Village Keeper

After the tragic loss of her husband, single mother Beverly-Jean (Olunike Adeliyi, Akilla’s Escape) struggles to bridge the emotional gap between herself and her teenage children. Once a professional dancer, and now a caretaker on the verge of a second eviction, she’s losing patience with her son Tristin (Micah Mensah-Jatoe), and is worried about the panic attacks her daughter Tamika (Zahra Bentham) hides from her. Desperate to shelter her children from a surge of gun violence in Toronto, Jean takes it upon herself to cleanse the blood from crime scenes in their neighbourhood. This transformative experience impels her to examine the hidden wounds in her family’s own painful past.

Based on her award-winning short film Measure, writer-director Karen Chapman’s feature debut blends social realism with compelling psychological portraiture, making confident use of flashbacks to capture the associative nature of emotionally charged memories. Village Keeper traces a mother’s valiant efforts to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma, and her heartwarming quest to rediscover what brings her joy in life.

Tender and empathetic… a story of a woman who has been asked so often to clean up after others that she’s never taken the time to deal with the mess of her own trauma.

Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com

In the end, Chapman’s film serves as a portrait of a family rendered in three dimensions, capturing both the strength and human frailties of these individuals in a detailed fashion. Village Keeper makes for a fine debut, bringing Jean’s claustrophobic pressures to life on a grander canvas, and inviting us in to share not simply her sorrows, but also her joys.

Jason Gorber, Collider