Film/Stage
Breakaway
Sikh Hockey Movie At The Toronto International Film Fest
by MELISSA LEONG
What could be more Canadian than a hockey drama set in a Sikh-Canadian community?
Among the Canadian films to be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival next month is Breakaway, Robert Lieberman's movie about an all-Sikh hockey team starring comedian Russell Peters and actor Rob Lowe.
In it, Anupam Kher who, in 2002, played a London father with a soccer-playing daughter in Bend It Like Beckham, now plays a Toronto-area father with a hockey-playing son.
"When I first started doing standup, I used to do a joke about an all-Sikh ice hockey team called the Toronto Maple Sikhs," Peters says in a video that producers posted on YouTube. "Who would have thought (that), 20 years later, I'm in a film about an all-Sikh ice hockey team?"
Last year, the festival opened with Michael McGowan's Score: A Hockey Musical.
The 36th Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 8 to 18; for ticket packages, visit tiff.net/festival.
[Courtesy: The Vancouver Sun]
August 12, 2011
Conversation about this article
1: Parvin (Santa Clara, California, U.S.A.), August 12, 2011, 1:53 PM.
Well, this is all good, would have been hundred times better, if the lead role would have been played by a Sikh guy, rather than ...
2: Inderjeet (Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.), August 27, 2011, 2:14 PM.
Parvin ... tolerance, please.
3: Raj Singh (London, United Kingdom), October 22, 2011, 10:28 AM.
This film from its trailer looked like total tripe. And the script, written by the lead actor, may teach us a lesson or two in scriptwriting. Get a professional, do research on Sikhi, so as to avoid total the stereotypes already concocted by the mainstream media.