The Rainbow Kid
Kire Paputts’s The Rainbow Kid, is a heartbreaking tale of a young boy with Down Syndrome who is obsessed with everything that has to do with rainbows. He goes on a crazy adventure of love and loss. During his journey, he never lets his disability get the best of him and does the best he can to survive the crazy world around him.
Hope is the one thing that Eugene holds on to as he journeys to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The audience meets Eugene as a young boy in high-school who lives everyday with Down Syndrome. He gets bullied by the other students in school, and his mother is sick and has fallen behind on the payments for their apartment. Because his mother is bedridden, Eugene feels it is his responsibility to use the money he has saved up to pay off the debt. When his money isn’t accepted and his mother passes away he feels the only thing he has left to do is go on a journey to find the end of the rainbow so he can discover the pot of gold and make life better for himself. He starts his journey by taking his bike on the road until he meets a peculiar man who says he can help him find the rainbow with an object he made out of a metal hanger. As night falls, Eugene asks the man if he can stay in his trailer for the night and the man agrees. When Eugene wakes up, he notices that the man is now gone and unbeknownst to him he stole all of his money. As his journey continues, he meets an aged rocker who helps him fix his flat tire and teaches him how to pick up girls. Once Eugene is back on the road he is picked up by a man who says he will let him stay at his home for the night and can hang out with his daughter which he assures to Eugene that he will become friends with. Once they arrive at the man’s home, we find out that his daughter has Down Syndrome as well. There seems to be something off-putting by the father-daughter relationship because she tends to agree with everything her father says. Come to find out their relationship is very off-putting and Eugene has to help her escape her situation. They end up getting to a point where she becomes injured and he has to leave her at someones doorstep so they can help her. His journey to find the end of the rainbow leads him to a nice old woman who begins to take of him until things go down hill once again. The film ends with Eugene being rescued by the police and put in a place where he can be safe and live a healthy life.
Before seeing the film, I really had no idea as to what it was even about except for the fact that a young boy goes on a search to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What I ended up seeing was a film that kept its audience on the edge of its seats and tugged on their heartstrings multiple times throughout. I think it’s important to have more films show stories with those who have mental disabilities. It can teach a lot to those who may not have that much knowledge on the subject. If given the opportunity, I would highly recommend seeing this film because of how powerful the story is and to somewhat see the struggles one has to go through on a daily basis with mental illness.

Remember
Atom Egoyan’s Remember is a thriller that will keep audiences on their seats with its twists and turns. The film follows a Holocaust survivor by the name of Zev, whose mission is to find the Nazi in hiding that helped kill his family in the concentration camps.
The film opens with Zev sleeping in a bed calling out his wife’s name. He wakes up, gets out of bed, goes out the door, and we see that he is living in a hospital. He is a dementia patient and his wife had died a few weeks prior. His friend Max reminds him of the mission they planned years prior. Max gives Zev a letter detailing every move he must make in order to find the man who helped kill their families. Zev packs up his things and leaves the area without anyone noticing for a least an entire day. The middle part of the film started to get repetitive at times because he would go find someone who ended up not being the right person he was looking for and it would repeat the process over again. At one point in the film when Zev is confident that he found the correct man he finds out the man died years ago and that it was the wrong one. Even though it was the wrong man, the man was a Nazi, and the house that Zev stumbled upon was stilled owned my the Nazi’s son. Things come to blows as the man finds out that Zev was a Holocaust survivor due to the tattoo on his arm. Zev ends up having to use deadly force in order to make it out of the house alive. Eventually, he finds the man he is looking for and things end up completely different from what is expected. As much as I would love to say what happened, I think it is only fair to keep the ending a secret.
Going into the festival, this was probably the film I was most excited to see. I thought the concept would be really interesting to see how an old Holocaust survivor with dementia go hunt down a Nazi. While it did get repetitive during some points I think the overall progression of the story worked really well. The plot twist at the end also really made the film for me as well. It could be possible that the repetitiveness was used to distract the audience so when the big reveal came, it would be a complete. If that was the case, I think it worked really well. This film definitely ended up as one of my top favorites in the festival, and I would definitely see it when it comes out theatrically.

Beeba Boys
Deepa Mehta’s Beeba Boys is a film inspired by real characters and incidents that surrounds an Indo-Canadian gang at war with another Indian crime family. Their mission is to take over Vancouver’s drug and arms trade, and place fear in the hearts of those who stand in their way.
Having seen a total of three different gangster films at the festival, I would have to say that this one would have to be my favorite. While it was a very violent film, it also had a lot of comedic moments to lighten the mood a bit. The film opens with the Beeba Boys in a car going to assassinate someone. During the car ride, you get an idea of each characters role and their personality. After they assassinate the man the opening credits begin and there is a credit that says who each of the Beeba Boys are and a little description about them. Throughout the film, you start to care for some of the characters even though you know what they do is bad.
The leader of the group, Jeet Johar, seems to be the film’s most interesting character. His parents live with him and watch over his son while he is taking care of business. His son clearly looks up to his father as a role model as he swears in public and has violent tendencies. His mother clearly knows that her son is up to no good and tries to convince him to stop but is unsuccessful. As Jeet tries to take down the competing crime family, things get worse for his team. Members of his team start to die and his family’s lives are put at risk. By the end of the film he ends up kind of being put in the position of the hero who saves the day.
The film hasn’t received super positive reviews, but critics still find it enjoyable. Generally, i’m not one who really finds gangster films that interesting, but I liked how this one stood out a bit from the others. It was refreshing to see a gangster film with a culture that isn’t very widely shown in media other than Bollywood. When the film was over, the cast and director came out on stage to answer a few questions and talk about the film. One of the actors stated how when he was younger, he looked up to these Indian gangsters because they were the closest things to celebrities in that culture. There was a moment in the film where you see young boys celebrating the Beeba Boys as heroes because of what they meant to the community, so to actually hear that children actually looked up to them was really interesting to me.
While this film is most likely not for everyone, if you enjoy gangster films this would be a good one to check out. It’s piled with action as well as comedic moments, and gives you characters that you love to hate and hate to love.