Name: Mile End Kicks
Director: Chandler Levack
Released: 2025
Duration: 114 min

PRESENTED BY

Over one cool indie-sleaze summer in the city of poutine and Arcade Fire, a self-sabotaging rising rock critic played by Barbie Ferreira falls for two guys in the same band.

In 2011, ambitious young music critic Grace plans a summer sabbatical in Montreal, sick of getting exploited by her Toronto alt-weekly editor and snubbed by chin-stroking bro colleagues. Moving in with chic DJ Madeleine and drummer Hugo, Grace starts promoting Hugo’s band Bone Patrol to impress its vain frontman Chevy, “the worst guy in Montreal” – though something slower and sweeter simmers with floppy-haired guitarist Archie. Things go off the frets as Grace’s planned 33 ⅓ book on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill falls by the wayside, her funds run perilously low and past traumas resurface as bad choices.

Writer/director Chandler Levack (Netflix’s Roommates) based her sophomore feature on her own youth in Montreal’s alt trenches. Her affectionate but bittersweet romantic dramedy – more Reality Bites than Almost Famous – premiered at TIFF and toured to Vancouver, Stockholm and SXSW. As Grace, Barbie Ferreira (Bob Trevino Likes It, MIFF 2024) brings fierce empathy to an impulsive, sometimes exasperating but easily recognisable protagonist, while Bone Patrol’s personnel include members of real-life Montreal band TOPS.

“A music lover’s dream movie … sharp, deeply human, painful, but genuinely hilarious. You’ll laugh, you’ll swoon, you may even shed a tear.” – Film Threat