Latest news with #CanadianCinema
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cameron Bailey On TIFF World Premiere Title ‘Mile End Kicks' & Why The Festival Is Now Focused On 'Celebrating Canada'
EXCLUSIVE: 'We are all about celebrating Canada right now,' TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey explains on a Zoom call with us ahead of his festival's latest lineup announcement this morning. 'But only in the sense that I'm very focused on how Canadian stories speak to the whole world. There is a thriving culture that I think is somewhat unique to Canadian cinema because it is supported by public bodies. Nearly all Canadian cinema is independent cinema, unlike some countries with big commercial industries.' More from Deadline TIFF 50th Edition Kicking Off With Colin Hanks & Ryan Reynolds' New Documentary 'John Candy: I Like Me' Details Of Toronto Film Festival's C$23M Market Revealed: Name & Dates Set As More Heavyweight Industry Advisors Join Ahead Of 2026 Launch Doc Talk: Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger On Staging "Attempted Coup" Within The GOP, And More From Toronto Film Festival Mile End Kicks, the sophomore feature from Toronto native Chandler Levack (I Like Movies), is one of those independently produced titles set to come out of Canada this year, and it was included as a world premiere in this morning's TIFF announcement. Levack joined us on the call with Bailey. Written and directed by Levack, the film follows a 24-year-old female music critic who moves to Montreal to write a book about Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she becomes intertwined with a struggling indie rock band and decides to become their publicist. Starring are Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria), Jay Baruchel (BlackBerry), Devon Bostick (Oppenheimer), Stanley Simons (The Iron Claw), and Juliette Gariépy (Société distincte). Bailey tells us that he 'fell in love with the film' after seeing an early, unfinished cut. 'I was a film critic for an alternative weekly paper in Toronto for many years. I never got to live in Montreal like the character in the movie, but I know that world,' Bailey says. 'And Mile End Kicks is telling this incredible story of what it's like to exist as a young woman in that world, which is an alternative cultural world, but still has a lot of hazards for women. That plays out in the film with great insight, humor, and candor.' Bailey adds that he believes Levack, who for some time worked on the editorial team at TIFF and debuted her first feature, I Like Movies, at the festival in 2022, represents 'the very best of what Canadians can do.' 'I think of the early work of Patricia Rozema and Patricia Rozema, Clement Virgo, and then in Montreal, people like Philippe Falardeau and Denis Villeneuve, those early independent features that really feel like they're immersed in a world, and speak to the experience of young people at that time — Chandler's in that lineage,' Bailey says. 'So I want the world to know about her, and that's why we're giving this film that kind of platform.' In a similar vein to I Like Movies, a film about a socially awkward teenage cinephile who gets a job at a video store, Mile End Kicks is inspired by Levack's own life experiences. 'I left Blockbuster and became a magazine writer in my early 20s. I wrote for magazines like Spin and Village Voice,' she explains. 'It was tremendously exciting. But looking back at those years, I would think about how all my bosses were men in their 40s, and how maybe there was something weird about that. And maybe the way I was being singled out as special and talented had a deeper meaning to it.' The film is set against the indie music scene in the titular Mile End neighborhood of Montreal, where acts such as Grimes, Mac DeMarco, and Arcade Fire first found acclaim. Montreal rock band TOPS have recorded two original songs for the film's soundtrack. 'This is a movie that should be of enormous interest to buyers,' Bailey adds. When you look at what's out there, what's succeeding in art house distribution and awards season, it's fresh voices and filmmakers who are connected to where the culture is right now. Mile End Kicks is exactly in line with that.' Titles also announced this morning as part of TIFF's Official Selection were Alejandro Amenábar's The Captive, Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers, Sung-hyun Byun's Good News, and Nia DaCosta's Hedda. They join the previously announced opening night flick, John Candy: I Like Me. On the wider TIFF lineup, which will be announced in August, Bailey adds: 'We've been in close conversation with all of our usual partners, the studios, streamers, sales companies, and independent producers. There's no let up it just all depends on what films are available, both in terms of what they present to us and what we end up choosing. Thankfully, we're still seeing some great movies.'TIFF 2025 runs from September 4–14. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far Everything We Know About The 'Reminders of Him' Movie So Far
Globe and Mail
