Latest news with #LifeAfter
Toronto Star
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
2025 Dora Awards nominations: The complete list of nominees
Nominations for the 2025 Dora Awards, recognizing the best of Toronto theatre, opera and dance, were revealed Wednesday morning, with the Canadian shows 'Mahabharata' and 'Life After' earning the most nominations. The announcement marks the end of a jam-packed performing arts season in the city. This year's nominations were spread among 81 shows, representing some 59 companies. The winners of the 45th Dora Awards, administered by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, will be announced on June 30 at Meridian Hall. The ceremony will be hosted by Peter Fernandes, a Dora-winning actor who's nominated again this year for his starring role in 'Fat Ham.'
Economic Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Economic Times
Saif Ali Khan had to apologize to Taimur for making him watch this Bollywood movie. 'He started giving me a look'
Saif Ali Khan recently shared a light-hearted moment involving his son Taimur, who gave him a disapproving look after watching Adipurush, prompting Saif to apologize. Despite the film's grand ambitions, Adipurush faced widespread criticism for its poor visuals and weak execution. Saif's candid anecdote, shared during promotions for his latest film Jewel Thief, added a humorous touch to the film's continued backlash and highlighted the grounded nature of his family life. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Backlash Against 'Adipurush' Behind the Scenes: Parenting and Stardom Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Popular in Panache 'Jewel Thief' and Life After 'Adipurush' Saif Ali Khan recently shared a humorous yet revealing moment with his son Taimur that highlighted the continuing discourse surrounding the 2023 mythological film Adipurush. In a candid conversation with co-star Jaideep Ahlawat on Netflix India's YouTube channel, Saif recalled showing his son the film — only to be met with a look of disappointment.'I just showed him Adipurush recently. Then, after a while, he started giving me a look. Then I said, 'Yeah, sorry.' He said, 'It's okay.' He forgave me.' The actor's ability to laugh at the situation while acknowledging the criticism reflects a broader sentiment felt by many after the film's by Om Raut and intended as a modern cinematic retelling of the Ramayana, Adipurush starred Prabhas as Raghava (Ram), Kriti Sanon as Janaki (Sita), and Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh (Ravana). Despite high expectations and a substantial production budget, the film faced intense criticism for its visual effects, dialogues, and narrative execution. Audiences were particularly disappointed with how the beloved epic was adapted, with many expressing that the film failed to capture the emotion, scale, and reverence associated with the source backlash was swift and widespread, making Adipurush one of the most discussed — and derided — films of the year. Despite its star-studded cast, it struggled to make a lasting impression, and its shortcomings became a frequent subject of memes and social the same interview, Jaideep Ahlawat asked Saif whether his children, Taimur and Jeh, grasp the reality of their parents being major film stars. Saif responded by recounting an incident from Taimur's school play, where the child admitted, 'Mujhe bohot darr lagta hai Abba. Logo ke saamne mujhe dialogue nahi bolne hai.'Saif recalled how someone complimented Taimur on his ability to speak lines so confidently, but he added that he hopes his children understand their parents are regular, grounded individuals despite the fame. 'It is a lovely job and you should not take yourself too seriously,' he Adipurush might not be Saif's proudest cinematic moment, the actor continues to explore new projects. His latest film, Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins, co-starring Jaideep Ahlawat, Nikita Dutta, and Kunal Kapoor, premiered on Netflix on April the film has not received overwhelmingly positive reviews — with some critics calling it underwhelming and even forgettable — the camaraderie between Saif and his co-stars, including lighthearted stories like Taimur asking Jaideep if he was the 'producer' of Jaane Jaan, adds a personal touch to the film's promotion.
