Toronto Stories
Various lives intersect over the course of 48 hours in Canada's largest and most culturally diverse city.
Sook-Yin Lee
Sook-Yin Lee
Aaron Woodley
Aaron Woodley
Sudz Sutherland
Sudz Sutherland
David Weaver
David Weaver
Casts & Crew
Sook-Yin Lee
Gil Bellows
K. C. Collins
Carly Pope
Lisa Ray
Ricardo Hoyos
Samantha Weinstein
Also Directed by Sook-Yin Lee
The daughter of an overbearing mother enters the rich and strange world of her deceased father — a man she never knew.
Lydia and her boyfriend, who works in a local café, broke up two months ago. The break up was a turbulent one. But he still has many of his possessions in her house, which are reminders of him to her. The one that she is most disturbed about his his bicycle, which is padlocked to her house. She does whatever she can to break the padlock and thus break any ties she has to him.
YEAR OF THE CARNIVORE is a romantic-comedy-drama about a girl with an unrequited crush on a boy who thinks she's bad in bed, so she goes out to get more 'experience'. SAMMY SMALLS is a 21-year-old tomboy who works as a store detective at Big Apple Food Town. Her job is to deliver shoplifters to her boss who beats them up so they never re-offend. Sammy is head over heels for scruffy street musician EUGENE ZASLAVSKY. He's perfect for her, funny, irreverent and sensitive, but the problem is, he doesn't want to be in a relationship. After a disastrous one-night stand that goes beyond the boundaries of their friendship, Eugene suggests they play the field to get more experience. Following his advice, Sammy hatches a plan catapulting her on a quest that takes her through her neighbours' bedroom, the public swimming pool, and finally to blackmailing shoplifters into giving her sex lessons in the woods behind the supermarket.
Sook-Yin and Dylan are currently holed up in a house in Toronto capturing what happens on consumer cameras and mobile phones. Death and Sickness is a work of auto-fiction inspired by real-life events.
A lonely couple meet in a Laundromat, where their clumsy attempt at a sexual liaison leads to revelations, embarrassments, and a little bit of compassion.
WHISPERS AND SHOULDERS An experimental short directed by Sook-Yin Lee Conceived by JOOJ (Lee & Adam Litovitz) Made from the raw footage of JOOJ's 'Shoulders and Whispers' music video, directed by Brandon Cronenberg & filmed by Karim Hussain, CSC. WHISPERS AND SHOULDERS appropriates and reworks the raw footage of JOOJ's 'Shoulders and Whispers' music video. The video's images are rendered voiceless, with figures adrift in suspended animation for a twenty-six minute hypno-poetic reconstruction that draws upon unused images from the original music video. The initial video, 'Shoulders and Whispers,' is a black-and-white three-minute pop-song artifact designed to grab attention with each shot a fixed duration with a slow left-to-right pan. No shot is ever repeated. It has a forward momentum, unfolding new dynamics and imagery; conversely, WHISPERS AND SHOULDERS embraces repetitiveness in richly-saturated colour.
A comedy of obsession and assimilation that charts the true account of a first generation Chinese-Canadian's attempt to fit into a white suburb. After an alienated childhood, she lands a job at an unpopular pasta bar, walking the streets as a 10-foot egg noodle. A transformation occurs when her new persona, Mr. Noodle, supersedes her own identity - only to confront a similar alienation as a noodle-human.
Also Directed by Aaron Woodley
The story of three people who strive to realize their dreams. Brothers Carter and Ellis set out on a road trip to their childhood home in a desperate search for their estranged father, who may hold the key to their future.
Without the security of the job he wants or the future he dreamed of, Paul Dynan plans the perfect crime to help his struggling family – abduct the socialite children of three wealthy men and collect a ransom of $3-million dollars. Over the course of one long night, Paul and his accomplices hold the rich kids hostage awaiting the ransom with little idea of the secrets that will surface between the fathers when they are forced to choose between their children and their money.
Spark, a teenage monkey and his friends, Chunk and Vix, are on a mission to regain Planet Bana - a kingdom overtaken by the evil overlord Zhong.
Rhinoceros Eyes is a fantastical coming-of-age story revolving around Chep, a young, reclusive prop-house employee who falls in love with a detail-obsessed movie production designer named Fran. Fran's need for authentic props sends Chep to great and questionable lengths as he tries to satisfy her requests, and ultimately... win her heart.
Animals band together to save the day when the evil Otto Von Walrus hatches a sinister scheme to accelerate global warming and melt the Arctic Circle.
Chandler owns and runs one of the finest bed & breakfasts in town. What his guests do not realize, is that each room is secretly monitored by a hidden video camera. He delights in entering the very private worlds of those who pass through, and when the Glue family arrives, he uncovers their well kept secret.
Also Directed by Sudz Sutherland
Ex-pro hockey player Matt Shade irrevocably changes his life when he teams up with fierce P.I. Angie Everett to form an unlikely investigative powerhouse.
