Adapting Cea Sunrise Person’s beloved memoir for the big screen, Carly Stone (The New Romantic) brings both compassion and energy to this tale of a young woman’s bid to come of age while living with a mother experiencing arrested development.
Having spent her early years in a wilderness commune founded in the 1970s by her anti-establishment grandfather Dick (Robert Carlyle), Cea (initially River Price-Maenpaa, then Amanda Fix) is forced to shed her alternative upbringing and acclimatize to civilization when her mother, Michelle (Sarah Gadon), tires of Dick’s chauvinistic reign. Granted, this doesn’t keep Michelle from careening between bad romances as she and Cea carve out a nomadic existence.
Adorning every scene with enticing period details, Stone ensures that Gadon and Fix’s exceptional performances serve as her film’s foundation. Detailing the humour and heartbreak that come from family dysfunction, North of Normal derives engrossing drama from the difficult decisions these women must make to survive and thrive.
Q&A Oct 5
Presented by
Media Partner
Sarah Gadon, James D’Arcy, Amanda Fix, River Price-Maenpaa, Benedict Samuel, Robert Carlyle
Canada
2022
English
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Wisdom of Happiness
An audience with the Dalia Lama, who, at 90, looks back on his life and shares the tenets of Buddhism as a practical guide to surviving the 21st Century with joy and compassion.
Köln 75
The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.
La Belle at the Movies + Apostles of Cinema
Cecilia Zoppelletto's lyrical documentary examines the fate of cinephilia in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital city, currently without a single operating cinema. + Apostles of Cinema (Tanzania, 17 min)
Credits
Executive Producer
Joel Reilly, Patrick Patterson, Sarah Gadon, Rob Connolly, Michael Risley, Adrian Love, Noah Segal, Berry Meyerowitz, Jeff Sackman
Producer
Kyle Mann, Jonathan Bronfman
Screenwriter
Alexandra Weir
Cinematography
David Jones
Editor
Orlee Buium
Production Design
Alexis DeBad
Original Music
Electric Youth
Director
Carly Stone
Carly Stone is a filmmaker from Toronto. She wrote and directed The New Romantic, which premiered in the Narrative Competition at SXSW 2018, where it won Special Jury Recognition for Best First Feature. She has also written on CBC’s award-winning comedy Kim’s Convenience. She graduated from the American Film Institute in 2014.
Filmography: The New Romantic (2018)