Stevie Vandervliet is a passionate Toronto social worker who has become deeply skeptical of the system she operates within. When a young First Nations client dies after being committed to police custody, Stevie stops trusting the machinery she is supposed to work through and starts making her own rules. She opens her East End Toronto home as a safe haven for three at-risk clients: George, an ex-con and chronic gambler; Tracy, a struggling musician with substance abuse issues; and Mina, a woman fleeing domestic violence. In trying to mend their lives she buries her own struggles, until defending Mina from her abusive husband forces a reckoning with just how far she has crossed professional boundaries. Starring Astrid Van Wieren (Come From Away, Tony-nominated) in an award-winning performance. Selected for the Socially Relevant Film Festival's Voice of Canada series in New York. Best Actress winner at the 2021 Toronto International Women Film Festival.
Why This Film Matters: The death of a First Nations person in police custody is not a plot device in this film. It is the inciting wound that makes the entire story possible, and the film does not let it become background noise. Canada's ongoing crisis of Indigenous deaths in police and state custody, the chronic underfunding of social services, the impossible caseloads that force workers to choose between rules and people, and the particular vulnerability of women fleeing domestic violence are all present not as talking points but as the lived texture of the story. For a generation increasingly aware of how systems fail the most vulnerable people they claim to serve, Stevie's decision to stop believing in the system and start building something in its place is both a fantasy and a genuine provocation.