Fail to Appear

Director: Antoine Bourges

2017 / 70min / DCP

Widely regarded as one of the finest feature debuts in recent Canadian cinema, Bourges’s wryly funny, elegantly shot independent drama stars Deragh Campbell as a trainee social services caseworker in Toronto who, when assigned to a withdrawn loner (Nathan Roder) facing a petty theft charge who stubbornly refuses to appear at his impending court date, finds herself buckling under the pressures of the job. Almost documentary-like in its detailed outlining of the knotty workings of the Canadian legal system, Bourges’s film eschews easy sleights of emotional manipulation, but suggests roiling emotional depths beneath its placid surface.

Introduction + post-screening Q+A with director Antoine Bourges on Saturday, February 24th