The safe, swirling chaos of creating MATT AND MARA with Matt Johnson and Deragh Campbell | TIFF 2024

In Matt and Mara, Toronto writer-director Kazik Radwanski reunites Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson — the stars of his prizewinning drama Anne at 13,000 ft (TIFF ’19) — for another precise, incisive drama. But this one’s a little different. It’s looser and even a little silly, the better to distract you from the heaviness in its heart.

Matt (Johnson) and Mara (Campbell) were friends in university. But that was years ago. Now, Mara is a creative-writing professor in Toronto, married to Samir (Mounir Al Shami) and raising a toddler (Avery Nayman). And when Matt, now a successful author who moved to New York, wanders into her classroom, they pick up exactly where they left off — hanging out for hours on end, sharing dumb jokes, and generally being each other’s escape valve. Old friends reconnect all the time. It’s harmless, right?

Matt and Mara is all about that question, and what can happen when people refuse to confront it directly. Campbell — who’s also in this year’s Festival with Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral — once again applies her electric screen presence to a character who’s opaque to others but open wide to Nikolay Michaylov’s camera. And with Johnson, who demonstrated surprising dramatic chops opposite Campbell in Anne, Radwanski finds a new context for the BlackBerry director’s distinctive screen presence, seeding hidden complexities into his goofball charisma.

It’s a new and specific take on a familiar narrative, leaving room for unexpected humour and warmth. You might even see yourself in the characters. Or possibly the locations.
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