“Dear Diary. Nothing Ever Happens.” Sandy Wilcox (Margaret Langrick) longs for adventure and a modicum of respect. Neither is readily available to a 12-year-old growing up in rural Penticton in the late 1950s. Enter Butch in a screaming red Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. He’s 16 going on James Dean, a California runaway and about the most exciting thing to hit town since rock-n-roll.
Sandy Wilson’s first feature — 40 years young — is a genuine Canadian coming-of-age classic. With its lovely shots of the Okanagan valley, it evokes a heartfelt nostalgia for a more innocent time, while also capturing that adolescent restlessness that yearns for energy and change. Do these competing characteristics also stand for Canada and the US of A? Let’s just say the movie speaks gently to the present discord.
Q&A with director Sandy Wilson
A little gem, offering a look back to a particular time and place not only with boundless amusement and affection but with exceptional clarity and subtlety. This is nostalgia at its most endearing and admirable. […] My American Cousin is a an expression of pure, innocent joy recollected with thoughtful perception and saved from sentimentality by a witty, running commentary on Canadian American relations and attitudes.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
In Partnership with
Sandy Wilson
Margaret Langick, John Wildman, Richard Donat, Camille Henderson, Babs Chula
Canada
1985
English
6 Genie Awards
Book Tickets
Credits
Screenwriter
Sandy Wilson
Cinematography
Richard Leiterman
Editor
Haida Paul
Art Director
Phil Schmidt
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.
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.
Universal Language
In a wintery, Farsi-speaking city that’s equal measures Winnipeg and Tehran, storylines entangle and the concepts of space, time, and identity grow increasingly opaque. Inventive and absurd, Rankin's poetic fable reminds us that Winnipeg is a wonderland. Rated: G
Are We Done Now?
Down River director Ben Immanuel returns with a wry, self-aware Covid comedy in which a socially distant Vancouver documentarian checks in with a stressed-out therapist (Gabrielle Miller) and several of her patients over the course of the pandemic.