THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In Toronto in 1899, a young man dreams of being prime minister of Canada one day, fulfilling his mother’s outsized ambitions for him. But just who is this William Lyon Mackenzie King? By looking at the early years and eventful private life of a man who would go on to spend 21 years in power, Matthew Rankin (Mynarski chute mortelle, Tesla : lumière mondiale) has made a rare and unclassifiable cinematic object, epic and unusual in equal measures; a first feature that draws as much inspiration from Guy Maddin’s clever experiments as from the over-the-top absurdist comedy of Monty Python.