TIFF 2025 Review: Mile End Kicks -“doesn’t reinvent the ‘coming of age’ story, but it is a fresh take on the genre”

Courtesy of TIFF

In 2022, director Chandler Levack premiered her first feature film, I Like Movies at the Toronto International Film Festival.  It is a quirky gem of a movie that quickly became one of my favourites of the fest (check out my review and interview with Levack).  If you haven’t watched it, the film is available, in Canada anyway, on Netflix.  It’s a great introduction to a new voice, and will allow you to see a style that follows through into her sophomore feature, Mile End Kicks.

Mile End is a neighbourhood in Montreal known to be home to many artists and musicians living on ‘bagels and cigarettes’ as Grace (Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria) writes in her newest article.  A music critic for a Toronto publication, she has aspirations to move there, the home base of so many indie bands she loves.  It’s also here she hopes to find inspiration to write a ’33 1/3′ book, on an album she feels has influenced her, Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill.

So, in 2011 Montreal, Grace moves into a flat with a roommate (Juliette Gariépy) courtesy of Craig’s List with a July deadline for her Jagged Little Pill draft and quickly ends up at a loft party where she discovers a new band, Bone Patrol.  She immediately has eyes for the lead singer (Stanley Simons) but it’s Archie (Devon Bostick) who finds a true connection with her.  As her deadline approaches Grace tries her best to check goals off her summer to do list – climbing Mount Royal, learning French, having real sex and falling in love.  But as typically happens in your twenties, nothing really goes to plan.

Grace is one of those characters you have to love for her potential, because she’s still learning her way in the world.  Levack comes dangerously close to writing Grace into a corner that makes her unlikable, so it’s good that she starts making better decisions before any good will for her is lost.  That said, Ferreira plays Grace with so much charisma it’s hard to lose empathy for her, especially if you remember some of the bad decisions you might have made at 22.

Levack fills Mile End Kicks with enough Canadian inside jokes that those from the home crowd will laugh without alienating others.  She particularly makes sure those from Toronto pronounce it the way it should be, compared to those from out of province, a fact that will be appreciated by Torontonians.  You might think it’s a picky and petty little detail, but it’s particularly important since Levack is from here.

Mile End Kicks is overall quite charming.  For those of us of a certain age (cough) it’s also really nostalgic, and Levack has the ability to truly embrace the era, something she also did well in I Like Movies, which is set about a decade earlier than this film.  There’s a good number of iphone 3Gs and old Macbooks on display, some good 2010s fashion as well.

There’s a particularly well-done monologue near the film’s conclusion that brings everything together, reminiscent but perhaps a bit less forceful than that viral Barbie moment.  You don’t have to be an aspiring music critic to understand where Grace is coming from.  Most women will have been in similar rooms, where you have to choose between belonging and speaking up.  Mile End Kicks doesn’t reinvent the ‘coming of age’ story, but it is a fresh take on the genre, one that looks at being on the outside of  ‘bro culture’ and trying to find your own voice, not the one that just impresses the boys.

Mile End Kicks had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday, September 4, 2025.  For more information head to tiff.net