Trauma, grief, and family drama come together in Demons, a short film premiering next month at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The short film follows 38-year-old Madhuri (Mads), who reconnects with her mother Kiran, after decades of a silent and broken relationship.
Both women, now older, unemployed, and still searching for their place in the world, sit across from one another in a diner to unfold their traumas in this dark but also comedic story.
The film was directed by award-winning, GTA-based filmmaker Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, and stars Preeti Torul as Mads and Sonia Dhillon Tully as Kiran.
Torul also serves as the film’s writer, and tells Now Toronto that the film is based on her own life growing up in Toronto with an immigrant family.
“My family came here from Mauritius and the U.K. in hopes of more opportunities, and it turned out to be much worse off for us, and that display of an immigrant story is never truly reflected on screen,” she said.
Torul says she grew up with a very tortured relationship with her mother, and says she feels like other South Asian stories depict family as being positive and harmonious.
“But what it actually was truly for me, was broken, and I never saw myself in anything,” she said.
She says she started writing Demons six years ago as a way to formulate what an apology may look like from her own mother, and to showcase what hasn’t been seen before on screen.
For Fyffe-Marshall, she says the lack of seeing the true immigrant story unfold on screen has led to less sympathy for immigrants and refugees in the real world, and hopes to change that.
“We don’t really see the true experiences of what it’s like to leave behind something and to come to a place that maybe doesn’t have all the things you thought it was going to,” she said.
Fyffe-Marshall says that much like the conversation between Mads and Kiran, she hopes the film can spark similar conversations within viewers’ own lives, ones that are both uncomfortable but also needed.
“It was about time we started having these nuanced conversations… I think for a lot of us, this is like our therapy, this is the way to get the message out. It’s something that will heal our generation,” she said.
And with only eight minutes to share that message, and 12 hours of filming, both creators feel like the goal was achieved.
“Everyone on the crew, everyone in our cast, related to the material… I couldn’t be more grateful,” Torul said.
Both women add that they want viewers to apply the lessons shared in the film.
“I want people to be able to watch this and be like, ‘Wow, I need to talk to my mom.’ I want to be involved in someone’s healing in that way. Allow someone to watch something and be like it takes the weight off your shoulders,” Torul said.
“I want every latchkey outcast kid to see themselves. I want them to be like, ‘I’m not alone’… Let us make you laugh amongst all the pain, that’s what I want people to take away from it,” Fyffe-Marshall said.
But Mads and Kiran’s story is far from over, Demons serves as a pilot for a 10-episode series that is currently in development, and although she can’t spill too much, Torul says the series does have interest from various networks and streamers.
“Right now we’re doing the model of TIFF to have a shorts to series strategy, we’re in TIFF to show the world that Canadian talent and high quality television exists in Canada. It always has,” she said.
The first public screening of Demons will take place on Sept. 7 at 8:15 p.m. followed by a second screening on Sept. 11 at 3:20 p.m. Both screenings will take place at the Scotiabank Theatre.
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