Get the latest gossip

Keeping Toronto weird — how a group of scrappy indie filmmakers are disrupting the city’s movie scene

They make movies on iPhones and help out on each other's sets — a portrait of an underground film scene ready to take centre stage.

What unites them is a rough-hewn magnetism and shared perspective characterized by urban (sur) realism, an oddball sense of humour, transgressive formal conceits and a near-total remove from major film power structures. Nate Wilson’s feature “The All Golden” — a madcap farce in which a bike courier with a broken leg discovers her boyfriend is hiding a cache of Nazi gold in his closet — is one of the early classics of the burgeoning scene. After the show, as I stood on the sidewalk while Sitter Sr., Jones and Vestby popped a celebratory bottle of champagne, I got the overwhelming sense that I had attended a screening that would become part of the city’s cinematic lore.

Get the Android app