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
‘It's the dream': Cannes showcases Canadian filmmakers outside the old guard
On the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, the red-and-white Canada Pavilion, located on the calm and pristine shores of the French Riviera, is a quiet oasis of laptop typing and polite networking. Especially contrasted with the boom-boom-boom thud of the American Pavilion a few tents down, where the atmosphere was thick with a smiley but nervy 'Do I know you?' attitude. The parallel moods on the Croisette underlined Canada's here-but-not-in-your-face presence at the 78th edition of the world's most prestigious film festival. After several recent editions of Cannes in which Canadian cinema's more name-brand auteurs stood tall – think of last year's festival featuring legacy-defining work from David Cronenberg (The Shrouds) and Guy Maddin (Rumours) – this year's Canadian contingent offers a quieter, more sneak-up-on-you energy from artists either emerging or long on the cusp. Of the three Canadian filmmakers whose work is competing in the festival's sidebar program Directors' Fortnight – Anne Émond's doom-tinged romcom Amour Apocalypse (Peak Everything), Felix Dufour-Laperrière's intense feature-length cartoon Le Mort n'existe pas (Death Does Not Exist), and Alex Boya's darkly whimsical animated short titled Bread Will Walk – each director is a Cannes newbie. 'I think it's a good sign for Canadian cinema if filmmakers are being invited to Cannes for the first or second time fairly early in their careers,' says Toronto International Film Festival chief executive Cameron Bailey, who is in town this week not only scoping out films for this fall's 50th edition of TIFF, but laying the groundwork for the launch of Toronto's official content market in 2026. 'It's always great when there's a Cronenberg or an Egoyan, but if there's only that, then that's a bad sign for Canadian filmmakers.' Quebecois animator Dufour-Laperrière knows well that he's not carrying the imprimatur of a Denis Villeneuve or Denys Arcand – and he wouldn't expect to, working in the field of adult-skewing animation. Which makes the invitation to debut his work at Cannes all the more important to him, and those of his fellow Canadian artists. 'It's breaking the boundaries. There's no public audience for adult animation, it doesn't exist. So it's a real pleasure to screen an adult animated feature in a general cinema context,' says the filmmaker, who began working on Death Does Not Exist, which follows the shattered life of a political activist, more than a decade ago. 'I'm joyful about having the opportunity to share this kind of work with moviegoers in a festival that permits it to stand out.' Canadian filmmaker Dominic Desjardins, who is also in Cannes for the first time with his impressively soul-crushing virtual-reality project The Dollhouse (a co-production with Luxembourg), possesses a more uniquely un-Canadian sense of unbridled enthusiasm. 'Being in Cannes is huge! It's the dream, you know?' says the filmmaker, who spent years working on the VR project out of his small Toronto office with his wife, producer Rayne Zukerman. 'This is a festival for creators who are not working for commercial purposes, but who just feel a powerful drive to bring a story into the world. Having a venue like Cannes, and being invited there, is saying that there's not just a market for this, but a need in the cultural landscape.' Although Canadian filmmakers have a wealth of opportunities to showcase their work at home, the international connections that a Cannes premiere can deliver are unparalleled. 'The mission is to reach out to Canadians, but also the world. And on that level, you can make so many connections once the same content is seen from the angle of an international audience,' says Bread Will Walk director Boya, whose short neatly subverts the zombie genre and features the voice of Jay Baruchel. 'You get to develop a relationship to your work in a more cubistic way – you can look at it from different angles and learn from how it's been viewed by audiences from one culture to the next.' Naturally, all of the Canadian titles at Cannes are premiering under the shadow of tariffs and other cultural politics seeping out of the United States – still the dominant force both in the global entertainment industry and this year's festival (up to and including the American Pavilion's soundtrack). But for the Canadian talent on hand, the tension might in fact be healthy. 'As an artist, we create environments of exchange in new terms,' says Boya. 'I think there are two options that you can take: be responsive to the backdrop of those dynamics, or nurture the things that you're fostering, the forums that you're trying to build as an artist, and it will just naturally co-exist with the overarching zeitgeist. 'These tectonic plates, they'll always be clashing – but you're building something that floats on its own gravitational pull. That's the value of creators connecting with audiences and other creators. Focus on the storytelling.'