Hamilton Spectator
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
‘We'll just make our own films': Disability rights advocates in spotlight at Hot Docs
Reid Davenport says he began making documentaries to confront the ableism he faced every day. When a college adviser discouraged him from applying for a study abroad program in Florence because the city wasn't wheelchair accessible, Davenport responded by picking up a camera. The resulting film, 2013's 'Wheelchair Diaries,' explored the lack of accessibility in Europe. 'It feels good to take pain and turn it into art. It's cathartic and relieves some of the difficult memories,' says Davenport, who has cerebral palsy. The New York-based filmmaker now counts himself among a growing wave of creators challenging how people with disabilities are seen and spoken about in media. That shift is especially apparent at this year's Hot Docs festival, where stories about disability rights are in the spotlight. Programming director Heather Haynes says the festival received a record number of submissions centering voices of people with disabilities. Among the highlights is the international premiere of Davenport's 'Life After,' which delves into the complexities of assisted suicide from a disability-rights lens, examining Canada's medical assistance in dying (MAID) program. 'Disabled people have been the subject of documentaries since the inception of documentaries, but those documentaries have literally subjugated them,' says Davenport. 'I think there's a groundswell of disabled people who want to take the narrative back and are sick of talking about the physicalities of their disabilities, and would rather talk about the unnecessary ableism they face that is embedded in society.' Other standouts are Shoshannah Stern's 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,' a portrait of the Oscar-winning Deaf actress and her trailblazing journey, and the international premiere of Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim's 'Deaf President Now!,' which revisits a 1988 student-led protest in Washington, D.C. that became a landmark moment for accessibility rights in the U.S. Homegrown selections include Lulu Wei's short 'A Stop Gap Measure,' which follows Toronto disability activist Luke Anderson on his fight to make Canada more accessible. Programmers and filmmakers say there is a larger shift in the documentary world that's fuelled by increased access, emerging support programs and long-overdue recognition of those who've been left out of the frame. Elspeth Arbow, a key programmer behind this year's Hot Docs slate, notes much of that momentum can be traced back to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a police officer sparked a cultural reckoning around race, power and representation. 'There was certainly this swell of interest in supporting equity-deserving groups or people that have been systematically disadvantaged or kept out of able-bodied, hegemonic, white-led organizations. A lot of that has fallen away over the past five years, but a lot of it has stayed, too,' Arbow says. The New Brunswick native cites the CBC's AccessCBC program and the National Screen Institute's Disabled Producers Lab as recent Canadian initiatives offering mentorship and financial support to disabled creators. Arbow, who lives with cystic fibrosis and has had two double lung transplants, is operations manager of the Disability Screen Office, a non-profit that launched in 2022 with the goal of eliminating accessibility barriers in the Canadian screen industry. She notes that people with disabilities have long been portrayed on screen through a lens of 'spectacle and voyeurism,' but the community has now reached a 'tipping point,' no longer willing to accept those narratives. 'Now that people are listening to disabled folks, we can say, 'The representation we have is really not very good. And if you call us disrespectful or unappreciative, we'll just make our own films,'' Arbow says. Anderson credits the 2020 documentary 'Crip Camp' as a galvanizing moment. Helmed by James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, the film traces the origins of the disability rights movement and, according to Anderson, helped bring much-needed attention to the fight for inclusion. 'A Stop Gap Measure' chronicles Anderson's creation of the StopGap Foundation, a non-profit that installs brightly colored ramps for single-step storefronts across Canada to raise awareness about the need for a barrier-free society. 'The disability community isn't going to settle for HR policies that are discriminatory, built-in environments that say that we don't belong or attitudinal spaces that aren't inclusive,' says Anderson, who has used a wheelchair since a mountain biking injury in 2002. 'We're tired of not being heard or seen. And there's a real close-knit community of disability activists who are really motivated to speak up.' In 'Life After,' Davenport interviews Canadian Michal Kaliszan, who, after losing his mother and struggling with limited care options due to his spinal muscular atrophy, considers MAID. Davenport says his film is truly about how 'radically under-supported' disabled people are in modern society. 'I think every disabled person experiences ableism, and it's so acute that we have a disproportionate amount of disabled people who either commit suicide or seek suicide,' he says. 'One of the old tenets of disability studies is that disabled people aren't impaired by their bodies, but they're impaired by society's reactions to their bodies. That's all you really need to know.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘We'll just make our own films': Disability rights advocates in spotlight at Hot Docs
