Still, it's a powerful story well told and acted, and a really vivid depiction of the Toronto Caribbean community. It's really deliberate pace slows down a bit too much in the last half hour, and since we sort of see everything from Johnson's perspective, it has trouble making his motives as clear as everyone else's.

It alternates between the two timelines, showing how Pierre's restless ambition (he's involved with the nascent Toronto hip hop scene) and refusal to be anything less than a person with dignity sends him on a tragic spiral, and how the aftermath of this tragedy impacts his family a decade later. 2 An adaptation of David Chariandy 's award-winning novel Brother, 3 the film centres on the relationship between Francis and Michael, two Black Canadian brothers growing up in the Scarborough district of Toronto, Ontario in the early 1990s. This film is really beautifully shot, creating a really vivid sense of place, and it's wonderfully acted by the three leads. Brother is a 2022 Canadian drama film, written, produced, and directed by Clement Virgo. When Johnson's ex-girlfriend Kiana Madeira comes to visit, she initiates a chain of events that breaches the cocoon of grief that Johnson and Blake are living in. Flashing forward 10 years, we learn that Pierre has died and Blake has been nearly catatonic with grief for a decade. Their mother (Marsha Stephanie Blake), a Jamaican immigrant, works long hours to support the boys, so Pierre becomes a de facto guardian for Johnson.