Across the Line | |
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Directed by | Director X |
Written by | Floyd Kane |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Sami Inayeh |
Edited by | Dev Singh |
Music by | Menalon |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | A71 Pictures Entertainment One |
Release date |
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Running time | 97 minutes [1] |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Across the Line is a 2015 Canadian drama film directed by Director X (in his feature film directorial debut). The film stars Stephan James and Sarah Jeffery. It is set in Nova Scotia, where it was shot.
The film's storyline was inspired by the 1989 Cole Harbour District High School race riots. [2]
The film is set in North Preston, Nova Scotia where Mattie (Stephan James), a black hockey player, is being considered for a professional career. However, his hopes are threatened by growing racial strife at his school while his brother Carter (Shamier Anderson) is involved in criminal activity. Mattie also has a romantic interest in Jayme (Sarah Jeffery), who already has a white boyfriend.
The film was originally titled Undone. [3] The film was produced by Floyd Kane, Michael Donovan, Mark Gosine and Amos Adetuyi and was written by Kane, a native of East Preston, NS. Kane attended Cole Harbour High school when a race riot erupted at the school in 1989.
The first screening of Across the Line was September 19, 2015 at the Atlantic Film Festival where it won the award for Best Atlantic Feature. [4] [2] The film opened in limited release in British Columbia and Ontario on April 8, 2016, with screenings in various Canadian cities throughout that month. [5]
The National Post assessed the film at 2.5/4 stars, noting the story's unwavering focus on racial themes was "to the detriment of the film's depth and realism" but noted that video producer Director X "makes the transition to feature film-making look easy". [1]
In 2017, the film was the subject of an episode of The Filmmakers , the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's web talk series on Canadian film. [6]
Nova Scotia is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
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Julien Christian Lutz, known professionally as Director X, is a Canadian filmmaker, commercial director, music video director, and television director. Having directed more than 100 music videos, he is widely known as a prolific music video director in the industry. He has also directed feature films and television series.
Viola Irene Desmond was a Canadian civil and women's rights activist and businesswoman of Black Nova Scotian descent. In 1946, she challenged racial segregation at a cinema in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia by refusing to leave a whites-only area of the Roseland Theatre. For this, she was convicted of a minor tax violation for the one-cent tax difference between the seat that she had paid for and the seat that she used, which was more expensive. Desmond's case is one of the most publicized incidents of racial discrimination in Canadian history and helped start the modern civil rights movement in Canada.
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The Disappeared is a Canadian drama film written and directed by author and filmmaker Shandi Mitchell. A story of survival and self-discovery for six men lost at sea in the North Atlantic, it stars Billy Campbell, Shawn Doyle, Brian Downey, Gary Levert, Ryan Doucette, and Neil Matheson.
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Bruce Holland is a Canadian politician. He represented the electoral district of Timberlea-Prospect in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1993 to 1998. He was a member of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party. In 2017, Holland ran as a candidate for the PC Party of Nova Scotia in Halifax Atlantic. Holland is currently the executive director of the Spryfield Business Commission and the publisher and founder of the Parkview News, a locally distributed paper.
Shamier Anderson is a Canadian actor. He is known for playing U.S. Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls on the television series Wynonna Earp and Invasion.
SaltWire Network Inc. is a Canadian newspaper publishing company owned by the Dennis-Lever family of Halifax, Nova Scotia, owners of The Chronicle Herald. Saltwire owns 23 daily and weekly newspapers in Atlantic Canada. The company was formed in 2017 via its purchase of 27 newspapers from Transcontinental.