Vancouver is often described as Hollywood North, so named for its tendency to play other cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Tokyo. A Welcome Distraction, however, is not set in Seattle, or San Francisco. Instead, it takes place right here in Vancouver, BC.
First-time Director Brian Daniel Johnson, who also wrote the film, said that he set out to construct a film that represented the neighbourhood within Vancouver where he and much of the crew were living at the time.
“[We wanted to capture] the general duality of really breathtaking nature and these cramped, bizarre urban centres …” said Johnson. “It wasn’t so much, ‘We need to make this thing that is heavily representative of Vancouver,’ but I think we wanted to make something that was representative of our neighbourhood and our community.”
A Welcome Distraction, part of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s “Northern Lights” lineup, is the story of Ernest Prinze “doing whatever he can to avoid his family.” Recently single and spiralling, he begins experimenting with drugs, then finds himself falling in with a group who seem to have some cultish tendencies. The film mainly centres Ernest’s struggles, as well as his increasingly strained friendship with his dealer, Nolan. Throughout the film we watch Prinze’s relationship with his family and friends strain more and more as he pushes away everybody except for those he meets through the group. As the movie progresses, the audience wonders: How far is this going to go?
The movie feels like a love letter to the city of Vancouver, and is indeed full of local references. The Cambie Bridge, Chinatown and Andy Livingston Park all do their part to set the film firmly in the city. These locations, and the film at large, worked in harmony to invoke a sense of unease with the viewer. In the cuts from wide-open spaces to extreme close-ups on actors’ eyes, and in the cramped house parties and apartments of the characters, a sense of claustrophobia permeates the work.
This is bolstered by the soundtrack, which balances uneasy audio effects like the ringing of a bell and sudden silence with the sounds of nature like wind and birds. These effects were often heard in combination or as part of the score. The film also features an extensive local production team. Besides Johnson, Executive Producer Mike Johnston, Producers Maddy Chang and Dide Su Bilgin, Editor Sam Mohseni and Production Designer Clara Salameh are all graduates from UBC’s department of theatre and film.
Bilgin said she was involved right from the beginning, when she first read the script. She was working as a producer at a marketing agency and wanted to continue doing creative work outside of that.
“[Johnson] and I were constantly discussing, ‘How do we stay creatively motivated while in this kind of conveyor belt of work,’” said Bilgin. “My involvement started from the ground floor of seeing Brian’s script.”
Mohseni, who is now pursuing a master’s in cinema studies at York University, said he first approached Johnson about the project, not the other way around. Johnson described Mohseni’s interest in getting involved as “coming to [him] from the heavens.”
“I had heard that [Johnson] had finished shooting this film and they were looking for an editor, and I was always drawn to this project because it looked really interesting and was set in Vancouver …” said Mohseni. “I reached out to [Johnson] and said ‘Hey, we should grab drinks,’ and I told him that I would like to edit this film if you don’t have anyone.”
The whole team agreed that their time studying in the UBC film production program, whether together or in different years, offered them many opportunities that led to the building of the movie. Bilgin said that the connections she made during the program were essential.
“UBC film was the catalyst for all of us meeting,” said Bilgin. “We all got to try and see how well we worked together, which was such a huge part of that film program.”
Johnson said A Welcome Distraction was initially intended to be a series of connected short films shot over the course of several weekends. However, by the second time the team got together to shoot, he knew they were building a larger project than the initial anthology. From there, the crew continued to shoot in a similar fashion, but with a larger connected arc.
“It was a year in production and a year in post[-production], so we shot from February 2023 to March 2024,” said Johnson. “I think it was 25 days within that year block just made up of weekends and long weekends, more or less … and it was the same process for editing.”
Of course, putting together a feature film while the crew also works 9–5 jobs is no easy feat. Johnson described struggles of falling asleep while writing scenes after returning from a full day of work, and Mohseni recalled the final push through some of the last of the editing.
“I asked Brian to come stay with me in Toronto for five days … It was just my bachelor flat at York University, it was a really cool almost ‘editing boot camp,’” said Mohseni.
As for the future of the film, Johnson would like to see it go to more film festivals going into the new year, and to potentially bring it back to Vancouver in a private screening. However, he said the feeling of watching it at their three sold-out VIFF showings was “right.”
“It felt like the right way to cap off the whole production … I’m not from Vancouver but I felt very embraced by Vancouver during the making of [the film],” said Johnson. “There’s no pretence, there’s no facade, it’s not playing something else, it’s just a movie about Vancouver and it’s not ashamed of it.”
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