Reid Davenport says he began making documentaries to confront the ableism he faced every day. When a college adviser discouraged him from applying for a study abroad program in Florence because the city wasn't wheelchair accessible, Davenport responded by picking up a camera. The resulting film, 2013's 'Wheelchair Diaries,' explored the lack of accessibility in Europe. 'It feels good to take pain and turn it into art. It's cathartic and relieves some of the difficult memories,' says Davenport, who has cerebral palsy. The New York-based filmmaker now counts himself among a growing wave of creators challenging how people with disabilities are seen and spoken about in media. That shift is especially apparent at this year's Hot Docs festival, where stories about disability rights are in the spotlight. Programming director Heather Haynes says the festival received a record number of submissions centering voices of people with disabilities. Among the highlights is the international premiere of Davenport's 'Life After,' which delves into the complexities of assisted suicide from a disability-rights lens, examining Canada's medical assistance in dying (MAID) program. 'Disabled people have been the subject of documentaries since the inception of documentaries, but those documentaries have literally subjugated them,' says Davenport. 'I think there's a groundswell of disabled people who want to take the narrative back and are sick of talking about the physicalities of their disabilities, and would rather talk about the unnecessary ableism they face that is embedded in society.' Other standouts are Shoshannah Stern's 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,' a portrait of the Oscar-winning Deaf actress and her trailblazing journey, and the international premiere of Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim's 'Deaf President Now!,' which revisits a 1988 student-led protest in Washington, D.C. that became a landmark moment for accessibility rights in the U.S. Homegrown selections include Lulu Wei's short 'A Stop Gap Measure,' which follows Toronto disability activist Luke Anderson on his fight to make Canada more accessible. Programmers and filmmakers say there is a larger shift in the documentary world that's fuelled by increased access, emerging support programs and long-overdue recognition of those who've been left out of the frame. Elspeth Arbow, a key programmer behind this year's Hot Docs slate, notes much of that momentum can be traced back to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a police officer sparked a cultural reckoning around race, power and representation. 'There was certainly this swell of interest in supporting equity-deserving groups or people that have been systematically disadvantaged or kept out of able-bodied, hegemonic, white-led organizations. A lot of that has fallen away over the past five years, but a lot of it has stayed, too,' Arbow says. The New Brunswick native cites the CBC's AccessCBC program and the National Screen Institute's Disabled Producers Lab as recent Canadian initiatives offering mentorship and financial support to disabled creators. Arbow, who lives with cystic fibrosis and has had two double lung transplants, is operations manager of the Disability Screen Office, a non-profit that launched in 2022 with the goal of eliminating accessibility barriers in the Canadian screen industry. She notes that people with disabilities have long been portrayed on screen through a lens of 'spectacle and voyeurism,' but the community has now reached a 'tipping point,' no longer willing to accept those narratives. 'Now that people are listening to disabled folks, we can say, 'The representation we have is really not very good. And if you call us disrespectful or unappreciative, we'll just make our own films,'' Arbow says. Anderson credits the 2020 documentary 'Crip Camp' as a galvanizing moment. Helmed by James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, the film traces the origins of the disability rights movement and, according to Anderson, helped bring much-needed attention to the fight for inclusion. 'A Stop Gap Measure' chronicles Anderson's creation of the StopGap Foundation, a non-profit that installs brightly colored ramps for single-step storefronts across Canada to raise awareness about the need for a barrier-free society. 'The disability community isn't going to settle for HR policies that are discriminatory, built-in environments that say that we don't belong or attitudinal spaces that aren't inclusive,' says Anderson, who has used a wheelchair since a mountain biking injury in 2002. 'We're tired of not being heard or seen. And there's a real close-knit community of disability activists who are really motivated to speak up.' During Elections Get campaign news, insight, analysis and commentary delivered to your inbox during Canada's 2025 election. In 'Life After,' Davenport interviews Canadian Michal Kaliszan, who, after losing his mother and struggling with limited care options due to his spinal muscular atrophy, considers MAID. Davenport says his film is truly about how 'radically under-supported' disabled people are in modern society. 'I think every disabled person experiences ableism, and it's so acute that we have a disproportionate amount of disabled people who either commit suicide or seek suicide,' he says. 'One of the old tenets of disability studies is that disabled people aren't impaired by their bodies, but they're impaired by society's reactions to their bodies. That's all you really need to know.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2025.
