As the Cascadian Film and Television Critics Association, we believe that it is our moral duty to highlight local films and celebrate them. Our members represent the Cascadian region, which ignores country borders and instead marks the bioregion that connects us. This year we expanded our group to include Oregon, which greatly opened up the films eligible for our Best Cascadian Film award, as the scene there is booming. There are three criteria that the films have to meet to be eligible. The director should either be from or based in Cascadia, the film should be shot in the region and the story must be reflective of the Cascadian experience. It isn’t a hard rule that all criteria must be met, but it ideally meets most of them. Below is a list of the five nominees for our 2024 CFTCA Best Cascadian Film Award. The winner will be announced later this month.
Follow us on Letterboxd and track the nominees with this list and all films that received consideration!
Check out last year’s crop of nominees and our winner Riceboy Sleeps.
Inedia – directed by Liz Cairns
Cora struggles with her relationship to food. What she is allergic to seems to change so frequently with no real reason, it just makes matters worse. Her friends and family don’t understand the issue and doctors can’t seem to pinpoint what is causing her to break out in terribly painful rashes all over her body. No diet seems to work and just “dealing with it” isn’t an option. After getting lost in an internet rabbit hole searching for answers, she comes across a group of people who practice inedia or breatharianism, which is the act of fasting from all food permanently while the sun nourishes you. Cora travels from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island to join the Sunhaven community led by the enigmatic leader Joana. As Cora begins her journey into fasting, she slowly starts to realize that the Sunhaven group might not be as honest about their health claims as they appear to be. Director Liz Cairns shines a spotlight on Vancouver Island’s natural beauty and the secrets it might be hiding in this slow-burn dramatic thriller.
It’s What’s Inside – directed by Greg Jardin
When a group of friends reunite for a party the night before one of their members gets married things quickly spiral out of control. Reuben has called his college friends to his castle-like home to celebrate his impending nuptials, but this group has simmering barely hidden tensions already. Shelby and Cyrus have been together for years and they fight constantly, Nikki is a world-famous influencer who is not respected by her friends, and Dennis hasn’t amounted to anything except living off of his rich parents and more. When Forbes shows up, things get ratcheted up as they hadn’t seen him since a fateful night a decade earlier, when Dennis and Forbes got into a physical altercation resulting in Forbes getting expelled. He comes with a suitcase asking to play a game where the players will get to understand what it is like to be someone else. Greg Jardin directed, wrote and edited the film filling it with twists and turns and a distinct look. The film was filmed in Portland and takes place in Oregon.
Longlegs – directed by Osgood Perkins
Agent Lee Harker seems to be a better FBI agent than her colleagues, possibly because she has special abilities. She is given a case of a serial killer where twelve times a father has killed his family and then himself in a satanic manner while a cryptic note is left behind signed by a “Longlegs”. As she begins to track down if one person is indeed behind these brutal killings, suspicious things start to happen around her. Longlegs eventually reveals himself to Harker, promising her that if she uncovers the truth, her mother will die. The movie goes from a Silence of the Lambs type of procedural to a straight-up cultish horror film, playing with genres and expectations. Osgood Perkins, son of legendary horror icon Anthony Perkins uses Vancouver to stand in as Oregon with its snow-capped towns to surprise viewers.
Sometimes I Think About Dying – directed by Rachel Lambert
Fran suffers from depression. And not in the typical movie fashion where she won’t get out of bed or breaks down crying in a coffee shop when they mess up her order. She just is in a rut. Her favourite food is cottage cheese, she only wears drab coloured clothing, and she can’t think of a single thing to write on a colleague’s retirement card. Worst of all, she fantasizes about being dead. Not killing herself, but rather her body being motionless after the act is complete. It is poetic in its beauty and nihilism. But then Fran meets Robert, a new hire at her office who despite being socially awkward takes a romantic liking to Fran and tries to bring her out of her shell. He’s not entirely successful, but this jolt of life force definitely awakens her. Director Rachel Lambert adapted the short film (directed by Stefanie Abel Horowitz) with great success. The film was shot on the coast of Oregon in a small town, and as Fran rises back to life the region doesn’t look so bleak, in fact, it is quite inviting.
Strange Darling – directed by JT Mollner
Before agreeing to a sexual encounter a woman asks a man if he is a serial killer, he laughs at the absurdity of the question highlighting the dangers women experience just to go through with a hook-up. From there we get a story told out of sequence, presented to us in chapters. We see the woman fleeing, while being chased by the man as he drives her off the road, tracks her in the woods and uses a shotgun to check any trunks she might be hiding in. As the movie continues, we learn things might not be as they seem. The aggressive sexual content first looks like an assault, but later we learn that it was consensual rough play with the woman using her safeword to test him and his snorting cocaine might not be to get the high we expect. JT Mollner has crafted a taut thriller that upends expectations of the cat-and-mouse genre. It is filmed in the backwoods of Oregon and showcases the rural beauty of the state, while we watch in terror.
Watch this space for the announcement of the winner later this month!