World Premiere
Maisie (Sofia Banzhaf) is feeling a little funny lately. A strange man might be stalking her at her retail job, her boyfriend Nima (Maziyar Khatam) is distant and dismissive, and her beloved cat Shimmer is acting suspiciously out of character. Lonely, isolated, and frustrated by the odd inconsistencies piling up around her, Maisie’s closest confidant is an AI chatbot that suggests she seek professional help. Worried that Shimmer has been replaced by a replica, she begins to obsessively search for answers, but the more she tugs at the loose threads bothering her, the faster her life unravels.
With a sharply sparse style and a knack for awkward tension, Adrian Murray (Retrograde) transmutes the uncanny sense of wandering a mall after-hours into the uneasy navigation of Maisie’s own instincts and relationships as liminal spaces she can’t make sense of. Blending wry, understated humour with underlying suspense, Pocket Mirror is a striking distillation of modern disaffection and alienation.
Presented by
Media Partner
Sofia Banzhaf, Maziyar Khatam, Dylan Roberts
Canada
2025
English
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Bill Marks, Matt Orenstein, Justin Rebelo
Producer
Priscilla Galvez, Sennah Yee
Screenwriter
Adrian Murray
Cinematography
Morgana McKenzie
Editor
Marcus Sullivan
Production Design
Olivia D’Oliveira
Adrian Murray
Adrian Murray is a filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada. He is the writer-director of the feature films Withdrawn (2017) and Retrograde (2022), both of which premiered at Slamdance Film Festival. Retrograde received a Grand Jury Honourable Mention at Slamdance and earned Murray the DGC Ontario’s Best Director Award at the 2023 Canadian Film Festival. As a screenwriter, he is a co-writer of the science fiction feature Home Bodies (2026), which premiered at Fantasia Film Festival. Pocket Mirror (2026) is his third feature as writer-director.
Filmography: Withdrawn (2017); Retrograde (2022)
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