“The Road Home,” featuring our home, Manchester, Michigan
The Manchester area’s county commissioner, Shannon Beeman, was interviewed for a documentary called The Road Home in City Hall’s lobby on Feb. 13. Photo by Colleen Schoenfeld.
by Colleen A. Schoenfeld
On February 13 a film crew from Breyko LLC was set up in the Manchester City Hall lobby to film an interview with our County Commissioner Shannon Beeman for an upcoming documentary called The Road Home. Residents entering to pay their utility and property tax bills sure were surprised to walk onto an active film set!
The documentary from Breyko LLC is about mental health service accessibility, homelessness, and housing insecurity in Washtenaw County. This documentary will intentionally include and pay attention to the areas of the county outside of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. The director, Kameron Donald, specifically chose to include and film in Manchester because he stated that often most of the focus of county efforts is centered in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and he wanted to be sure to include more areas of the county. The crew also filmed parts of the documentary at a County Commission meeting that took place in Manchester in June of 2025.
The detailed description of the film, provided by Breyko on the Michigan Theater website, is “this documentary addresses the critical issues of mental health, housing insecurity, and homelessness in Washtenaw County, exploring both the underlying challenges and potential solutions through a unified community effort. Although numerous local organizations, government officials, businesses, and residents actively contribute to tackling these issues, inadequate funding and resources often lead to fragmented efforts or ineffective strategies, ultimately failing the very individuals they aim to help. Recent federal funding cuts have compounded these challenges, forcing many vital programs to close or scale back significantly, leaving more people without essential support. In response, organizations are increasingly turning toward collaboration, seeking collective solutions that leverage shared resources and insights. The goal of this documentary is to foster unity among all stakeholders by creating an educational platform that raises awareness, facilitates dialogue, and inspires coordinated action. Through collective understanding and commitment, we aim to effectively combat homelessness and housing insecurity, ensuring sustainable, compassionate support for those in need.”
There are two upcoming free screenings of this film scheduled so far. The first is on April 23 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, and the second will be on May 7, also at Michigan Theater. The director stated there are plans to then take the documentary on tour around the rest of the county, to include a showing here in Manchester at a time and date to be determined. To view the official trailer and reserve tickets for the two currently scheduled screenings, go to https://marquee-arts.org/, click on “what’s on” under the menu, and select “films,” then scroll down to “special events” and click on “The Road Home.” Tickets will be available soon and, while free, reservations are recommended to ensure access to the screening.
This project grew out of a previous documentary filmed by Breyko, also directed by Kameron Donald, called A Letter to the West Side. That documentary, per the shotbybreyko Instagram account “explores the vibrant history of Ann Arbor’s West Side, the historic Black community, honoring the trailblazers, the resilience, and a community forever changed by systemic hardship.” According to Donald, that film was born out of the recently built Dunbar Tower housing construction and opening, located on the West Side of Ann Arbor.
The full documentary A Letter to the West Side is available on YouTube by searching “A Letter to the West Side.” Additional clips of projects filmed by Breyko are available on their website at https://www.breyko.com/our-work.
Photo by Colleen Schoenfeld.
Photo by Colleen Schoenfeld.
Photo by Colleen Schoenfeld.
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