Film: AMY GEORGE April 3, 2011

Part of the Wisconsin Film Festival.

DESCRIPTION: Jesse (Gabriel del Castillo Mullally) is floating in the confusion that comes with being a shrimpy 14-year-old boy in Toronto. The urge to change and transform and mature is there, but none of it makes sense to him yet. One idea is to become a “true artist,” one who suffers for his work and discovers great passions along the way. Clumsily, he convinces his parents to buy him a traditional film camera so he can take up photography. His dippy mom is both willing to indulge her son’s creative side, but also clings to the memory of his boyness, not yet ready to acknowledge how close he is to that line between child and adult. Jesse is orbited by girls and women: school friends, his hip twentysomething aunt, and Amy, a teenage girl whose blossoming is irresistible to Jesse. Effectively cast, especially the roles of Jesse and his mother, this first feature from Canadian directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas is observant, lush, and beautifully made. Revealing almost as much about the quasi-bohemian trendiness of middle-class Toronto as it does about the mind of the adolescent male, Amy George is a lovely, slightly disturbing story of discovery.

Canada, 2010, 98 mins, video, dir. Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas

In English. World Premiere. Filmmakers scheduled to attend.

Official Website: http://www.wifilmfest.org