Born in immigrant families and acclimated to the growing pains of being first-generation Canadians, filmmaker Clement Virgo and producer Damon D’Oliveira deeply connected to David Chariandy’s award-winning 2017 novel Brother.

Virgo wrote and directed the film adaptation, produced under his and D’Oliveira’s prodco Conquering Lion Pictures, which is set to world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Friday (Sept. 9). The Jamaican-born Virgo calls it his “most personal film to date” and an homage to the Canadian immigrant experience.

The coming-of-age film about two Jamaican-Canadian brothers in the 1990s began five years ago when Virgo and Guyana-born D’Oliveira were approached about the novel on separate occasions. Virgo was at a birthday party when maxine bailey, now the Canadian Film Centre’s executive director, recommended he turn it into a film. Aeschylus Poulos and Sonya Di Rienzo of Toronto’s Hawkeye Pictures approached D’Oliveira about it after looking for a project on which they could work together.

“[Chariandy] trusted us to make the story authentic because of the reputation that we have built for ourselves as a company creating projects the majority of the Canadian population typically don’t see on screen,” says D’Oliveira. They previously adapted Lawrence Hill’s novel The Book of Negroes into an award-winning 2015 miniseries, which debuted to record-breaking numbers on CBC in Canada and also aired on BET in the U.S.

Initial financing from the Harold Greenberg Fund allowed them to option the rights to the story in 2018.

By October 2020, Conquering Lion Pictures, along with Poulos and Di Rienzo, had locked in financial commitments from Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund, Ontario Creates and the Shaw Rocket Fund, in association with Bell Media’s Crave and CBC Films. (The filmmakers did not disclose the budget to Playback).

They waited until summer of 2021 to begin production so they could spend more time scouting Toronto locations. They cast actors who had a “deep understanding of the immigrant experience,” said Virgo. The cast includes Lamar Johnson (The Hate U Give), Aaron Pierre (Underground Railroad), and Marsha Stephanie Blake (When They See Us), who inspired Virgo to depart from Chariandy’s original Trinidadian family to a Jamaican one.

D’Oliveira connected with Bron Releasing for the film’s international sales, while Elevation Pictures will handle Canadian distribution. Bron aims to secure U.S. and international distribution sales during TIFF.

“It’s going to be a question of what the buyers are looking for, but I feel that we’ve made an exceptionally strong film with some great awards-worthy performances,” says D’Oliveira.

This story originally appeared in Playback‘s Fall 2022 issue

Photo by Guy Godfree, courtesy of Elevation Pictures