struggling with burnout from the demanding work and witnessing so much loss; Norma, a much-loved Indigenous elder in the community, who cooks meals for the staff when she’s not administering naloxone; and Dana, an active fentanyl user who constantly reverses overdoses at work while struggling with his own drug use. With loved ones dying in unprecedented numbers, the staff at OPS does whatever it takes to save lives and find radical new ways out of the devastating but widely ignored crisis ravaging their community. Love in the Time of Fentanyl is an intimate, observational look beyond the stigma of people who use drugs, revealing the courage of those facing tragedy in a neighborhood often referred to as ground zero of the overdose crisis.