Ewa Goes Viral
Genre: Satire, Meta-Cinema
Synopsis: Frustrated with a Canadian film industry that repeatedly typecasts her due to a barely-detectable accent, Ewa learns to make the most out of what makes her different… but not before she confronts an online troll.
Erik Anderson is an orphan of Canadian cinema. Self taught, he began making short films out of pocket in 2002, and by 2011 completed his first no-budget feature while pursuing an Honours Degree in Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. His latest no-budget feature, the meta-modernist 4-hour epic, ‘My Thesis Film: A Thesis Film by Erik Anderson,’ started as his MFA graduate film at York University, and was named as one of Canada’s Top Ten features in 2019 by The Globe & Mail. His most recent film, the short satire ‘Ewa Goes Viral,’ debuted at the 40th FIN Atlantic International Film Festival, and has since been nominated for three LEO Awards.
Ewa and I used to get together for beers every so often. The topic of conversation was always the same: how difficult it was to get anywhere in the Canadian film industry. I had my gripes as a filmmaker: finding funding, getting festivals to watch their submissions, etc. And Ewa had hers as well: she wasn’t finding any satisfying parts as an actor… and she was pretty sure it was because of her face. Her face, she explained, is instantly identifiable as Eastern European. Thus, she always ended up playing Russians. But she’s not Russian… and I couldn’t tell that about her face.
Now, if you’re like me, you might feel there’s something oddly amusing in all this. If you’re like Ewa, there’s no humour in this to be found. But if you’re like me again, you might feel there’s ALSO something amusing in NOT finding anything amusing about it. So I set out to make something that would please both of us… something about feeling overlooked in the industry, feeling gripe-y about it, yet finding the resilience to press onwards anyway.
And then while I was writing, a funny thing happened… Ewa went viral.
Notes
Erik Anderson is an orphan of Canadian cinema. Self taught, he began making short films out of pocket in 2002, and by 2011 completed his first no-budget feature while pursuing an Honours Degree in Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. His latest no-budget feature, the meta-modernist 4-hour epic, ‘My Thesis Film: A Thesis Film by Erik Anderson,’ started as his MFA graduate film at York University, and was named as one of Canada’s Top Ten features in 2019 by The Globe & Mail. His most recent film, the short satire ‘Ewa Goes Viral,’ debuted at the 40th FIN Atlantic International Film Festival, and has since been nominated for three LEO Awards.