Slumlord Millionaire
- Directed by: Steph Ching, Ellen Martinez
- Released: 2025 (educational)
- Year of Production: 2024
SLUMLORD MILLIONAIRE is a documentary focused on the housing crisis in NYC.
In New York City’s most quickly gentrifying neighborhoods, a group of fearless residents, activists, and nonprofit attorneys fight corrupt landlords and developers for the basic human right to a home.
Official Selection and Audience Award Winner at 2024 DOCNYC, and Winner for "Best Documentary" at 2025 CAAMFest
“[Slumlord Millionaire] does a pretty good job of highlighting one of the limitations of the tenant movement — that many politicians and their benefactors in New York City ultimately do not care about tenants, and cannot be shamed into doing so. But it also hints at the possibility of a larger tenant movement, one that connects battles across the city. If that movement ever fully comes into being, it’s one that New York’s one-party political system will either have to reckon with, or risk losing what once was a reliable multi-ethnic base (as is already happening across the city’s outerboroughs).” — Max Rivlen-Nadler, Hell Gate
“By putting faces to the issue, the film effectively humanizes what might otherwise feel like an abstract debate over policy and development, reminding viewers that gentrification is more than just a term, it’s a force displacing families and transforming neighborhoods beyond recognition.” — TV and City
Steph is a Brooklyn-based director, producer, and editor. She directed and produced “After Spring,” a feature documentary about the Syrian refugee crisis. The film was Executive Produced by Jon Stewart and supported in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. “After Spring” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016, was broadcast on STARZ and is the recipient of a Frontline Award for Documentary Journalism. She was the Associate Producer and Additional Editor of the Emmy Nominated documentary Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon and also worked on The Brink, Cameraperson, The Fourth Estate, and Jagged, the HBO Music Box documentary about Alanis Morissette. Steph participated in the 2019 Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Labs and was a 2020 Karen Schmeer Fellowship Diversity Program Mentee. She was an honoree on DOC NYC inaugural "40 Under 40" list as a director. Most recently she was an editor on the HBO Max documentary series Take Out with Lisa Ling and Netflix’s White Hot. She is the proud daughter of Hong Kong immigrants.
Ellen Martinez is a documentary director, producer, and recent Netflix Nonfiction Directing Fellow. She directed and produced AFTER SPRING, a feature documentary about the Syrian refugee crisis. The film was Executive Produced by Jon Stewart, had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, was broadcast on Starz and is the recipient of the Frontline Award for Documentary Journalism. It is now available in 50+ countries around the world. As a producer she and has worked on projects for Imagine Documentaries, Catalyst Films, Participant Media, HBO and PBS. Ellen attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and was an honoree as a Director on DOC NYCs inaugural “40 Under 40” list. She grew up overseas in Dubai, Venezuela and Syria and is now based in Brooklyn, New York.
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