ACTRA Toronto members are in the spotlight again at the 2024 Cinéfest Sudbury!
From September 14 to 22, 2024, Cinéfest Sudbury will showcase 12 ACTRA Toronto feature films and four short films across various genres.
Below you’ll find a round-up of ACTRA Toronto productions at this year’s festival and the talented casts of ACTRA Toronto Members who bring these stories to life.
THE INVISIBLES
Charlie and Hanna are in crisis and facing the end of their marriage when Charlie literally starts to disappear. As he fades from the world, he discovers a new world of “invisibles”; people who have disappeared just like him and who now exist in an alternate reality. Continually drawn back to his old life, he starts to see their marriage and the tragic loss of their six-year-old son Oskar from Hanna’s point of view and soon realizes that he must fight to return to his reality.
Featuring: Raven Dauda, Bruce Greenwood, Golden Madison, Robert Ramsay, Simon Webster, Rachel Wilson. Stunt Coordinator: Ted Hanlan.
Gala Presentation; Premieres Saturday, September 14 at 7 p.m.
SHOOK
Ashish, aka “Ash,” is a struggling Indo-Canadian writer living in the Scarborough district of Toronto— torn between a desire to be downtown to pursue his career and dreams, and accepting his suburban reality of falling in love with barista Claire and reconnecting to his estranged father Vijay (after he learns that the older man was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease).
Featuring: Amy Forsyth, Faizan Khan, Sharjil Rasool, Pamela Sinha. Stunt Coordinator: Tommy Chang.
Premieres Sunday, September 15 at 2 p.m.
DARKEST MIRIAM
Librarian Miriam Gordon lives in a fog of grief while working amidst marginalized members of the public who populate the Allen Gardens branch of Toronto’s Public Library. When a burgeoning love affair with Janko, a younger foreign cab driver, coincides with her receiving a series of oddly threatening letters, Miriam’s sheltered existence is cracked open.
Featuring: Aviva Armour-Ostroff, Kris Hagen, Susannah Hoffmann, Joshua Odjick, Clyde Whitham, Jean Yoon. Stunt Coordinator: Sharon Canovas.
Premieres Sunday, September 15 at 4:30 p.m.
ACTRA Toronto is proud to be a co-presenting sponsor of this film.
YOUNG WERTHER
Charming, passionate, totally irresponsible young novelist Werther is sent to the city on an errand by his mother. By chance, he meets lovely Charlotte, whose allure and commitment to her impressive, stable fiancé Albert will turn Werther’s life upside down. Werther and Charlotte embark on an emotional affair, while Werther and Albert start an awkward friendship. The more entwined this trio becomes, the harder it is to navigate the complexities of lust, affinity, and love.
Featuring: Patrick J. Adams, Amrit Kaur, Alison Pill, Scott Thompson. Stunt Coordinators: Daniel Lavigne, Angelica Lisk-Hann.
Gala presentation; Premieres Sunday, September 15 at 7 p.m.
DEADPAN
A family bids farewell to their beloved pet dog. Deadpan is a dark comedy showcasing how death can be many things at once—absurd, mundane, and tragic.
Featuring: Ashley Comeau, Trevor Martin, Paloma Nunez.
Short Circuit I: You’re Thrillin’ Me; Premieres Monday, September 16 at 12:30 p.m.
ANYWHERE (NOOJ GOJI)
George lives a quiet life with his Gokmis on reserve. His girlfriend, Eileen, lives alone in the big city down south. Facing alienation, isolation, and a society of lovelessness, George chooses instead to love radically—at times through impossible means.
Featuring: Noelle Dupuis, Kelly Reich. Stunt Coordinator: Don Stockford.
Short Circuit II: Love In All Forms; Premieres Wednesday, September 18 at 12 p.m.
EPHEMERA
Robin contends with a secret porn addiction during North Bay’s annual Shadfly swarm. The Shadflies have one purpose in life — to mate. Numbed out, Robin craves that kind of primal pleasure.
Featuring: Joe Drinkwalter, Aurora Gatwenzi, Kelly Lamb, Matt Paradis.
Short Circuit II: Love In All Forms; Premieres Wednesday, September 18 at 12 p.m.
WE FORGOT TO BREAK UP
In this love letter to Toronto’s early 2000’s music scene, trans man Evan the lead singer of indie rock band The New Normals, leads his band of misfits as they ditch their small town in order to chase their dreams in the big city. But although everything appears to be too good to be true during their pursuit of stardom, Evan finds himself in a messy love triangle with his fellow bandmates that could tear the entire band apart.
Featuring: Evan Buliung, Jordan Dawson, Daniel Gravelle, Hallea Jones, Xavier Lopez, Nicolette Pearse, Lane Webber. Stunt Coordinator: Brandon Jones.
Premieres Thursday, September 19 at 12 p.m.
