Breakfast with Curtis

When a family feud spills into its fifth year, Syd, a middle-aged hippie, brokers a tentative peace by roping Curtis, his introverted 14-year-old neighbour, into a web venture he’s launching from his ramshackle abode. "Loosely based on fiction," Laura Colella’s cheeky coming-of-age tale is slightly akin to stepping into a dreamy Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in a lush, late-summer Kitsilano garden with your favourite wise-cracking draft-dodger. Except that part of the huge pleasure of this unique and very welcome indie is that this bohemian backyard is in Providence, Rhode Island.

"Over the course of a balmy east coast summer, an introverted, bespectacled teenager is brought into the strange and delightful world of his bohemian neighbors. What unfolds, against the backdrop of lush flowerbeds and overgrown vegetable patches, is a mirthful story of unlikely and rekindled friendships. But for all of its wine-soaked, pot-infused dreaminess, Breakfast is firmly rooted in reality. The rambling purple house where the action happens is writer/director/co-star Laura Colella’s, and her captivating cast is composed of her very own housemates and neighbors. Despite the homespun approach and unfettered narrative, Colella’s smartly written, tightly directed tale has a distinct vision and clear intention, one joyously devoted to the pleasure principle."—Los Angeles Film Festival. "As unkempt, free-floating and bucolic as that Providence, R.I., abode, Colella’s tale of a lad’s seminal summer will win hearts and minds."—Variety