TIFF Short Cuts: But What I REALLY Want to Do is Direct a Feature
By Jim Slotek
It’s no secret that many filmmakers showcased in the Toronto International Film Festival’s acclaimed Short Cuts programme want to graduate from shorts to features.
But Eva Thomas, director of the drama Redlights, is unusually direct with how she’s followed what she jokingly calls, “my evil plan.”
Ellyn Jade and Kaniehtiio Horn in Redlights
The film is inspired by often fatal incidents of Natives in prairie cities being dumped and stranded by police outside of town in the cold (a grim practice nicknamed Starlight Tours). The 14-minute plot sees best friends Tina and Amber (Kaniehtiio Horn and Ellyn Jade, both of whom have long credit lists, but became friends on Letterkenny) spending the evening in a bar. At one point, Tina loses track of Amber, and locals point to a cop car speeding away on the frozen horizon.
Tina gets in her car and tails the police right out of town (staying in touch with her worried mother, voiced by Jennifer Podemski), when they stop and confront her. The confrontation proceeds to escalate.
And if you want to know what happens next, you’d better hope Thomas’s feature gets a green light during TIFF.
Instead of a self-contained story, Redlights is unmistakably the opening act of a feature-length movie. Specifically, it’s an Indigenous version of Thelma & Louise that Thomas has had in her head for years.
Eva Thomas
The writer/director – whose father is Walpole Isand First Nation (Ontario/Michigan) and whose mother is an Arizona-based Cherokee – remembers her first screening of the Ridley Scott movie. “I remember my little kid brain thinking, ‘Why don’t they just go to the cops?’ I didn’t understand the nuances.”
Five years ago, she got to rescreen it as an adult. “When I watched it again, I could see there were a lot more things going on. I could see the trauma, I could see the fear.
“So, then it dawned on me, ‘Well, these white women couldn’t go to the cops. So, what if they were Indigenous, and they REALLY couldn’t go to the cops?’
“I hadn’t directed narrative before, it was an opportunity for me to step into that space. I’ve directed docuseries in my community, and I had the pleasure to direct on Still Standing, which was a docuseries.
“But this was my first time to direct in that narrative space. And it’s harder to get the money for a feature when you haven’t directed before. So, it’s like, ‘Look what I did with this amount of money!’ And tease people, like, ‘Oh, what might she do with a feature?’”
The “evil plan” wasn’t universally encouraged. “A lot of people said, ‘No, no, no, the story has to be contained!’ But it does end on this note of, ‘Oh, you’re in trouble. What happens next, are you going to jail?’”
Certainly, if it does receive funding, the Redlights feature is halfway there. It already has a solid cast, with best friends Horn and Jade, and Thomas’s mentor Podemski. The plot is underway, and there is already built-in tension.
“My confidence isn’t completely there just yet because I’m a new filmmaker,” Thomas says. “But having the film accepted into TIFF, and people telling me they like the film, boosted my confidence for sure.
“Maybe I’m good at this,” she adds with a laugh.
Toronto International Film Festival Short Cuts programme
Eva Thomas’s evil plan notwithstanding, many of the 42 TIFF Short Cuts films are remarkably self-contained.
One marvel of brevity, Xie Xie, Ollie, the debut film by James Michael Chiang, communicates in nine minutes the shame and self-doubt of a bi-racial Westernized Chinese-Canadian (Oliver Chiang) who doesn’t speak Mandarin and who hits a wall with language lessons that further estranges him from his family.
It is among 19 works by Canadians, including Marni Van Dyk’s This Is Not About Swimming, Karsten Wall’s bird-doc Modern Goose and Ivan D. Ossa’s anti-workaholic urban tale Express.
The six programmes of shorts also includes Flóra Anna Buda’s 27, which won the Short Film Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Daria Kashcheeva’s Electra, her follow-up to the Oscar-nominated animated short Daughter. Jasmin Mozaffari’s Iranian-hostage era film Motherland closes the series.
And yes, given Short Cuts’ history, any number of the showcased shorts could inspire features. Alumni of the programme include Charlotte Wells (whose feature Aftersun was an awards magnet this year), Luis De Filippis (Something You Said Last Night) and Saim Sadiq (Joyland).
CLICK HERE for information on Short Cuts screenings.