SEEDS
Ziggy, a thirty-something Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) woman, is offered her first gig as an online influencer, promoting for Nature’s Oath, a seed and fertilizer company. When her cousin summons her back to the rez, she is forced into a battle to save her people’s legacy. Serving as Ziggy’s spirit guide, Graham Greene of The Green Mile and Dances with Wolves plays himself in this dark comedy that was filmed in North Bay, Ontario.
Featuring: Dylan Cook, Meegwun Fairbrother, Patrick Garrow, Graham Greene.
Premieres Thursday, September 19 at 2 p.m.
ALL THE LOST ONES
A near-future civil war is sparked by government-imposed measures due to climate change. Nia and her boyfriend Ethan are hiding out with a mismatched group of family, friends and neighbours in a secluded lake house when an anti-government militia leader and his followers arrive on their doorstep. Nia and her fellow civilian cabin mates must decide whether to surrender or join the resistance movement and fight back.
Featuring: Vinessa Antoine, Alexander Elliot, Matthew Finlan, Anthony Grant, Stefani Kimber, Michael Lipka, Sheila McCarthy, Kim Roberts, Douglas Alexander Smith, Cody Sparshu. Stunt Coordinator: Randy Butcher.
Premieres Thursday, September 19 at 4 p.m.
DRIVE BACK HOME
In the winter of 1970, a cantankerous, smalltown plumber from rural New Brunswick must drive his beat-up work truck one thousand miles to Toronto to get his estranged, gay brother out of jail after being arrested for having sex in a public park. The two men are then forced to drive back home together at the behest of their hard-nosed mother before they kill each other.
Featuring: Clare Coulter, Judah Davidson, Sprague Grayden, Gray Powell. Stunt Coordinator: Don Stockford.
Gala presentation; Premieres Thursday, September 19 at 7 p.m.
WIFI
A teenage mother juggles the responsibility of parenthood along with her fleeting childhood dream of cosplaying and broadcasting videogames.
Featuring: Katie Buitendyk, Hope-Renee Fleury, Remy Fllint, Michele Kaye, Briar Knowles, Alana Pancyr.
Short Circuit III: The Genre Mash; Premieres Friday, September 20 at 12 p.m.
HIS FATHER’S SON
Amir Mansouri is nowhere near where he imagined he’d be at this point in his life. An aspiring chef in Toronto, Amir feels like a disappointment, to his mother, Arezou, and especially to his father, Farhad, who migrated from Iran to Canada when Amir was a child. By contrast, Amir’s younger brother, the Canadian-born Mahyar, seems to avoid his parents’ scrutiny. Just as Amir’s career seems to be on the cusp of a turning point, his parents receive news about the death of an old friend from Iran. The news brings with it an unexpected surprise as the friend has left a large inheritance.
Featuring: Parham Rownaghi, Alireza Shojaei.
Premieres Friday, September 20 at 12:30 p.m.
DADA
Within Aaron Poole’s debut feature film is a story that invokes the erosion of language, the failure of mentorship, and the threat of the abyss. Dada was filmed on Manitoulin Island, Ontario.
Featuring: Ciara Alexys, James Gilbert.
Premieres Friday, September 20 at 2:30 p.m.
PAYING FOR IT
In the late ’90s, Chester and Sonny are a long-term, committed, romantic couple. When Sonny wants to redefine their relationship, Chester, a painfully introverted cartoonist, starts sleeping with sex workers and discovers a new kind of intimacy in the process. The intertwined lives between Chester, Sonny and their partners depict a relationship that challenges the societal norms of romance and monogamy. Paying for It is an adaptation of the graphic novel memoir of the same name by cartoonist Chester Brown.
Featuring: Dan Beirne, Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato, Stephen Kalyn, Chris Sandiford, Kris Siddiqi, Scott Thompson.
Premieres Friday, September 20 at 9:45 p.m.
A THOUSAND CUTS
Tonight, on a live TV special, Roberta and her co-host Frasier will attempt to solve the notorious murder of famous horror novelist Bernard Balance who, 30 years ago, was stabbed to death in his mansion, as his young son, Noah, disappeared—with only his remains found in a bonfire on the property. Sidney Balance, the wife of Bernard and mother of Noah, was cleared of the crime but wasted her life away in the crumbling mausoleum to one of the world’s most infamous unsolved true crime cases. Over the course of this stormy night 30 years later, Roberta and Frasier interview special guests and witnesses intimately involved in the case, discover missing clues, and investigate never-before-told secrets to solve the murder as they open the doors to the Balance Home for the first time in decades. By the climactic end of the live TV special, Roberta and Frasier encounter a devastating series of twists that will forever change their relationship, the case, and all that came before.
Featuring: Jonas Chernick, David Ian Hewlett, Julian Richings, Varun Saranga, Storm Steenson.
Premieres Saturday, September 21 at 3 p.m.
Photos and capsule descriptions courtesy of Cinéfest Sudbury.
ACTRA Toronto is a proud sponsor of 2024 Cinéfest Sudbury.
ACTRA Awards nominations
See a performance in one of these films worthy of an ACTRA Award nomination? Submit to the ACTRA Awards in Toronto before the October 31, 2024, deadline! Learn more.