Eric “Roach” Denis is a Montreal-based Canadian documentary film maker and activist whose films deal with social justice, and particularly homelessness.
Eric Denis was born in Grenville, Quebec. At age 9, his parents divorced and he went on to live with his mother. After a brief stay with his father, he was put in a juvenile detention centre because he had been hooked to smoking marijuana. At the age of 14, he escaped from the center he was assigned to and started living as a street kid in the streets of Montreal acquiring addiction to hard drugs in the process as a teenager.
Eric Denis began first by documenting his own life as an autobiography, entitled “RoachCam” as part of the acclaimed S.P.I.T.: Squeegee Punks in Traffic directed by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin.
Using cinema as a motivation to get cleaned up, “Roach” has gone on to make two other films with EyeSteelFilm: RoachTrip is his directorial debut film. It is autobiographical take about the invisible punk highway from Quebec to the orchards of British Columbia.
He directed Punk the Vote!, again an autobiographical documentary which saw Roach and fellow punker Starbuck run for Canadian federal elections against Liberal incumbent Jean Lapierre, in an informative, hilarious take on Canadian politics punk-rock style.