ONE WEEK

Director: Michael McGowan
Cast: Joshua Jackson, Liane Balaban, Campbell Scott
Run Time: 94 minutes
Country: Canada
Year: 2008
Language: English
Rating: PG (Coarse language, violence and drug use)

One Week, a Gala at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival ®, is the highly anticipated second feature from Michael McGowan, whose remarkable debut, Saint Ralph, won the Arc d’Or at the 2005 Paris Film Festival, a Writers’ Guild of Canada award for best screenplay, the 2005 Mackenzie Investment’s Film Circuit People’s Choice Award and was named one of Canada’s Top Ten films of the year in 2005. Saint Ralph, about a boy who aimed to defeat the odds and perform a miracle in order to save his mother’s life, won audiences the world over for its poignancy and deceptively simple storytelling technique. McGowan brings these qualities and more to One Week, a film that explores how an imminent crisis can transform a person’s perspective on the world and the meaning of true living.

As the title indicates, Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson, Bobby, Battle in Seattle) has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. What should he do? What would you do? For Ben, engaged to a beautiful woman, Samantha (Liane Balaban, New Waterford Girl, Seven Times Lucky), the only answer that makes sense is to see as much of his country as he can, in a way that allows him to experience the dizzying freedom of the road and help him search within himself for sources of meaning. To this end, he gets on his motorcycle and journeys from Toronto to Tofino, British Columbia. Along the way, he visits many of Canada’s iconic and lesser known landmarks, and has encounters that enable him to get at the heart of who he is. A film with this premise can be treated in many ways; McGowan wisely eschews severity and heavy-handedness in order to bring charm, buoyancy and a sometimes-sad lyricism to Ben’s quest for meaning. Filmed mostly in and around Banff, Alberta, One Week, which masterfully brings large stretches of this country’s scenic landscape to the screen, is in many ways a universal story combining the best of the odyssey film with an intensely personal account of how the threat of mortality can reawaken one to the joys and bittersweet experiences of life.

Website/Trailer: www.mongrelmedia.com/theatrical/info.cgi?id=1441