Barbie Ferreira never had to put on an accent before “Mile End Kicks.”
The “Euphoria” actor stars in the autobiographical rom com from writer/director Chandler Levack. In the film, Ferreira plays a version of Levack herself, who worked as a music critic before she was ever premiering films at Toronto International Film Festival. Unlike Ferreira, who grew up in New York and New Jersey, Levack is a Canadian born and raised.
“I was so excited,” Ferreira told TheWrap. “It was my first time really playing someone that was just not culturally, at all, a part of me. Also, the fact that I was playing Grace in Montreal was really interesting, because I’m also not familiar in Montreal, so I got to bring a sort of wide-eyed joy and curiosity to Montreal that was very authentic. But I loved it.”
“I loved observing the Canadians,” Ferreira joked.
Ferreira and Levack were joined by “Mile End Kicks” cast members Stanley Simons, Devon Bostick and Juliette Gariépy to speak with TheWrap’s Joe McGovern at TIFF 50 on Friday. The festival marks a sort of homecoming for the Toronto-born filmmaker Levack on several fronts: like “Mile End Kicks,” both her first narrative short film (“We Forgot to Break Up”) and her feature debut (“I Like Movies”) premiered at TIFF in 2017 and 2022 respectively.
“Mile End Kicks” is based on Levack’s own life, with Ferreira starring as the writer/director’s stand-in (here named Grace Pine). The film follows Grace as she moves to Montreal in the hopes of writing a book on the iconic Alanis Morissette album “Jagged Little Pill” — only to become the publicist of an indie band with romantic ties to two of its members.
“I wrote the script the first draft in 2015 so I’ve been working on this one for a decade,” Levack said. “I was a music critic in my early 20s and moved to Montreal in the summer of 2011, and it was such an exciting time to be there. The music scene was kind of at this pivotal cresting moment with these underground concerts with like Grimes and Mac DeMarco and Tops and Sean Nicholas Savage, and so I think that just felt like such a cinematic memory. I kind of wanted to recreate it.”
And recreate it she did. The film has drawn comparisons to “Almost Famous,” another autobiographical story of a young music journalist becoming embedded in the world they admire. Like with that early-2000s Cameron Crowe feature, Ferreira had the benefit of learning about her character from the source — the film’s writer/director.
“I was literally shadowing her. She was my Canadian compass,” Ferreira said. “It was really cool to have a collaboration where you get to have a point of reference of where the character really should be. Of course, we fictionalized it and whatnot, but it was just really cool to have that.”
