Mile End Kicks (2026)
Directed by: Chandler Levack
Premise: A twenty-four-year-old music critic (Barbie Ferreira) moves from Toronto to Montreal to write a book. While there she gets involved with an indie rock band.
What Works: Mile End Kicks is a coming-of-age story in which a young woman lives among musicians and writers in Montreal and attempts to create her own work. Barbie Ferreira stars as Grace, a young writer seeking a fresh start after leaving an exploitative position at an arts and culture website. She’s socially awkward, impulsive, and inexperienced in just about everything. But Ferreira and filmmaker Chandler Levack make Grace endearing. Even when she makes bad choices we understand the context. The film has a brutal honesty equivalent to Eighth Grade and Boyhood. Mile End Kicks is blunt about Grace’s irresponsibility and her sexuality. Nothing here is idealized but the filmmakers stage and shoot scenes in ways that reveal Grace’s inner thoughts. She lusts over the dirtbag lead singer of an indie rock band (Stanley Simons) and the filmmakers present him in a way that allows us to see what Grace sees. She’s drawn away from her writing by social opportunities and here too we can see that Grace is responding to unmet social needs. The film is appropriately quirky but not cute. Mile End Kicks is allegedly based on filmmaker Chandler Levack’s own experiences and the picture looks back at young adulthood with a wry sense of humor but it isn’t nostalgic. The filmmakers do not dress up the reality of Grace’s situation nor do they idealize the lives of starving artists. The production design of Mile End Kicks has an unpolished reality and the actors give very grounded performances.
What Doesn’t: Mile End Kicks is sometimes frustrating to watch because Grace makes so many obviously stupid or irresponsible decisions. But there is a difference between the stupidity of bad storytelling and the stupidity of youthful naivete. Grace’s stupidity is the latter which makes it credible and understandable. Like many young people she is fumbling her way through life. But this also makes Mile End Kicks predictable as we can see where these choices are leading. Grace is a writer and writing is difficult to convey in cinema in a way that is interesting. What’s missing in Mile End Kicks is the sense that Grace is growing as a writer. Grace’s experiences in Montreal shape her emotionally and intellectually but the film doesn’t translate those experiences into her output as a writer.
Bottom Line: Mile End Kicks is a blunt but empathetic coming of age story. It looks back on youth with an unflattering honesty. Barbie Ferreira is perfectly cast in the lead role.
Episode: #1097 (May 3, 2026)