THE SAVER

Fern is a 16-year-old aboriginal girl. She lives with her mother, who works hard as a cleaning woman for welloff clients. When her mother dies of a sudden heart attack, Fern finds herself isolated from the world and runs away from social services. Inspired by a self-help book, she saves every penny, does every little job she can get, hoards anything she can find with some value. Her goal: get rich, maybe even a millionaire, to escape her situation and a life like her mother’s. Some people help, others try to sabotage her, but nothing can deter her. Set in a wintry, multicultural, bilingual Montreal, this drama may seem stark at first. But it’s anything but: The Saver is optimistic, even uplifting, to its core. Rejecting victimhood, Fern mourns her mother in her own obstinate way, defying social expectations and reductive clichés. The result is a deeply moving, subtle, original but not overly sentimental portrait of a teenager; the film dares to take on difficult topics and a painful historical legacy. Its young star, Imajyn Cardinal, is a revelation.