In the lead up to the 7th Canadian Film Festival in Australia (August 2012), join us as we countdown the Top 100 Canadian Films of the past 30 years. We'll be posting one film a day leading up to Canada Day on July 1st 2012. Do you agree with our staff favourites? Let us know your thoughts!
Toronto teenager Lina gets dumped a week before the summer holidays, during which she’d planned to visit her extended family in the small Slovakian town of Modra. On impulse, she invites Leco instead, a cute boy from school. Once in Europe, Lina and Leco discover they have little in common, yet must navigate together this strange land, newfound independence, and conflicting desires.
In 2008, Ingrid Veninger cast her son Jacob in a micro-budget charmer called Only, and the film went on to win the Audience Award at Sydney’s Canadian Film Festival. Modra features her talented daughter, Hallie Switzer, amongst a cast of non-professionals. Using an authentic European journey as rite of passage (Veninger was born in Slovakia), Modra brings to life a place few of us have visited by taking us back to a time we’ve all known.
Lina and Leco’s low-key adventure isn’t the well-trodden cutesy love story, nor does it follow the well-trodden path of accelerated epiphanies neatly laid out by the coming-of-age genre. Instead, Veninger captures the series of confusions, hesitations, and non-events that make up most teenage relationships, romantic or not. Veninger charts the heightened emotional turmoil of adolescence with warmth, insight, and refreshing cliché-free honesty. The result is a sun-drenched, naturalistic, and sharply observed tale of family; identity and teenage desire.
- Matt Ravier
“A prime example of heartfelt DIY filmmaking that really works... poignantly alert to the nuances of teen life.” – Variety
Modra had its Australian premiere at the 6th Possible Worlds Film Festival in 2011, introduced by Her Excellency Mrs Eva Ponomarenková, the Slovak Embassador to Australia.
To see the other films in the countdown so far, click here.