Toronto Star
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
The new Canadian musical ‘Life After' is a triumph at Mirvish. But is it ready for Broadway?
Life After 3.5 stars (out of 4) Music, lyrics and book by Britta Johnson, directed by Annie Tippe. Until May 10 at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St. or 1-800-461-3333 Toward the end of the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical 'Into the Woods,' after the sheer amount of devastation becomes nearly too much to bear, its four surviving fairy-tale characters sing the moralizing number 'No One Is Alone.' 'Mother cannot guide you / Now you're on your own,' sings Cinderella to the now orphaned Little Red Riding Hood. 'Only me beside you / Still, you're not alone.' In a musical that otherwise so astutely navigates the messy expanse of grey between what's black and white, this one song has always struck me as being hollow, even trite. If only our experiences with grief were that simple. If only we always had a support system around us each time we dealt with the death of a loved one. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The astounding Canadian musical 'Life After,' however, penned by the stupendously talented Britta Johnson and which opened Tuesday at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, feels like it was written in response to — and in conversation with — that very idea in 'No One Is Alone.' Grief, Johnson argues, is agonizingly lonely. It's painful. It's overwhelming. It's also occasionally funny, in the absurdest ways possible. Alice (Isabella Esler), the show's 16-year-old protagonist, is dropped into the forest of her own grief after her father Frank (Jake Epstein), a famous self-help author, is killed in a car crash. Though her mother Beth (Mariand Torres) and sister Kate (Valeria Ceballos) are both grieving in their own ways as well, Alice knows that if she's to ever find her way out of the metaphorical woods she must do it on her own. There is no one there beside her. She is, indeed, alone. Mariand Torres as Beth, Valeria Ceballos as Kate and Isabella Esler as Alice in 'Life After.' Michael Cooper/Yonge Street Theatricals As part of this journey, Alice is forced to reckon with her complicated memories of her oft-absent father, particularly their final conversation on her 16th birthday. Her dad was supposed to be at a convention in Winnipeg to promote his new book. But, unexpectedly, he returned home for several hours to surprise Alice. Frank wants to have dinner with his daughter before his flight back out west. Alice, however, already has plans with her best friend, Hannah (Julia Pulo). Why should she bend over backwards, she reasons, to accommodate her father's schedule? An argument ensues. Alice ignores her father's phone calls. Then the crash. The teenager, crushed by an intense sense of guilt, is also haunted by the mystery surrounding her father's death. Frank's flight was to depart at 8 p.m. Yet his crash occurred at 8:22 p.m., in a suburb far from the airport. What was he doing there? Did Frank know that Alice and Hannah were planning to attend a party in that neighbourhood? Was he searching for his daughter in order to reconcile with her? ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Alice needs to find answers. But she also knows that the answers she's looking for will never quite give her the closure she needs. This paradox is at the heart of the show — and it's one that anyone who's had a complicated relationship with a loved one they've lost will instantly recognize. I think it's fair to call 'Life After' a spiritual successor to 'Into the Woods,' with both shows mining similar thematic territory. Johnson has shared that she found inspiration in Sondheim's work. After her own father died when she was a teenager, she saw the Stratford Festival's 2005 production of 'Into the Woods' 14 times as a way to process her own grief. (Though 'Life After' isn't autobiographical, Johnson does draw from her own experiences.) A scene from the musical 'Life After,' by Britta Johnson. Michael Cooper/Yonge Street Theatricals Sonically, Johnson's score is more akin to the works of Sondheim, and modernist composers like Benjamin Britten and Igor Stravinsky, than the typical pop