POPULAR "I BROUGHT A FRIEND" CAMPAIGN BACK FOR CINEMA CNC'S 20TH ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL!
If you have attended Cinema CNC in the past and have bring a friend who
is coming for the first time, you are BOTH eligible for our “I Brought A
Friend” campaign.
The bringer
will be entered in a draw for a lovely Cinema CNC prize package, and the
bringee will get a voucher for free pop and popcorn... a win, win, win
situation, don’t you think?
Just go to the IBAF booth where our crack group of volunteers will validate your claim!
While it’s a one-time offer to be a first-timer at Cinema CNC, the next
film you come to you can be the Bringer, rather than the Bringee!
March 20th: 9:30 Borealis Director: Sean Garrity Cast: Joey King, Clé Bennett, Emily Hampshire Canada 2015 95 minutes
Jonah plays poker at a seedy back-room game overseen by Tubby Finkleman, who reluctantly grants Jonah one-hundred grand in credit, which Jonah promptly loses. The volatile Tubby takes Marvin – Jonah’s family dog – as collateral, and warns Jonah that if he doesn’t pay up by first thing in the morning, he and his daughter, Aurora, are going to get hurt. When Jonah appeals to his girlfriend for a loan, she dumps him, tired of his lies and his negligent parenting.
Oblivious to her family’s danger, Aurora undergoes an eye exam, and her doctor delivers the prognosis to Jonah in private: she’s going completely blind. But Jonah’s unable to tell Aurora the truth. Instead, he urges her to come on a road trip to Churchill, Manitoba. There, Jonah once witnessed the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen – the Northern Lights. His motivation is two-fold: flee from danger, and assuage his guilt by showing her the amazing Aurora Borealis - before she loses her vision completely.
Along the way, with Tubby hot on their trail, Jonah and Aurora finally confront their tragic pasts and their individual vices in unanticipated and often comical ways. And when Jonah finally reveals the truth to Aurora about her failing vision, she shares a profound encounter with a mysterious small town hipster, before reuniting with Jonah for the final leg of the journey and the film’s exciting climax.
March 20th: 7 pm My Internship in Canada Director: Philippe Falardeau CANADA, 2015 French, English, Creole, with English subtitles 108 minutes Cast: Patrick Huard, Suzanne Clément, Irdens Exantus, Clémence Dufresne-Deslières, Sonia Cordeau, Paul Doucet, Jules Philip, Robin Aubert, Micheline Lanctôt
In this satirical look at the vagaries of Canadian politics from Academy Award nominee Philippe Falardeau, a Member of Parliament finds himself thrust suddenly into the spotlight, and it’s up to his young Haitian intern to help the hapless backbencher navigate the complexities and pitfalls of Parliament Hill.
A Conservative minority government trying to pass a bill that will enable them to go to war suffers a setback when one of the Tory MPs falls ill, leaving the key vote for the government’s warmongering initiative in the hands of independent MP Steve Guibord, a former hockey player whose pro career fizzled. Feverishly courted by the Tories and subjected to a moral tug of war at home — his ambitious wife wants him to vote Yes, his peacenik daughter, No — Guibord is unable to decide. As the vote nears and Guibord is beset on all sides, salvation arrives in the form of his new intern Souverain, a young Haitian student who knows considerably more about the ins and outs of our parliamentary system than does his boss.
Not only a witty and incisive portrait of wheeling and dealing in Ottawa, My Internship in Canada also exposes Canadians’ tendency to focus on the regional and specific at the expense of the wider picture. As Falardeau’s gently skewering satire demonstrates, sometimes it takes a person from another country to explain to us the workings — and the value — of the unique system that makes our democracy (sometimes) function.
“The performances are lived-in and the tone is refreshingly light. A genuine crowd-pleaser, no matter what colour that sign on your lawn might be.” —Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail
March 20th: 2 pm LES ETRES CHERS [Our Loved Ones] Director: Anne Émond CANADA, 2015 French, with English subtitles 102 Minutes Cast: Maxim Gaudette, Karelle Tremblay, Valérie Cadieux, Mickaël Gouin
A film of ambitious scope and penetrating insight, this second feature from award-win- ning writer-director Anne Émond, follows a Québécois family over a thirty-year period as it traces the fallout from the suicide of the clan’s patriarch.
