deadend.com

Director: S. Wyeth Clarkson
Screenwriters: S. Wyeth Clarkson

Institute History

  • 2003 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Nicole is a moody beauty with an awkward disdain for dirty talk and probing questions. Adrian, no matter how much he bubbles about suicide, will end up OK in life. Harold, who left a comfortable home for the streets, is on the opposite trajectory. He is charming and impulsive, but his demons are darker than the mission he has devised for them. By the time they reach the end of an 11-day road trip from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the coast of British Columbia, our heroes, brilliantly played by themselves, are unusually chill about the task at hand: suicide.

Through a crusty stay at a Toronto gutter punk squat, a sweet video missive from a stoner camping compadre, a suburban house party turned skinny dip, and a day spent drug running for Nicole's abusive brother, we get a true-to-life picture of the alternately poetic and anticlimactic experience of youth striving to find the edge of society and life on a journey to the edge of the continent. First-time director S. Wyeth Clarkson's methodology—deftly woven perspective from Adrian's video camera and a spontaneous story scripted with input from Web users—blurs all the right lines.

— Larin Sullivan

Screening Details

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