A Penticton-based film will soon be premiering at the local box office, after making its way through film festivals last year.
Making her feature directorial debut is Canadian filmmaker Caitlyn Sponheimer, who is a Directors Guild of Canada nominee, Reykjavik Talent Lab alumna and Telefilm Canada and Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient.
Wild Goat Surf is a film about a young skater girl who is growing up in an RV park with her mother in the summer of 2003. She dreams of making it to the ocean, like her father, who was a pro surfer.
Filming took place in Penticton in August 2022, which Sponheimer said was amazing.
"We were kind of behind every day just because we were shooting with kids," she said. "We added a few extra days, which I was so grateful that we were able to do that, because you can't always do that with film. So that was nice, we got everything we needed. "
"I don't think filming is ever what you expect it. I think you kind of [want to] be so prepared, that when things fall apart — because something will go wrong — you hopefully have a good enough team and plan that you can keep going forward."
The film is described as a "character-driven, coming-of-age story exploring the themes of parental loss, the power of friendship, and how our childhoods shape our future."
Sponheimer said she thinks there are themes in the film that anyone could resonate with in a personal way.
"I think it's impossible to make something that doesn't have a piece of you in it for anybody," she added. "So many themes that are universal, just struggles to fit in or having dreams you want to achieve."
"That motorhome in the film is my family's motorhome and that campground is where we would vacation out to every year. We stayed for at least a month. So that part of the story is very close to home, and just spending so much time in Penticton."
She also wanted to make sure the Penticton was seen as-is, not portraying another town.
"It feels really nice to show a very unique Canadian landscape and a really cool [place] to me. I really love Penticton, this town in between two lakes and I really feel in many ways I grew up there even though we would just go for our summers," she said.
"The really interesting thing about the Okanagan is people don't really know about it. I was living in Montreal and Toronto for a while, and a lot of people hadn't heard of the Okanagan Valley and this kind of orchard wine country in the middle of Canada that gets like 35C to 40C degrees."
Alongside writing and directing the film, Sponheimer is also a producer and acts in it.
Having premiered at the Vancouver International Film Fest in September, Sponheimer said there were a lot of very positive reactions and some very unexpected emotional reactions.
"I had an older man come up to me in tears, just saying he wished he had seen a positive storyline for queer young people when he was a teenager. So that was a very unexpected and cool to hear."
A big point of the film for Sponheimer was to host a positive space for queer storytelling, where the queer character's storyline isn't about their sexuality, and it's also not condemned, but celebrated.
"People should come see it, because it's a local Canadian film shot in their city and it's really fun film. It's a really beautiful film," she said.
"I think everyone [in Penticton] should feel proud of what their city did for us."
Wild Goat Surf will be hitting theatres on May 3. A big premiere event will be hosted at the Penticton Landmark Cinemas on May 2 with a celebratory party, red carpet and all the cast and filmmakers in attendance. The film will also be hosting a Vancouver premiere.
Keep an eye out for more details to come on movie showtimes.
