★★★★1/2

Sweetheart Deal is a gritty, affecting work; as raw and revealing a documentary as you may ever find.

From conception to completion, the film took over a decade to complete and focuses on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue, a well-traveled highway which slices through the city. As directors Elisa Levine and Gabriel Miller (who sadly passed away in 2019) settle in under and around the lights of Aurora, they embed with four women who work the street to try and make a living, while also each navigating debilitating heroin addiction.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be for them. However, as we find in this moving and powerful documentary, Kristine, Tammy, Sara, and Krista (a/k/a Amy, her street name), come from different backgrounds and upbringings, but are bound together by this place, this work, and this time in their lives.

Another connection they share is that the self-anointed “Mayor of Aurora,” Laughn Elliott Doescher, gives them a place of safety and comfort in a parked RV on the side of the road. These women, and countless others, have turned to Doescher for help and assistance and a place to sleep through the years. Appearing kind and non-judgmental, he opens the door, cooks them meals, takes them on errands, and helps them detox if they need a place to try and “kick.”

Levine and Miller are masterful in the ways with which they build and layer these stories - both at an individual level, and in presenting a bigger picture for what these women have experienced in their lives. An Aurora Avenue exists in every major city. Levine and Miller never exploit or present these women as anything other than survivors. The trust which develops between subject and storyteller is obvious and important. The women share their back stories, discuss how they became addicted to drugs and why they work the streets. They seek a better life. They seek to reconnect with family, friends, and children who have been caught in the wash of their life’s decisions. They still have a sense of hope and that proves inspiring, amid the despair we may feel about their existing situations.

As we spend more time with these characters, we recognize that something feels off - not everything, or everyone, seems quite right. A quick Google search can certainly spoil the twist which Levine and Miller deliver at about the one-hour mark. Those unfamiliar with the circumstances surrounding these characters will likely be stunned by the reveal. For those who do anticipate where the movie is heading, the power in getting to know these characters so intimately and so personally makes the details surrounding the final third of the film all the more stunning and heart-wrenching.

Society so easily dismisses and disregards the Kristines, Tammys, Saras, and Kristas of the world because we live in a society where sex work and drug addiction are viewed as signs of abhorrence, weakness, and disgust. What’s most striking about Sweetheart Deal is that these are women who, among them, were 4.0 students in high school. Were victims of abuse growing up. May have been homeless at a young age or may have became pregnant as a teenager with no support from loved ones. The resulting behaviors may be indefensible in the eyes of many, but whether we agree with the choices they make or not is an irrelevant part of the conversation Levine and Miller want to have.

Understanding how someone can find themselves trying to find a place to sleep in between turning tricks or coming down of a heroin rush can be a moment of learning and education for all of us. Sweetheart Deal pulls no punches - by presenting these women without judgment is simply to let them tell their stories and give amplification to voices which are marginalized or shut down. Levine and Miller give these individuals a safe space to share, even as other spaces they rely on as safe prove otherwise.

Sweetheart Deal remarkably finds a message of hope and opportunity - even in the bleakest and most traumatic of situations. As a society, we could learn a lot from a movie like this. Sweetheart Deal is a staggering achievement in documentary filmmaking.

Sweetheart Deal was screened as part of the 48th Seattle International Film Festival.