fare that's become so ubiquitous in musical theatre today. The music of 'Life After' is dense, layered and richly coloured. Johnson's use of leitmotifs, musical phrases that are associated with certain characters and evolve as the narrative develops, is especially striking and effective. Her lyrics, too, are Sondheimian in quality. Pithy, yet never cold. Deeply expressive, yet never sentimental. Poetically ambiguous, yet also razor sharp. Take, for instance, this lyric in the musical's final song: 'It feels like rain and yet the ground is dry.' As sung by Esler, in soaring vocal form, imbuing the character with a tragic touch of teenage vulnerability, that moment lands like a punch to the gut. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'Life After' isn't easy to stage. It's a delicate chamber piece, structured more like a memory play than a traditional musical. And some of it unfolds in Alice's mind, slipping in and out of reality and her unreliable recollections. Director Annie Tippe's production, however, is largely successful at keeping all the moving parts together. Compared to the musical's previous Toronto run in 2017, this iteration is far larger, with clear, if tacit, Broadway intentions. The sheer scale of this staging often works in the show's favour. Todd Rosenthal's imposing set, a two-storey house with revolving rooms, captures the whirlwind nature of Alice's grief. Her world is constantly shifting around her, never stopping for a moment to breathe. Isabella Esler as Alice and Jake Epstein as Frank in 'Life After.' Michael Cooper/Yonge Street Theatricals Tippe's slick production, moving between scenes with dreamlike ease, pays close attention to the smallest of details. Kai Harada and Haley Parcher's crisp sound designs deserve special praise for managing to tame, miraculously, the cavernous and unwieldy CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre. Thank goodness for that, because we get to hear Lynne Shankel's gorgeous orchestrations in all their glory. Esler, onstage for the entirety of Johnson's 90-minute musical, is superb. And she's surrounded by an ensemble cast that's equally strong. Epstein's Frank is a man of contradictions: a suave celebrity author who could dole out life advice to strangers on a whim, yet couldn't manage to solve the puzzle of his own life. As Alice's mother and sister, respectively, Torres and Ceballos demonstrate how grief manifests itself in so many different ways. For them, unlike Alice, the only way to heal is to forge ahead, leaving the past behind them. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Chilina Kennedy exudes maternal warmth as Alice's teacher, Ms. Hopkins. And Pulo steals every scene she's in as the awkward yet bubbly Hannah. If all these supporting characters come off as rather wispily drawn, that can be excused. We are, after all, in Alice's mind, as we're constantly reminded by a trio of pestering Furies (Kaylee Harwood, Arinea Hermans and Zoë O'Connor) who give voice to her deepest insecurities, and manifest themselves as everything from piggish mourners to overly solicitous neighbours. And grief, especially the kind that Alice experiences, distorts the way we see the world. Where this production falters, however, is in its final 15 minutes, as Alice finally finds some semblance of clarity amid the chaos. Critical emotional beats don't land with the force that they could. In particular, the elements of Tippe's production that made it so successful up until this point now work against it. Her frantic staging never settles enough to offer Alice, and the audience, a moment to reflect. Rosenthal's scenery and Japhy Weideman's lighting also become rather intrusive and distracting, nearly overshadowing the musical's quiet conclusion. And as Johnson's material grows increasingly abstract and metaphorical, Tippe's production seems stubbornly focused on a more literal interpretation. I'm not exactly sure how to resolve these issues. But I guess it's sort of fitting that 'Life After,' a meditation on grief, never quite concludes on a satisfying note. Losing a loved one is always messy and painful, filled with a grief that's unending. And as Johnson demonstrates in her final song, there's a complex beauty and poetry in that, too.
