Mile End Kicks brings Montreal’s 2010s indie grit to the big screen
Posted April 9, 2026 9:35 pm.
Last Updated April 9, 2026 11:08 pm.
Théâtre Outremont is premiering Mile End Kicks, a film inspired by Montreal’s Mile End music scene. Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Chandler Levack, it captures the indie culture of the early 2010s that helped launch artists like Mac DeMarco, Arcade Fire, and Grimes.
“I think just what a complicated, beautiful, fascinating cinematic place it is. I mean it’s always been a hotbed for music,” said Chandler Levack, the writer & director of Mile End Kicks.
“I was a music critic for ten years of my life, like all through my 20s. And I wrote this story about Grimes and the Montréal Music Scene in 2011 for Maisonneuve. And I spoke to like 50 people in Mile-End about the music scene. And I just always think that will be the most compelling reason to move to Mile-End.”
Set in the summer of 2011, the film follows a 24-year-old music critic, played by Barbie Ferreira —known for her role in ‘Euphoria’— who moves to Montreal to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill, but she gets pulled into the city’s indie rock scene and a complicated love story.
“It was just really fun to kind of get to collaborate with like the filmmaking community in Quebec. It’s very rare that people from Ontario and people from Quebec make a movie together, and so it was kind of fun to like do this exercise in two solitudes filmmaking,” said Levack.
It also features Montreal actors Jay Baruchel and Juliette Gariépy. Her recent performances have been praised, including for the film The Red Rooms.
“That character allowed me to explore the whole Montreal scene, which I grew up in, and […] I didn’t realize how iconic it was to actually grow up here,” said Juliette Gariépy, the actor who plays Madeleine in Mile End Kicks.
Set for release in theatres on April 17, the film is already gaining recognition, winning a Sustainable Production Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
“We just sort of wanted to like, big up the community that we were shooting in, make sure we were shooting in and kind of shouting out local businesses and venues and like real people in the community that really informed this story for me,” said Levack.
Gariépy adds, “Go see the movie. It’s coming out on April 17, and Letterbox it, we want it up!”
The story doesn’t stop on screen
A live Mile End Kicks concert is set for April 24 at Sala Rossa, with Montreal-based artists Nora Kelly Band, Last Waltzon, Marontate, and Birds of Prrrey.
