“Not until we are lost do we find ourselves.” Thoreau’s observation reverberates through Carl Bessai’s plaintive mid-life crisis film. Vincent Gale plays Peter, a Vancouver architect who is trying to set up his own company more in line with his ideals. This proves expensive. His sexy, influencer girlfriend calls it quits when he tells her they will have to sell the house. His 20-something daughter can only stand back and hope he pulls out of his tailspin. A quixotic decision to tough out a Saskatchewan winter in a bare-bones family cabin opens the floodgates of memory…
Apr 12 & 14: Q&A with filmmakers
Carl Bessai
Vincent Gale, June Laporte, Sara Canning, Tanaya Beatty, Ben Cotton, David Cubitt
Canada
2025
English
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Executive Producer
Steve Macy, Sam Eigen
Producer
Laura Lightbown, Carl Bessai
Screenwriter
Carl Bessai
Cinematography
Carl Bessai
Editor
Santiago Bessai
Original Music
Frank Bessai
Also in This Series
Canadian Film Week spotlights 18 features, including six Vancouver premieres and four brand new films from BC filmmakers, plus returning classics, new favourites, and free screenings on National Canadian Film Day.
Sweet Summer Pow Wow
After the local hit The Great Salish Heist, writer-director Darrell Dennis proves his versatility with this charming love story about two young people who meet cute on BC's Pow Wow circuit. Her mom wants her to become a lawyer, but Jinny loves to dance...
The Decline of the American Empire
Friends from the History Department at the University of Montreal come together for a dinner party. While the men prepare the meal, the women work out at the gym. In both groups, the conversation returns repeatedly to sex...
Village Keeper
In Karen Chapman’s sensitive debut feature, a widowed mother desperate to shelter her teenage daughter and son from a surge of gun violence in Toronto takes it upon herself to cleanse the blood from crime scenes in her Lawrence Heights neighbourhood.
The Barbarian Invasions
Arcand's belated sequel finds his erstwhile "sensual socialist" facing terminal cancer and trying to make peace with his financier son. This is one of the most acclaimed Canadian films ever made, garlanded all over the world.
Incandescence
Filmed across the Okanagan before, during and after several devastating fires by veteran non-fiction filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper (Metamorphosis; ScaredSacred), Incandescence is a mesmerizing cinematic contemplation of the power of wildfires.