TIFF spotlight: Connor Jessup and ‘Boy’
Posted Sep 10, 2015 04:09:24 PM.
Last Updated Sep 10, 2015 04:40:25 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO – The Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing. Here’s a look at a Canadian project trying to break through at the 11-day movie marathon:
Film: “Boy”
Synopsis: This short film follows the spirit of a boy who dies in a bicycle accident, and then silently trails a classmate home from school.
Director: Connor Jessup
Hometown: Toronto
Age: 21
The backstory: Jessup is a former kid actor whose credits include the indie film “Blackbird” and sci-fi TV series “Falling Skies.” He next appears in the second season of ABC/CTV’s “American Crime.” He also stars in the Canadian TIFF feature “Closet Monster.”
On learning to direct: “It’s one of the advantages of being on sets for most of your adolescence. You can go to film school and it can be helpful and you can learn a lot, especially theoretically, but a lot of it is just like the day-to-day, etiquette and working (routine) — how a crew functions, what different people’s jobs are. And that’s something you learn being around those people, so that’s been a great fortune of mine.”
On TIFF’s decision to combine Canadian and international shorts into the same program this year: “I always thought that as great as it was that TIFF was and continues to support Canadian films … there’s something about putting films in a Canadian section that felt a little ghettoized to me. It felt like that was a whole section of movies people could write off.”
