For its casting of non-professional actors within a mostly scripted narrative, Antoine Bourges’ latest feature, Concrete Valley, has already been called a docu-fiction “hybrid.” Set in the East Toronto neighbourhood of Thorncliffe Park, an initial landing spot for new Canadian immigrants, the film centres on Rashid (Hussam Douhna), a former physician from Syria who settles there with his wife, Farah (Amani Ibrahim), and their young son Ammar (Abdullah Nadaf). Apart from Ibrahim, who in the film plays a former actor, everyone who appears in Concrete Valley is an amateur performer. If it’s often difficult to tell this, though, it’s largely because of the film’s distinct conversational rhythms, which are driven by the simple fact of its characters having to speak an unfamiliar language: English. (For its regulation of tone and…
You're reading a preview of
Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 93 - Winter 2023