Description

Against the backdrop of a subdued Toronto high school, THE LOCKPICKER orbits around teenage thief Hashi, pulled along by the dull and ever-present gravity of trauma, reckoning with his hunger for intimacy, violence, and the thin boundaries between the two. With powerful visual language that weaves together harsh realism and unnerving dream-like states, Randall Okita masterfully explores a universal, burning desire for escape — to shed one’s skin, one’s pains, one’s experiences — and the impossibility of the task. Keigian Umi Tang’s performance as Hashi is haunted by loss and withdrawn, almost otherworldly, bringing to life the vulnerability, toxicity and fury of male adolescence.

Okita’s first feature infuses a coming of age narrative with the raw and experimental spirit of his previous work. Produced in partnership with a Toronto high school as a creative project, the film captures the candor of youth voices and holds space for the recursive, wound-licking trauma of forming a masculine self — to be hurt and to hurt in turn.

— Andrew Yeung

Co-presented by: Consulate General of Canada, Digital Moose Lounge

Credits

Writer: Randall Okita
Executive Producers: Jason Lapeyre, Randall Okita
Producers: Darcy Van Poelgeest, Robert Fisher, Tania Thompson, Chris Agoston
Cinematographer: Jackson Parrell
Editors: Jonathan Eagan, Mike Reisacher
Sound: Menalon, Scott Humphries
Cast: Keigian Umi Tang, Storie Serres, David Woroner, Jordan Gray

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