THE MISSING GIRL: Cast Profile

Writer-director A.D. Calvo's film The Missing Girl follows Mort, a comic book store owner who fills the void with rare pieces of pop culture paraphernalia and daydreaming about his beautiful employee Ellen. When Ellen misses work one day, Mort becomes consumed with fear that she is in danger, because of something similar that happened to him earlier in life, which is completely exacerbated when his former classmate Skippy returns to town.

Mort is played by Robert Longstreet, who has worked on several aspects of the filmmaking process and been in dozens of roles in his time, acting in films such as Take Shelter, Ain't Them Bodies Saints and This is Martin Bonner. Longstreet has been decorated with the Sidewalk Film Festival Jury award for his work in both What Happens When Robert Leaves the Room (2012) and Cork's Cattlebaron (2011), and has been nominated for multiple awards for his work.

Alongside Mort is the beautiful Ellen, played by Alexia Rasmusssen, who is perhaps best known for her role as Esther Woodhouse in Proxy, a young pregnant woman who is brutally attacked on her way home, in one of the most disturbing scenes in horror movie history. (Incidentally, Proxy premiered at Vanguard, too). Rasmussen has also worked behind the camera for the short film Silo, which follows Silo, a drunk white man who can't find his missile. She was also nominated for her work in Listen to your Heart in 2010 at the Action on Film International Film Festival for Best Actress.

And last but not least, the former high school classmate Skippy is played by Eric Ladin, who most will recognize as the ritzy brother of January Jones' character on AMC's Mad Men. Ladin is perhaps more known among avid TV watchers, as he is also a part of Big Love, Bones, The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, and several more.


THE MISSING GIRL screens:
Sun, Sept 13, 10:00 PM SCOTIABANK
Tue, Sept 15, 4:15 PM SCOTIABANK
Sun, Sept 20, 2:30 PM SCOTIABANK

THE MISSING GIRL First Look: Poster and Trailer

Making its world premiere at TIFF is A.D. Calvo's dark comedy The Missing Girl. Mort (Robert Longstreet) is the owner of a comic book shop who becomes increasingly worried when one of his employees, Ellen (Alexia Rasmussen), does not show up for work. Mort's distress grows as he begins relating Ellen's disappearance with the case of a missing girl from when he was a teen, an anguish which only grows when he discovers a former classmate Skippy (Eric Ladin) has arrived in town.

Below is the poster and trailer for The Missing Girl, which plays this year's Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.

Further information about The Missing Girl can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the film's website, Facebook account and director A.D. Calvo's Twitter account.

THE MISSING GIRL screening times:

Sun. Sept. 13th 10:00 PM SCOTIABANK 13
Tue. Sept. 15th 4:15 PM SCOTIABANK 14
Sun. Sept. 20th 2:30 PM SCOTIABANK 4

FINAL SCREENING: Proxy

Zack Parker's harrowing thriller Proxy has its last festival screening tonight.

See the poster and a behind the scenes video, here. And Parker talks with the Vanguard Blog's Sasha James:

SJ: Your 2011 film, SCALENE, and PROXY both deal with women recovering from grief after a vicious attack. Do you feel like female grief and retribution are underplayed in film? 

ZP: I think I just feel that women are more fascinating to watch. They seem to be able to portray a complexity and depth of emotion that you just don't typically see in men. 

I actually have three children and have been a stay-at-home dad for over eight years, so, I've been around a lot of young mothers at playgroups, birthday parties, etc. I should also mention that my writing partner Kevin Donner has been a stay-at-home dad for six years. So, we are both kind of immersed in this world of women, observing how they talk about their children, their lives, their husbands, each other. Proxy is basically a warped perspective of that world, greatly magnified and filtered through two damaged minds.  

More from that interview here.

PROXY Final Screening:

Saturday, Sept 14th, 8:00 PM SCOTIABANK 9

PROXY Poster and Behind-the-Scenes Featurette

Proxy, the fourth feature film by writer-director-producer Zack Parker, follows the pregnant Esther (Alexia Rasmussen) after she is viciously attacked after a doctor's appointment. Disfigured and traumatized, Esther joins a support group, hoping to come to terms with her assault, but what she finds there is much more intriguing.

Below is the poster for Proxy, which plays this year's Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.

Zack Parker also produced a series of behind-the-scenes featurettes, the first of which you can watch below:

Further information about Zack Parker's Proxy can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the Proxy website, Twitter account, Facebook page, and IMDB page.

PROXY screening times:

• Tues., Sept. 10, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema 10:30 PM
• Thurs., Sept. 12, Scotiabank 1 5:00 PM
• Sat., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 9 8:00 PM