Chandler Levack.Dan Epstein
Toronto-based journalist and filmmaker Chandler Levack is excited and 100-per-cent prepared for this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), so much so that she's already picked out her music for the rush lines. She won't need to line up to see We Forgot to Break Up, though, because she wrote and directed the 15-minute short about a backstage rock 'n' roll reunion and a trans protagonist. We spoke to Levack about her current fixations.
What she's listening to: "The War on Drugs's A Deeper Understanding is the kind of gauzy, Indian summer record you need while standing in a rush line at the Toronto International Film Festival. It sounds like leaves slowly turning golden in the dying sun. My favourite Toronto band, Weaves, also just released a new single Walkaway from its forthcoming album Wide Open (out Oct. 6) that's the best Pretenders song I've ever heard."
What she's reading: "I just tore through Patricia Lockwood's memoir Priestdaddy. Every single sentence is the funniest sentence I've ever read and every image was an explosion in my brain. (Lockwood is also a renowned poet.) I would recommend it to anyone who wants to spend an entire weekend laughing loudly alone to themselves in their apartment, and I have thin walls!"
What she's looking forward to: "Spending two weeks at TIFF watching movies by women. I'm personally stoked for the premieres of Agnes Varda's Visages Villages (Faces Places), Molly McGlynn's Mary Goes Round, Dee Rees's Mudbound, Sadaf Foroughi's Ava, Kathleen Hepburn's Never Steady, Never Still, Chloe Zhao's The Rider and Lady Bird, the directorial debut of my lady hero Greta Gerwig. One-third of the films at TIFF are directed by women this year, and to be even a teensy part of this phenomenal cohort with my first short film gives me all the hope and inspiration in the world."
Chandler Levack's We Forgot to Break Up screens at TIFF as part of Short Cuts Programme 05, Sept. 10, 11 and 16; tiff.net/festival.
Brad Wheeler