Darkest Miriam | |
---|---|
Directed by | Naomi Jaye |
Written by | Naomi Jaye |
Based on | The Incident Report by Martha Baillie |
Produced by | Julie Baldassi Brian Robertson |
Starring | Britt Lower Tom Mercier Sook-Yin Lee Jean Yoon |
Cinematography | Michael LeBlanc |
Edited by | Lev Lewis |
Music by | Eliza Niemi Louie Short |
Production companies | Younger Daughter Films Low End |
Distributed by | Game Theory Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Darkest Miriam is a 2024 Canadian drama film, directed by Naomi Jaye. [1] Adapted from Martha Baillie's novel The Incident Report, [2] the film stars Britt Lower as Miriam, a librarian in Toronto who leads a closed-off, grief-stricken life after her father's death; amid a series of strange incidents at the library, she meets and begins a romance with Janko (Tom Mercier), a Slovenian immigrant who opens her up to new possibilities. [3]
The cast also includes Sook-Yin Lee, Jean Yoon, Jaimara Beals, Clyde Whitham, Susannah Hoffmann, Scott McCulloch, Igor Shamuilov, Joshua Odjick, Sarah Li Wen Du, Anita Yung, Peter Millard, Danté Prince, Scott Ryan Yamamura, Jamaal Grant, Aviva Armour-Ostroff, and Laura Afelskie.
The film began production in 2022 in Toronto and Hamilton, initially as The Incident Report. [4] American filmmaker Charlie Kaufman is an executive producer. [5]
The film premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, [6] and had its Canadian premiere at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival. [3]
Caryn James of The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "small wonder", writing, "there is a dramatic turn at the end that we don't see coming, and Lower allows us to feel Miriam's deep emotional pain, yet the film ends with Miriam pointed toward the future. That mix of the tragic and the hopeful is just the kind of off-kilter balance that makes the film so exceptional and compelling. Charlie Kaufman has lent his name to the project as an executive producer, and while there is a definite sympathy between his imaginative approach and hers, Jaye's artistry comes through as purely hers, a true discovery." [1]
Josh Korngut of Exclaim! gave the film a mixed review, writing, "unfortunately, the film's precociousness bogs it down. Stylistically, Darkest Miriam feels a bit like an approximation of Atom Egoyan, broken into chapters and labelled with pretentious, overly flowery subheadings. Style sometimes suffocates substance to the point that the film occasionally feels more like a Harbourfront modern dance piece than it does an engaging drama with burnt edges. All in all, Darkest Miriam is a somewhat fresh and strange character study worth watching for audiences with the right threshold for arthouse vagueness. Thankfully, Lower's title performance elevates the material, and Jaye's direction shows very real promise." [3]
For Screen Anarchy , Olga Artemyeva wrote, "the film gives us a gentle love story, but it also features a very distinctive artistic voice and style, where opera outbursts and unexpected stills of plants in the middle of the story feel like an organic part of the intricate cinematic language. Like several other films at the Tribeca Film Festival, Darkest Miriam – while aesthetically very different from them – reflects on the necessity to let go of things, both painful and wonderful. As Jaye's movie also talks about art and its influence on how we perceive things, it also seems to frame the same idea this way: the painting of one's life can be dark or light, can be any texture, style or genre – just maybe don't let it become a still life." [7]
Isaac Liev Schreiber is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s after appearing in several independent films, and later mainstream Hollywood films. He has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award as well as nominations for nine Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Naomi Ellen Watts is a British actress. After her family moved to Australia, she made her film debut there in the drama For Love Alone (1986). She appeared in three television series, Hey Dad..! (1990), Brides of Christ (1991), and Home and Away (1991), and the film Flirting (1991). Ten years later, Watts moved to the United States, where she initially struggled as an actress. She took roles in small-scale films until she starred in her breakthrough role as an aspiring actress in David Lynch's psychological thriller Mulholland Drive in 2001.
Charles Stuart Kaufman is an American screenwriter, film director, and novelist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He both wrote and directed the films Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). In 2020, Kaufman released his first novel, Antkind.
Sion Sono is a Japanese filmmaker, author, and poet. Best known on the festival circuit for the film Love Exposure (2008), he has been called "the most subversive filmmaker working in Japanese cinema today", a "stakhanovist filmmaker" with an "idiosyncratic" career.
Martha Baillie is a Canadian poet and novelist.
Daniel Grou, frequently credited as Podz, is a Canadian film and television director, director of six feature films as well as episodes in dozen TV series.
Kim Nguyen is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for his 2012 film War Witch (Rebelle) which received numerous honours including an Academy Awards nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Mr. Church is a 2016 American drama film directed by Bruce Beresford and written by Susan McMartin. The film stars Eddie Murphy as the title character with Britt Robertson, Xavier Samuel, Lucy Fry, Christian Madsen and Natascha McElhone also starring. The movie is based on the short story "The Cook Who Came to Live with Us" written by McMartin. The film centers around a cook who becomes a caretaker and father figure to three generations of women over the years. This was Murphy's first film role in four years.
Jason Lapeyre is a Canadian film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his 2012 film I Declare War, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at Fantastic Fest. I Declare War was released theatrically in the US by Drafthouse Films.
Hey, Viktor! is a 2023 Canadian mockumentary comedy film directed by Cody Lightning and written by Lightning and Samuel Miller.
Ally Pankiw is a Canadian film and television writer and director from Toronto, Ontario, whose debut feature film I Used to Be Funny premiered in 2023.
With Love and a Major Organ is a 2023 Canadian fantasy drama film, directed by Kim Albright, and starring Anna Maguire and Hamza Haq.
Kim Albright is a Canadian film director based in Vancouver, British Columbia, whose debut feature film With Love and a Major Organ was released in 2023.
We Forgot to Break Up is a 2024 Canadian drama film, directed by Karen Knox. Adapted from the novel Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess, the film centres on The New Normals, an indie rock band from a small town led by trans man singer Evan, who move to Toronto in pursuit of stardom.