City Cinema Beyond the Frame: A CISF Connect Project Presents Village Keeper

Drama. PG, mature subject matter.
Dir: Karen Chapman, Canada, 2025, 83 min.
Olunike Adeliyi, Zahra Bentham, Maxine Simpson.
Winner: Best First Feature, Canadian Screen Awards; Grand Prize and Best Performance, Arizona International Film Festival.

All seats $10. There will be a Q&A with director Karen Chapman by Zoom after the show.

“Karen Chapman’s tender and empathetic Village Keeper… is character-driven, her love for the people in front of her camera evident in every frame. She has crafted a story of a woman who has been asked so often to clean up after others that she’s never taken the time to deal with the mess of her own trauma. Olunike Adeliyi (Akilla’s Escape)… plays Jean, who lives in NW Toronto with her two children. Flashbacks to a violent past invade Jean’s daily life, punctuated by the fact that her kids are headed out into an increasingly dangerous world. When Jean is asked to clean up after a bloody crime scene, it sparks two fires in her heart, the one that connects to violence she’s seen in her life and one that prays that she can shelter her children from something similar… It’s a drama of lovely little moments like Jean humming to herself after an event or a tender embrace between a mother and daughter that feels spontaneous. It’s at its best when we feel the love not just between the characters but from the filmmaker to all the women like Jean who have similar stories to tell.” —Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com