Screening Dates
  • April 18 (Thursday) 7:00
In Person: Kazemi & Smith

“The impressive film captures the raw emotions and daredevil vulnerability of adolescence with a scary accuracy.”

Stephen Holden, The New York Times

In the 1990s, we saw the birth of the ​“subverted teen” movie genre, whether it was through Larry Clark’s Kids or Wes Craven’s Scream. Xennials were tired of sanitized primetime portrayals of youth and trusted antihero directors to depict a darker, scarier, more forbidden side of adolescent malaise on screen. One of the more underground filmmakers of this lineage includes Canadian Scott Smith, whose 1999 debut film Rollercoaster depicts a powerful and brutally empathetic portrayal of new millennium teens. As the story unfolds, a group of broken youth break into a deserted amusement park and spend a day watching all of their darkest desires and secrets reveal themselves. As someone who has spent the last decade studying Y2K youth culture for my debut novel New Millennium Boyz, I was hypnotized by the unnerving documentary-like feel of Rollercoaster and haunted by its familiarity. The movie does a beautiful job at simulating the emotional, hormonal warfare of being young, and it was all filmed at Playland right here in Vancouver. —Alex Kazemi

Print courtesy of TIFF Film Reference Library

Novelist Alex Kazemi will introduce the screening and moderate a post-screening Q&A with director Scott Smith.

Signed copies of Kazemi’s book New Millennium Boyz, ​“a no-holds-barred tour of the millennial mindset’s spiritual DNA” (Douglas Coupland), will be available to purchase.

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