Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)

Growing up means getting even.

In 1976, a Mi'gMaq teenager plots revenge against the sadistic Indian agent who imprisoned her in a residential school where rape and abuse are common.

Date of release
2013-09-09
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (46)
Runtime
1h 26m
Genres
Drama, Crime
Director
Jeff Barnaby

Casting

Interesting facts

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is a 2013 Canadian independent drama film and the feature-film debut of writer-director Jeff Barnaby. Set in 1976 on the fictional Red Crow Mi'kmaq reservation, it takes place in the context of the Canadian residential school system.

Production

In a press release following the films announcement, Barnaby noted that he was "one of the rare Indians whose introduction to his heritage on film did not come from a misrepresented stereotype but from another native filmmaker whose subject was a member of [his] own community." This was in reference to documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin's visit to his home community on the Mi'kmaq reserve of Listuguj in 1981; Obomsawin had come to document th…

Speaking to the CBC ahead of the film's premiere, Barnaby stated that his choice to pursue Rhymes came as an attempt to "deviate from the 'hyper-masculine' stories [he had] tackled in the past", with Aila's character being inspired by the "'strong, hard-headed women' in his life".

Rhymes for Young Ghouls was first envisioned in 2010 amid the premiere of Barnaby's short film File Under Miscellaneous at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). CFC Features from the Canadian Film Centre was the first group to support the project in development, followed soon after by the Quebec government's Society for the Development of Cultural Enterprises (SODEC), the Quebec Arts Council, Telefilm, and the Harold Greenberg Fund.

Prospector Films of Montreal produced the film, which was shot from 21 October to 22 November 2012. It was announced to the public on 23 October, 2012. The pre-production and production phases took place on the Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve and in Montreal. Post-production occurred through the first half of 2013 in Montreal.

The first character to be cast in the film was Mi'kmaq actor and musician Glen Gould, a regular partner of Barnaby's, as Joseph. Out of a pool of 70 actresses from across North America, then-19-year old Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs was chosen to play the role of Aila. Following Barnaby's death from cancer in 2022, Jacobs noted that, "[h]aving nearly given up on this career, he not only took a chance on me, but fought relentlessly to cast me...".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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