Brother

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From The Booth

"Adapted from David Chariandy’s award-winning 2017 novel of the same name, Virgo’s film is a special work to be cherished and pored over for generations to come – an instantly essential addition to the Toronto cinema canon. In more than a few ways, Brother arrives as the follow-up question to the query that Virgo first asked almost three decades ago, when his debut feature film Rude wondered what we talk about when we talk about the inner lives of Black Canadians. The journey from the Regent Park of Rude to the Scarborough of Brother isn’t quite a straight line, but a series of thoughtful, knotty detours that paint a portrait of a city, a community, a cinema.

"A deceptively simple story unfurled and then woven back into three separate timelines, Brother follows the lives of the charismatic, swaggering Francis and the hopelessly sensitive and meek Michael, two siblings who are as attached to one another as they are temperamentally opposed. The two lean on each other throughout their lonely childhood and then frenetic teenage years, with their loving but strict Jamaican immigrant mother Ruth (Marsha Stephanie Blake) often out of the house, working as a nurse to provide her sons a better future than she ever could have imagined back home." - Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail. Winner of 12 Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Picture.