Tickets are on sale for the fast approaching Maple Ridge Festival of B.C. Film.
The second annual festival rides on the tails of the highly successful inaugural event that highlights films created in the province.
The film industry provides employment to more than 600 residents in Maple Ridge alone, with wages that total more than $24 million.
This year, the festival will include four feature films, six shorts and one documentary.
The Prodigal Dad, shot in Vancouver and Squamish, will kick off the festival at 8 p.m. on Mar. 23.
The 2017 feature tells the story of a recently widowed man named George who arrives uninvited at his daughter’s shared college house. Although she is less than thrilled, her roommates embrace him and he becomes the life of the party.
The 2017 short film No Reservations, shot in Maple Ridge, is the tale of a couple’s peaceful suburban lifestyle being disrupted by the installation of a pipeline underneath their house.
At 5 p.m. on Mar. 24, the 2014 thriller called Primary will be screened. Filmed in Vancouver, the feature film is about an insurance executive, seen simultaneously in the future and the present, who is betrayed and left penniless and who has to battle his friends to get his life back in order.
Following the feature will be The Prince, a 2017 short filmed in Vancouver about a young tap dancer names Olivia and her uncle Amir, an actor, who struggle with what it means to be Middle-Eastern Canadian in a racially divided world.
At 7:30 p.m., Drone, a 2017 drama/thriller filmed in West Vancouver, Langley and Mumbai, India, will be shown. It tells the story of a military drone contractor who meets an enigmatic Pakistani businessman that results in the collision of ideologies with fatal consequences.
Next will be the 2017 short film Cypher that was filmed in Burnaby and Vancouver. This story takes place in 1997 Los Angeles, where tensions still linger between the Korean-American and African American communities that came to a head during the 1992 riots. Jay, a Korean-American high school student, finds himself pulled into L.A.’s underground hip hop scene after an incident in his father’s restaurant.
On Mar. 25 at 5 p.m., Hello Destroyer, a full length 2017 feature filmed in Prince George and Vancouver, will be screened. This story is about a young hockey player whose life is turned upside down by an act of violence during a game. As he struggles to come to terms with what happened and the repercussions of the incident, his journey ends up illuminating systemic issues around violence in the sport.
The United Guys Network, a 2016 comedic short filmed in Vancouver, follows a newlywed man who is putting his neighbours to shame until the United Guys Network steps in to teach him how to be a ‘real’ husband.
The only documentary at the festival will be screened at Mar. 25, 7:30 p.m. and is called Primeval: Enter the Incomappleux. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Damien Gillis, in partnership with the Valhalla Wilderness Society, tells the story of the majesty, magic and endurance of one of the world’s last truly ancient inland temperate rainforests in the Selkirk Mountains.
The festival ends with two shorts. The first, called Send Us Smokes, is a 2017 fantasy filmed in New Westminster and Mission and is about a seven-year-old girl who tries to send a care package of cigarettes to her father serving on the front lines during the First World War.
When she finds out that they won’t be delivered to him she sets out on a fantastic adventure to get the package to him herself.
Finally, the 2017 comedic short called Scattered filmed in North Vancouver will be screened. It’s about two women who venture into the woods to scatter their friend’s ashes and fumble for a way to say goodbye.
Tickets to the festival range from $10 for singles to $20 for the opening night, which includes a reception.
A festival pass is $50 and includes tickets to every film over the three-day event, plus the opening reception.
All films will be screened at the ACT Arts Centre, 11944 Haney Place in Maple Ridge.
• For more information about the festival go to theactmapleridge.org/FestivalofBCFilm or call 604-476-2787.
