Synopsis
It was easy, until they made it legal.
When cannabis becomes legal in Canada, boutique weed dealer Anne Banting is swiftly run out of business by the biggest gangsters in town - the government.
Canadian Strain
2019 Directed by Geordie Sabbagh
Cast
Director
Producer
Writer
Cinematography
Production Design
Composer
Genre
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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Canada
Digital
17 Mar 2020
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Canada14A
Releases by Country
Canada
07 Dec 2019
- Theatrical Premiered at the Whistler Film Festival
17 Mar 2020
- Digital14A iTunes
Popular reviews
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If this movie is about weed, then why does the lead character prefer whine?
72 minutes of complaining, 3 minutes of problem-solving.
Acting so good, I actually visualized the script ghostly scrolling over the cast as they said their lines.
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so bad. the film is so embarrassingly inaccurate on how what balling up before and around 2018 was like. i dont buy any of the performances or mise-en-scène; it looks like they filmed a bunch of upper middle-class toronto millennials pretending to be drug dealers. everyone creatively responsible for this film lack any semblance of street smarts or literacy in the topic.
(the screenwriter is probably the type of person to complain they broke even though mom and dad pay for Uber eats).
legalization and its effects on the black market and canadian communities, in this case toronto, is such a complicated and intricate story, yet this film eradicates any of the factual humanity associated with it, instead opting to…
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The lead actress is good, and this is a solidly put together film. Just suffers a bit from low production costs, dullness and improbability.
In a matter of days, Anne goes from realizing she might lose customers when day of legalization comes around (Monday, Oct 17, 2018), to getting and quitting a job with the government, to becoming a hard drug dealer, to getting kicked out of her apartment! When was her rent due? The 17th of October? Weird day of the month. And if her business was so good, how could she not survive one day with a loss of customers before becoming homeless?
I did appreciate the very Canadian setting, though.
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I have a cold so this is what I am doing today.
Read this review too bc it also covers really important stuff too: here
Why is Anne so… stubborn. Like, so many people are giving her decent advice on how to not be fuckin’ homeless and she’s just like “yeah but I wanna just be the same old dealer why is it so hard”. Dude, rules have changed, simply being upset isn’t gonna pay the rent. Ya gotta work at the CDCBO bc your middle-class clients OBVIOUSLY are switching to government stuff. They didn’t buy from you before bc you’re cute, they did it bc you were the easiest source for it. This isn’t their fault it’s just very…
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This wasn't at all as funny as I thought this film was gonna be it was more of a drama.
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Usually, films with drugs are funny, but not this one. Did not laugh once, one tiny giggle at Gilf. but the rest was mehh
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- All the actors are clearly more well-versed in theatre
- The random newsreel footage adds literally nothing
- I don’t think they had a tripod on set
- Does watching this movie officially make me a Colin Mocherie stan? -
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This was funny and entertaining. The ideal movie to watch on Canada Day. Jess Salgueiro does a good job in the lead role and I enjoyed all the Canadian references. Definitely worth checking out.
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It was a landmark period for Canadian history in October of 2018 when Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government decriminalized the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes. However, the legalization came with a major catch, as the sale of cannabis was to be heavily regulated by the government, with the initial plan in Ontario being the implementation of government-run retailers, not unlike the LCBO or Beer Store, both of which of featured in brief history lessons in Canadian Strain, which also includes a number of archive entrepreneur videos, including one promoting an “Ontario and You” handbook.
While Canadian Strain is a largely fictionalized depiction of what happened after legalization, it does play off some actual events, specifically how there were real crackdowns…