Unless

[projekktor id=’25693′]

Unless is a Canadian/Irish drama written and directed by Alan Gilsenan. The film, which is based on the novel “Unless” by Carol Shields, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and stars Catherine Keener, Matt Craven, Hannah Gross, Chloe Rose, Abigail Winter, Martha Henry, Linda Kash, and Benjamin Ayres.

Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy. Suddenly, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment when her eldest daughter Norah inexplicably drops out of college and is found on a Toronto street corner, pan-handling and refusing to speak, holding a cardboard sign reading GOODNESS.

“It’s quite a complex story and the issues that it brings up, the thoughts it provokes, don’t have easy answers,” says Gilsenan. “Sometimes in film, people want you to tie everything up at the end and resolve everything and the power of the book is that it touches on profound feelings that we all have, that we all grapple with and that seem to me to somehow be issues of our time. There is a quiet subtlety to Shields’ writing that doesn’t always sit easily with the demands of contemporary cinema. Yet, somehow Carol Shields captures something crucial to our time, our unspoken concerns, and that is a big challenge to put into a film.”

Unless is rated 14A.