A sexy urban comedy about how a guy who is addicted to watching pornography discovers love is stronger than fantasy when he meets and falls in love with the girl of his dreams.
Detective Rick Merriweather and Detective Constable Ford Sanders from the Weapons Enforcement Unit in Toronto struggle to balance family life with a complex investigation centering on a twenty-three year old gun trafficker.
Returning to a "home" they hardly know after being deported from their adopted countries for minor criminal offenses, three people from very different backgrounds try to make a new life for themselves, in Jamaica in this gutsy drama from writer-director Sudz Sutherland. (TIFF)
The Phantoms is a television movie inspired by the heart-warming, real-life events surrounding the 2009 New Brunswick provincial championship victory by the Bathurst High School (BHS Phantoms) boys varsity basketball team, a year after a terrible road accident takes the lives of seven players and the coach’s wife. In the following school year, as tragedy hangs over the community, the BHS Phantoms are reconstituted. The ragtag bunch of players gels as a team, and manages to lift community spirit on the long road to the provincial basketball finals.
A Victorian-era Toronto detective uses then-cutting edge forensic techniques to solve crimes, with the assistance of a female coroner who is also struggling for recognition in the face of tradition, based on the books by Maureen Jennings.
A film about small Ontario town's struggle to restore a desecrated African-Canadian cemetery and the resulting turmoil over it.
Also Directed by David Weaver
David Weaver makes his feature debut with this omnibus film in which each tale is told during different points during the 20th century, but in the same hotel room -- room 720. The film opens during the swinging '20s when a beautiful young woman, married against her will to a brutish thug of a man, endures a tension-fraught honeymoon. During the Depression segment, a mail-order bride from China meets her husband for the first time. Following the end of WWII, a soldier returns home to meet his girlfriend and his best friend. During the paranoia of the 1950s, a professor searches for his wife. During the 1980s, a lawyer has too much sex and debt, and during the dawn of the millennium, a woman comes to a newly refurbished room 720 to meet her Internet lover. Such acclaimed Canadian actors as Tom McCamus, Sandrine Holt, and Colm Feore star in this film, which was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.
A harsh TV personality, Jennifer, needs a break from her own life, so she hops into a car and drives to a small town mountain retreat. On her way there a blizzard veers off the road and she crashes. When she comes to she has complete amnesia and a friendly passerby takes her in. As time passes she still doesn’t remember who she is and the friendly passerby, a widower himself with three kids, assimilates her into his family. But as she slowly starts remembering who she is, she prefers the new life she’s built in the small town.
A musician who is set to headline a Christmas concert in New York City makes a pit-stop in Tennessee to see her family. When a freak snowstorm hits, she finds herself stranded in the town, and is roped into taking part in a local Christmas concert.
A modern-day EMMA finds David Martinez being secretly set up with his daughter's teacher, when the young girl begins a matchmaking business for a school project.
It’s a full Valentine’s Day weekend at the Inn when Olivia and Mick host Mick’s sister Bonnie and her finance Sean, Mick’s daughter Julie and her boyfriend Wyatt, and Olivia’s mother Nora and her boyfriend Johnny. Bonnie brings her new fiancé Sean, and they plan to marry at the Inn that weekend, and Julie announces she plans to drop out of college to pursue her passion for cooking. While Olivia plans the wedding, Mick expresses his concerns to both Bonnie about the distant Sean, and to Julie about dropping out of college. Wyatt, too, is troubled by Julie’s decision to leave college, and the two have a fight that may end their relationship. As the wedding approaches, Sean reveals a secret that he has been keeping all weekend, and Johnny has a surprise of his own in store.
Lauren Gabriel leaves everything behind in Boston to embark on a new chapter in her life and career. But an unforeseen detour to the charming town of Grandon Falls has her discover unexpected new chapters - of the heart and of family - helping her to embrace, once again, the magic of Christmas.
Joe (Alex Campbell) and his siblings have a couple of problems. First off, their stepparents are despicably evil. Secondly, they seemed to have killed them. Now this mixed up mess of half-sisters and step-brothers have to figure out how to dispose of the bodies, cover up the murders, collect their grandfather's inheritance and somehow stick together as a family -- all without getting caught. Not to mention Joe's incessant need to keep tabs on his promiscuous sister, an eye on the precocious little ones and a lustful watch on the girl next-door. Growing up has its complications. Murder's just one of them.
In a prestigious butler academy, passionate Emma and rebellious Henry train to become royal butlers where the competition is fierce and sparks fly.
When a holiday rom-com movie shooting in her town needs a costume designer, Kerry, a local shop owner, steps into the role. While working on the movie, she rediscovers her passion for costume design and finds herself falling for Brad, the film’s famous leading man.
Follows the relationship between a classical music critic and a country music star after a one night stand, which results in an unplanned pregnancy.