UBC Theatre and Film is thrilled to share that Assistant Professor Antoine Bourges’ feature film Concrete Valley premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12! The film moves on to screen at the Vancouver International Film Festival in October. Concrete Valley follows Rashid, a former physician from Syria, who has settled in an immigrant community in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park with his wife, Fahra, and his young son. Working as an unlicensed doctor for his neighbors in an attempt to cling to his old identity, tensions rise and begin to threaten his fragile marriage. The film offers a complex character study within a larger and at times contradictory image of care.
“Concrete Valley is inspired by my fascination for the neighbourhood of Thorncliffe Park, a densely populated modernist apartment complex in East Toronto. The area is sometimes described as an ‘arrival city’, a first landing spot for many new immigrants in Canada. I was inspired by the architecture of the place and its residents who I met regularly when co-writing with filmmaker Teyama Alkamli. I was interested in their stories and I wanted to collaborate with them, to create a fiction together.”—Antoine Bourges
Catch Concrete Valley at TIFF at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on these dates:
Sep 12, 2022
Sep 16, 2022
Available to watch digitally (Canada wide) from Sep 16
And at VIFF at the Cinematheque on these dates:
Oct 3, 2022
Oct 5, 2022
Available to watch digitally (BC wide) Oct 4–9