Protected by his well-intentioned siblings from the truth about his father’s death, the sensitive David has grown into a loving husband and father of two, living a seemingly fulfilling life in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region. But as the years go by, during which time his relationship with his wilder brother begins to strain and his kids grow into young adulthood, David begins to struggle with an insuppressible melancholia that gradually threatens to engulf him. Meanwhile, his daughter, Laurence, begins to recognize herself in her father, and sees that she’ll need to reckon with her emotional inheritance if she is to break this destructive cycle and take on the future.
Clearly one of Canada’s great new talents, Émond exhibits a wisdom and empathy for all her characters rarely found in young filmmakers. Though Our Loved Ones is epic in scope (spanning three generations, and taking us from Quebec to Barcelona), it remains unerringly attuned to the inner lives of the family, portraying their heartbreaks and joys with sincerity and grace.
“Simultaneously an expansive, richly detailed family chronicle and an intimate two-hander about a troubled father’s relationship with his spirited teenage daughter, this marks a decisive step up for Anne Émond.” —Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter
March 19th: 9:30 Into the Forest Patricia Rozema CANADA, 2015 English 96 minutes Cast: Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Callum Keith Rennie, Max Minghella
After several years of acclaimed television productions, writer-director Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) returns to the big screen with Into the Forest, a mesmerizing and powerful story of two teenage sisters who are forced to fend for themselves in a society that may be on the brink of collapse.
Based on Jean Hegland’s novel of the same name, Into the Forest takes place in the not-too-distant future, as a massive power outage overwhelms all of continental North America. Living with their recently widowed father in a house over thirty miles from the nearest town, sisters Nell and Eva gradually become aware of the severity of their situation as their supplies dwindle and the blackout continues with no end in sight. As they contend with the threats of intruders, disease, loneliness and starvation, the young women are forced to re-examine their place in the world and their relations to the land, their home, and each other.
Featuring brilliant performances by Page and Wood and offering a disturbingly plausible vision of an apocalyptic future, Into the Forest is a thought-provoking film about hope, despair, and the bonds of love.
“Into the Forest amply illustrates the vital need for female voices in the industry; Rozema possesses the insight and sensitivity to reimagine the apocalypse as a low-key trial of sisterhood instead of a race to avoid whatever deafening CGI eyesore might come next.” —Charles Bramesco, The Playlist
March 19th: 7 pm Remember
Director: Atom Egoyan
CANADA, 2015 95 minutes
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, Henry Czerny, Dean Norris
Master filmmaker Atom Egoyan (Ararat, The Sweet Hereafter) tackles one of the darkest chapters of 20th-century history in the gripping thriller Remember, which gives legendary actor Christopher Plummer (Elsa & Fred, Beginners) a majestic role as an elderly
Holocaust survivor seeking revenge on the man responsible for the deaths of his family.
Plummer plays Zev, a recent widower whose deteriorating mental state forces him to be placed under permanent care. When he discov- ers that the concentration-camp guard who murdered his relatives is now living in America under an assumed identity, Zev
resolves to fulfill his final vow to his wife by exacting vengeance on the escaped war criminal. With the support of his friend Max (Martin Landau, Lovely, Still, Ed Wood), Zev sets out on his mission with grim purpose — but his quest for retribution leads to
unexpected results.
Working from an original script by first-time screenwriter Benjamin August, Egoyan
generates nerve-shredding suspense as the unlikely avenger pursues the demon from his past. Plummer is remarkable as the driven Zev, and the stellar supporting cast — which also includes Henry Czerny (TV’s The Tudors, Fido), Jürgen Prochnow (TV’s 24, Das Boot), Bruno Ganz (The Reader, Downfall) and Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris as a neo-Nazi state trooper — help make Remember one of the most compelling thrillers in recent memory.
“Plummer’s performance is quietly magnificent, turning the heavy breathing, shaking hands and slow responses of the elderly into a heart-rending vulnerability while also capturing his character’s enduring intelligence and psychic pain.”
—Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail
March 19th: 1 pm Al Purdy Was Here Director: Brian D. Johnson CANADA, 2015 English 92 minutes With: Margaret Atwood, Joseph Boyden, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, Sarah Harmer, Katherine Leyton, Michael Ondaatje, Eurithe Purdy, Tanya Tagaq
An icon of English Canadian letters, Al Purdy was equal parts rock star, raconteur, and rabble-rouser: in other words, all poet. Coming to prominence in the 1960s alongside a crop of other extraordinary talents (including Leonard Cohen, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje), Purdy scorned the tired tales of rural life that had dominated Canadian literature and set out to create a different language, one that came from the contemporary Canadian experience.
