Kingsway at VIFF 2018 #MustSeeBC

Some are unlucky at love. Others are just plain inept. The latter populate writer-director Bruce Sweeney’s heartfelt farce that delivers finely tuned dysfunction while featuring copious local haunts and a surplus of skeletons in closets.

“TIFF kind of ties me up in knots and VIFF kind of unloosens those knots,” writer and director Bruce Sweeney told me over the phone from his cabin this summer, ahead of the busy film festival season. His latest work, Kingsway premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month and it will soon screen at Vancouver’s festival.

Kingsway by Bruce Sweeney

Named after a storied thoroughfare that crosses cities and in parts almost seems to intersect with itself, Kingsway, the namesake of Sweeney’s film, also serves as a metaphor. “A loose metaphor for relationships,” he says. “You think you’re going one way and you end up going another.”

It kicks off at the 2400 Motel and comes to a raucous, raunchy close six kilometres away at Main Street’s China Cloud Gallery. In between, it lingers in the veritable cul-de-sacs its players lives have become.

“We all know that there are a lot of movies out there with a ‘life is sh*t’ theme and I get that, but I just didn’t want to do that.”

Camille Sullivan shines as Jess, a rough diamond who must keep Matt (Jeff Gladstone), her emotionally frail brother, from unravelling as his marriage to unrepentantly brash Lori (Colleen Rennison) predictably implodes. Meanwhile, matriarch Mary (Gabrielle Rose) balances romantic trysts with some amateur sleuthing.

What might strike the viewer is the openness of the characters – people actually saying what they mean, what they want, it’s refreshing, or as Sweeney told me, “woven into a narrative that wasn’t punishing to watch” where surface is one thing and subtext is another.

Get Tickets

As the city prepares for VIFF, snapping up tickets and program guides, I’m pleased to sponsor Kingsway this year, and to support the festival in general. As Bruce added, “VIFF is just this very cool thing where people can come and watch films, I watch films at VIFF.” Here’s how you can watch Kingsway:

Get tickets » Saturday, September 29, 2018 5:45pm at the Rio Theatre
Get tickets » Monday, October 1, 2018 4:30pm Int’l Village 9

Win Tickets

I have two pairs of tickets to give away to see Kingsway at the Rio Theatre on Saturday, September 29th. Here’s how you can enter to win:

• Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
• Click below to get another entry by posting on Twitter:

[clickToTweet tweet=”RT to enter to win tickets to @KingswayFilm at @VIFFest #mustseeBC #VIFF2018 http://ow.ly/rLN030lS6PN” quote=” Click to enter via Twitter” theme=”style6″]

I will draw one winner at random from all entries on Friday, September 21, 2018 at 12:00pm.

VIFF 2018 runs September 27 to October 12, 2018. Follow along on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more information about the festival, its events, special guests, and films.

Miss604 is a proud media partner of VIFF 2018.

Update: The winner is Mike!