Film Review: Scarborough

By Mahil Senathirajah

Scarborough
Directed by Shasha Nakhai, Rich Williamson
136 min
Canada
North American Independent Cinema
US Premiere

Scarborough is a fearlessly ambitious, 135 minute, domestic and social drama revolving around the intersecting lives of public school children in a hardscrabble, multi-ethnic suburb of Toronto.

It was the best film of the festival that I saw and the kind of undiscovered gem that gives festivals their adventure.

The young kids face entirely real and daunting challenges; their delicate feelings struggling to survive in the face of poverty, substance use, bullying, emerging autism and budding sexual identity. They all attend the same school program whose warmly humanistic teacher is an emotional refuge, providing the constancy and nurturing they need.

The film is uniquely its own thing.  However, it reminded me of Ken Loach’s pulse-pounding social realism and Paul Thomas Anderson’s interweaving psychological explorations, with some of Sean Baker’s use of non-actors from parts of society not often seen.

The performances from the kids and parents are uniformly believable and heart-rending.  There are moments of transcendent love juxtaposed with moments of casual cruelty.  The film is adapted from a novel based on the author’s childhood, with the specificity of the social situation in the neighborhood serving to deepen the universality of the film’s themes. 

During the Q&A, the unassuming filmmakers, who have a documentary background, explained the challenges of working with such a large, diverse cast on a micro-budget and during the pandemic. Given the challenges, the assured filmmaking is remarkable – best pandemic epic on a microbudget.

A large part of what makes the film so interesting is its use of observational documentary techniques combined with meticulously composed scenes and shots, the combination of which deeply involves the viewer and constantly moves the narrative forward.  There must be hundreds of shots, including a lot of handheld, but the editing is brisk and coherent making the 135 minute running time unnoticeable.

While the film has difficult moments, it is not at all difficult to watch and, ultimately, self-acceptance and unconditional love prevail at the end.

The film Islands also has a true-life, everyday-struggle sensibility making me think there might be a small Toronto-based, Filipino social realist movement going on. Thanks to SBIFF for bringing both films here.