There was already a sharp eye for taste, insecurity, and youthful self-invention in Chandler Levack’s (“I Like Movies”) work. Her new feature, “Mile End Kicks,” stayed in that lane, shifting from movie obsession to music-scene longing in a story set in Montreal’s indie-rock orbit in 2011. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, and it will open in theaters on April 17, 2026 (read our review).
Levack wrote and directed the film, which stars Barbie Ferreira (“Euphoria,” “Bob Trevino Likes It”) as Grace Pine, a 24-year-old music critic trying to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill before she gets drawn into the world of an aspiring indie band and takes a job publicizing them. Devon Bostick (“Oppenheimer,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”) and Stanley Simons (“The Iron Claw”) play the two musicians she becomes romantically involved with, while Juliette Gariépy (“Red Rooms”) and Jay Baruchel (“BlackBerry,” “This Is the End”) round out the ensemble.
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The setup puts ambition, romance, and status on the same collision course. Grace isn’t just chasing a byline or a book idea—she’s moving through a scene where taste doubles as currency, where proximity can look like possibility, and where work and desire blur fast. That made the film a natural extension of Levack’s interest in young people trying to build themselves out of the culture they consume.
The film also built a solid festival run after TIFF. “Mile End Kicks” later screened in the Borsos Competition at the 2025 Whistler Film Festival, where Levack won Best Screenplay in a Borsos Competition film. It was also named to TIFF’s annual Canada’s Top Ten list for 2025 and picked up a strong batch of Vancouver Film Critics Circle nominations, including Best Canadian Film, Best Director for Levack, Best Actress for Ferreira, and supporting nominations for Bostick, Simons, and Gariépy. Bostick won Best Supporting Actor.
Sumerian Pictures will release the film theatrically on April 17, 2026. For Levack, it marks a return to the kinds of emotionally bruised, culturally specific young-adult worlds that made “I Like Movies” hit as hard as it did. Here, the setting changed from video-store cinephilia to indie-rock romantic chaos, but the social stakes looked just as recognizable.
“Mile End Kicks” opens in theaters on April 17, 2026. Watch the trailer below.
