RKSS’s award-winning forthcoming post-apocalyptic fantasy fare, Turbo Kid, has seen quite the electric journey from its inception as a shortfilm entry to a fully-fledged and dazzling epic. The reviews are in and the fallout is nothing short of upworthy, and with the film releasing soon in select territories to expand after next month, I’m fairly certain at this point that audiences won’t be disappointed.
RAVEN BANNER RELEASING Presents
A SINISTER CINEMA PRESENTATION
FROM QUEBEC’S “ROADKILL SUPERSTAR” FILM TRIO
A FUN AND BLOODY POST-APOCALYPTIC HOMAGETURBO KID
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY FRANÇOIS SIMARD, ANOUK WHISSELL, YOANN-KARL WHISSELLRIDES INTO CANADIAN THEATRES:
AUGUST 27
CINEPLEX THEATRES – ONE NIGHT ONLY
TORONTO, VANCOUVER, OTTAWA, HAMILTON, EDMONTON, CALGARY, WINNIPEG, HALIFAXAUGUST 28
TORONTO – CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS and CARLTON CINEMAS (week runs)
OTTAWA – MAYFAIR THEATRE (limited engagement)
WATERLOO – PRINCESS THEATRE (limited engagement)
EDMONTON – METRO THEATRE (limited engagement)
VANCOUVER – RIO THEATRE (limited engagement)
KITCHENER – APOLLO THEATRE (limited engagement)
HALIFAX – CINEPLEX PARK LANE (week run)AUGUST 28 AVAILABLE ON VOD – BELL, iTUNES, ROGERS, SHAW, VIMEO
“A pitch-perfect pastiche that never mock its inspirations”- The Hollywood Reporter
“Feels like no other film in the last decade”- Slash Film
“A cult classic in the waiting” – Twitch Film
“Perhaps the most colorful film ever made with a post apocalyptic setting… a loud, energetic homage to Eighties kitsch” – Film Comment(Toronto – July 22, 2015) Imagine a Mad Max-ish world where the gas shortage has gone on just a little longer – and hard-pedaling death races take place on BMX bikes. It’s the low-tech post-apocalyptic milieu of Turbo Kid.
Set on a degraded Earth in a fictional 1997, Turbo Kid is a cartoonishly-bloody tongue-in-cheek nod to the last-humans-on-Earth genre that has delighted horror and genre fans at festivals from SXSW to Sundance.
Turbo Kid will play as part of Raven Banner’s much-acclaimed Sinister Cinema series, taking over select Cineplex locations nationwide for a one-night only screening of this instant cult favourite on August 27. The next day, August 28, the film will open for one-week runs in Toronto and Halifax, and will also have limited engagements in Ottawa, Waterloo, Edmonton, Vancouver and Kitchener.
The film will also be available on VOD platforms including Bell, iTunes, Rogers, Shaw, and Vimeo on August 28
It’s a triumphant first feature for Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissel, the Montreal filmmaking collective known as RKSS (Roadkill Superstar). The family-act (Yoann-Karl and Anouk are siblings, Anouk and Francois are married) had been making cutting-edge film shorts for a decade before their quickie adventure T Is For Turbo created a splash at the ABCs Of Death anthology contest. Pushed by the event’s producers, the Canadian/New Zealand co-production Turbo Kid was born.
Stars Munro Chambers (Degrassi: The Next Generation) as The Kid, an orphaned collector of memorabilia who roams the wasteland in search of touchstones from a past he doesn’t remember (and whose dreamworld revolves around battered comic books starring a hero named Turbo Man).
His grim routine is interrupted, however, by an oddly-childlike young woman named Apple (Laurence Lebeouf), who cheerfully but clingingly insists on being his friend. The two soon find themselves embroiled in a war-of-vengeance between a cowboy named Frederic (Aaron Jeffery) and the villain-of-villains Zeus (Michael Ironside). Add the discovery of a lost piece of super-hero technology, and you’ve got the makings of a lo-fi action mini-masterpiece.“Turbo Kid is kind of inspired by movies we grew up on,” says Yoann-Karl. “There are elements of The Goonies and (the 1983 crime/action film) BMW Bandits.”
“We were obsessed by BMX Bandits,” says Anouk.
“And there’s Road Warriors, of course,” Francois says, “and Italian rip-offs like The New Barbarians and The Bronx Warriors.”
“It’s not like we were laughing at those movies. We really wanted to honour them,” Yoann-Karl says. “We see this as a love letter and an homage.”