Janvier's first feature pays homage to '90s indie films and rental shops
Writer and director Eric Janvier wants to resuscitate '90s indie film with Last Stop Video Rentals, his first feature that will premiere at the Edmonton International Film Festival at Landmark Cinemas downtown.
"(The 1990s) was the last great era of independent cinema," Janvier, 36, told Taproot. "I'm not saying we don't have great indie films today, but that was a time when you could make a movie with $30,000 in your pocket and a couple (of) friends. Then it becomes a hit, and it kick-starts your career. We don't see that anymore."
Janvier shot Last Stop Video Rentals at the Movie World rental store in Stony Plain. The story follows a day in the life of Nick Young (Yassine Fatmi El Fassi El Fihri) as he navigates getting dumped and tries to get to the opening night of the Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace — all while getting called in to his job at the titular video store.
The video store setting reflects Janvier's youth renting videos from such stores in the '90s and points to his ongoing love for '90s indie cinema. He said he's been renting from Movie World weekly since 2019. "I really wanted this film to feel like, if you walked down the aisle of a video store in 1999 or 2000, you would see this film there," he said. "You'd pick it up and watch it, and you would really feel like this was another movie from the '90s. That's the biggest part of why I wanted to shoot on film."
Janvier opted for 16mm film rather than digital to ensure Last Stop Video Rentals feels authentic to the '90s. He also chose black and white rather than colour. He built his nearly $350,000 budget around using film, as celluloid is far more expensive than digital. The budget is made up of approximately $35,000 from Edmonton Screen (which told Taproot this is the largest investment the organization made in a film at EIFF this year), $45,000 from the Indigenous Screen Office, and $250,000 from Telefilm Canada's Talent to Watch program.
"The Talent to Watch program is actually a very big deal for a lot of filmmakers," Janvier said. "It's one of the most competitive funding streams in the Canadian film industry. People are really shocked that we got it on our first try."
Janvier said some of his reference points for the film are '90s auteurs Kevin Smith (who made Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy, and is mentioned by name in the film), Robert Rodriguez, and Richard Linklater. (Incidentally, two new Linklater films will screen at EIFF — Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague.)
Edmonton has a particularly dedicated film industry, where people are willing to step in and help on scrappy projects that don't pay the same as working on a "service" crew, Janvier said; those crews tend to cater to out-of-town productions like The Last of Us, he added. Accordingly, he recruited friends and family for much of the cast and creative team. His younger cousin, Sequoia Janvier, plays JD, a main character with a memorable, scatological plotline. Sequoia has had his own success as a voice actor for some animated series produced by PBS. "I like to say it's reverse-nepotism," the director joked.
Janvier is nonetheless finding his own momentum. In addition to the Telefilm funding and recognition, he served as a producer for Cody Lightning's Hey, Viktor!, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was among the headliners at EIFF in 2023. And while Janvier wrote the original draft of Last Stop a decade ago, he's now working on four further scripts, including one about the day portrayed in Last Stop from another character's perspective and in a completely different setting.
Beyond Last Stop, which has a sold-out screening on Sept. 28 and an encore on Oct. 2, EIFF will host more films with direct links to the Edmonton region, such as Buffet Infinity(which already has a distribution deal), Singhs in the Ring, Bif Naked, and Have You Heard of Judi Singh?. All films and showtimes at EIFF are available online.