Purdy’s impact on Canadian culture is detailed in this documentary by Brian D. Johnson, the former film critic for Maclean’s. Al Purdy Was Here artfully combines archival footage, including some of Purdy’s priceless television appearances, where he played the eccentric contrarian with everyone from Adrienne Clarkson to William F. Buckley, Jr., with readings and reminiscences from Purdy’s friends and colleagues, as well as performances by Bruce Cockburn, Tanya Tagaq, and Sarah Harmer, who set Purdy’s words to music.
What emerges is a far more complex portrait of Purdy than was suggested by his public persona as the boisterous lover of booze, brawls, and verse, immortalized in his best-known poem “At the Quinte Hotel.” While Johnson does not skimp on anecdotes about Al’s delightful debauches, the Purdy he presents is a diligent, hard-working writer, and one of the first in English Canada who was actually able to make a living off his work. Underlying the whole of Johnson’s affectionate elegy, and investing it with a sense of urgency, is the realization that the fiercely proud cultural nationalism that Purdy embodied has not been seen in Canada for decades — and perhaps never will be again.
March 18th: 9:30 Sleeping Giant Director: Andrew Cividino CANADA, 2015 English 90 minutes Cast: Jackson Martin, Nick Serino, Reece Moffett
One of the most accomplished and exciting Canadian feature debuts in recent memory, Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant is a finely observed, whip-smart study of the emotional extremes of adolescence, and their potentially catastrophic effects.
In an isolated cottage community during a bleak midsummer, teenagers Nate, Riley, and Adam deal with their boredom and idleness by getting drunk, playing video games, and engaging in dim-witted, invariably destructive shenanigans. The boys are a study in contrasts: Adam is wan and overprotected; Riley is more outgoing and socially adept, but his fascination with Adam’s upper-middle-class family (including the “open” way that Adam’s father talks to him) indicates something lacking in his own home life; while Nate is the most overtly troubled of the trio, a kind of pubescent Iago who talks an endless stream of smack and enjoys messing with people simply out of spite. Enter Taylor, a pretty girl who has known Adam for years (though they’re only good friends), and who seems very drawn to Riley. As the summer goes on, Taylor’s actions begin to infuriate both Adam and Nate, and push the volatile dynamics of the makeshift group towards a dangerous imbalance.
If you’ve ever spent a teenage summer in a rural area with little supervision and nothing much to do, you’ll instantly recognize both the ennui and the creeping atmosphere of mystery and menace that Cividino’s film so expertly captures. Boasting fine performances by the young cast, a singular visual style and some exquisite and insightful writing, Sleeping Giant is a stellar debut.
“Cividino creates a volatile, captivating and singular look at adolescence, wholly free of the sanitized antics of Hollywood.” The Globe and Mail
March 18th: 7 pm No Men Beyond This Point Director: Mark Sawers CANADA, 2015 English 80 minutes Cast: Kristine Cofsky, Patrick Gilmore, Rekha Sharma, Tara Pratt, Cameron McDonald
This wry mockumentary from Vancouver director Mark Sawers posits an alternate history where an explosion of virgin births from the 1950s onwards has taken men out of the procreation equation — and now that only girls are being born, it seems that men’s days on earth are numbered.
At thirty-seven years old, Andrew Myers is now the youngest man in the world. He has a quiet life working as a nanny for Terra and Iris, until he begins having an affair with Iris, and the two have to hide their love from both Terra and the uptight, anti-sex authorities.
But just as the world’s few remaining males — who have been sent to “sanctuaries” where they can quietly finish their lives — decide that it’s time to stage a revolt, Andrew and Iris find themselves at the centre of a media frenzy spurred on by more extremist government leaders. As the men’s comically disorganized comeback flounders, and the end of humanity as we know it approaches, the couple’s actions will take on historical proportions.
No Men Beyond This Point is a smart, hilarious take on gender politics, sounding a call for balance — both philosophical and biological — even as it keeps us laughing. A feminist satire with a strong handle on comic role reversals, Sawers’ film is a riotous original.
