Canadian filmmaker Brendan Prost’s queer character drama Loretta’s Flowers will have its North American premiere at the 37th Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Various Positions shorts program.
Loretta’s Flowers is an alluring and enigmatic short drama that follows a young woman (Shaw Theatre Festival veteran Harveen Sandhu) on a long summer’s day in Toronto as she cycles between increasingly intimate encounters with three diverse individuals, trapped in a pattern of insatiable longing.
Before being invited to Vancouver for VIFF, Loretta’s Flowers had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June, and was chosen by Telefilm Canada earlier this year for Canada – Not Short on Talent, a curated showcase presented at the Short Film Corner during the Cannes Film Festival.
In addition to Sandhu in the titular role, Loretta’s Flowers boasts the talents of three other Canadian theatre stars: Steffi DiDomenicantonio (currently onstage in the Tony award-winning Come From Away), Dora Award nominee Matthew Gouveia and Sochi Fried (one of NOW Magazine’s 2015 top 10 theatre artists of the year).
Loretta’s Flowers is written, directed and produced by Brendan Prost, a dogged young auteur and former Vancouverite who has been quietly emerging as one of Canada’s most prolific filmmakers, with an impassioned and eclectic body of work that includes four DIY features and several shorts.
Prost was trained at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and produced his two most recent features in Vancouver before moving to Toronto to complete the Directors’ Lab at the Canadian Film Centre.
The film takes viewers on an achingly wistful, sun-kissed journey westward through several distinctive Toronto neighbourhoods in search of lasting connection, but finds Loretta persistently thwarted by distraction, miscommunication and desperation.
Anchored by subtle but poignant performances, Loretta’s Flowers reflects on how cultural change is inflating our expectations for closeness and grasps at the profound strangeness of yearning for something that seems to exist all around us.
Loretta’s Flowers at VIFF
Dates: Wednesday, October 3, 9:15 pm; Wednesday, October 10, 3:30 pm
Venue: Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas (INTL), 88 West Pender Street, Vancouver
Tickets: Available online via VIFF
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