Article by Davide Gravina

Translated by Valerio Copponi

Never-ending opening credits, accompanied by shots of race cars burning rubber and going around in endless circles open the first feature film by Philippe Grégoire, premiered in competition at TFF39. The film, without sacrificing its biting humour, recounts a piece of Alexander Mastrogiuseppe’s life (Robert Naylor), a boy raised in Napierville, a remote and forgotten Canadian village, who leaves his birthplace to go work as a customs officer on the border between the US and Canada. Grégorie describes the same path which he has walked himself, going from living in his hometown to working as a customs officer, to be able to pay for his film studies. Migration towards a different world is just one of many points of contact between the director’s life and the protagonist’s. Indeed, he focuses on the cultural background to which he is bound, thanks to the racetrack built by his grandparents in Napierville.