Programmer's Note

MODRA, the first solo feature from Ingrid Veninger, introduced an authentic new voice in Canadian film. Veninger is a skilled storyteller, a world traveller who mixes fiction with the familiar to create a universe of people and places at once invented and deeply personal. Her intimate character studies recall the early works of iconic filmmakers Claude Jutra and Allan King.

i am a good person/i am a bad person — the title is best left for you to figure out on your own — opens with filmmaker and married mother Ruby White (Veninger) dutifully “servicing” her husband before her departure to a film festival in England, where her eighteen-year-old daughter Sara (Veninger’s real-life daughter Hallie Switzer, who also starred in MODRA) will tag along as her assistant. Mother-daughter bonding may have been the intent, but Sara’s sullenness and Ruby’s laissez-faire ways drive the two women apart — the trip goes so poorly that Sara decides to fly to Paris instead of travelling to Berlin with her mom as planned. Sara has some difficult decisions to make regarding her future, while Ruby, so extroverted that her daughter seems inhibited by comparison, is fleeing something that will require time to fathom.

As with MODRA, a sudden change of plans pushes the characters toward transformative experiences. For Sara, this evolution takes place along the alleys of the Père Lachaise Cemetery or at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Meanwhile, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate provides the backdrop for Ruby’s unexpected solitude, and reveals how she got lost somewhere between her life and her art.

Like her onscreen alter ego, Veninger is a little bit good and a little bit bad — her script doesn’t shy away from the amusingly raunchy. A skilled demolisher of boundaries, she presents visions of the human experience that are at once bold and genuine.