After getting kicked out of his apartment by his partner, Dante gets tangled in UForge, a legal multi-level marketing scheme, as he Navigates the Vancouver housing crisis and his own repressed traumas.

SYNOPSIS:

An intimate look into toxic masculinity, BPD, and repressed trauma; MILLENNIAL is a self-portrait that documents Dante, the filmmaker's shadow, as he is confronted by the Vancouver housing crisis after being kicked out of his apartment by his partner. With unrealistic rent and nowhere to go, he finds himself couch surfing at Francis' place, his childhood friend from Edmonton, and connects with his roommate, Rae, a yoga teacher and freelance photographer. In these bleak circumstances comes desperation and Nate, a street business-influencer and self-proclaimed entrepreneur provides hope through UForge, a legal multi-level-marketing scheme. In the midst of this instability, his repressed traumas begin to surface and call his interpersonal relationships into question.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:

Throughout my entire life, I've been battling various forms of mental illness. Repressed childhood trauma lead to a life of internal instability. I would turn to cinema as a means to sublimate my pain. With Millennial, I was at a point in my life that I needed to look into the mirror and confront some of my deeper complexes. Dante is an accumulation of my fears and my insecurities; my worst qualities amplified. From there, I worked with great actors and friends to develop fully fleshed out characters. Instead of writing a script, I set up situations in a sandbox with contextual tools to use scattered throughout and allowed the actors to invent the scenes within these parameters. The result is the documentation of my shadow within situations closely related to my life; a work of auto-ethno-fiction, inspired by the processes discussed in Gilles Deleuze's Powers of the False. Shot with just one lens, one mic, no budget, and an average crew size of two including the director, Millennial is a rough but authentic self-portrait made in rebellion to the many gatekeepers of cinema.

DURATION:

1h56m

Country of Origin:

Canada

WHO WE WERE

PAST EVENTS:

WORK-IN-PROGRESS SCREENING - 07/02/2022

Through Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society, MILLENNIAL was screened in front of a small audience for impressions and feedback during the post-production phase. After a successful screening and Q&A, this greatly aided in the completion of the film.