Matt and Mara

Accelerator Lab alum Kazik Radwanski (Anne at 13,000 Feet, MIFF 2020) re-teams with Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson in this ennui-filled character-driven charmer.

Mara (Campbell) leads a happy-enough life as a literature professor at a Toronto college, raising a child with experimental musician Samir. So why is it that this cruise control hits turbulence when Matt (Johnson, BlackBerry, MIFF 2023), an old college friend from her past, shows up out of the blue? A hedonistic writer with a ‘bad boy of the lit-world’ reputation, he shares an undefinable frisson with Mara – one that only intensifies as their prodding escalates into an ‘it’s complicated’ road trip that will force them to reassess what they want from their futures.

Debuting in the Berlinale’s Encounters strand, Matt and Mara is shot in an intimate cinema vérité style that betrays the true feelings darting across the faces of Radwanski’s prickly protagonists. Recalling the perceptive Oscar-nominated work of Celine Song in Past Lives (MIFF 2023), this is a true indie gem that, with humour and gently discombobulating wit, asks: how did ‘back then’ get us to ‘here and now’, and where forward from there?

“A sly and sharply observed comedy … Matt and Mara hits you in the gut.” – The Moveable Fest