''Adrianne and the Castle'' is a 2024 Canadian documentary film, directed by

Shannon Walsh Shannon Walsh is a Canadian filmmaker, writer and scholar. She has directed the feature documentaries ''The Gig Is Up'', ''H2Oil'' , ''À St-Henri, le 26 août'', ''Jeppe on a Friday'' and ''Illusions of Control''. She has also directed music vi ...

Premise

The film profiles Alan St. George, a man who maintains his home in rural

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

as a shrine to his late wife Adrianne, including musical re-enactments of scenes from their earlier lives together performed by actors Nathan McDonald and SLee.

Release

The film premiered at the 2024

SXSW South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

festival, and had its Canadian premiere at the 2024

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and Jun ...

. It also screened as the opening film of the 2024

DOXA Documentary Film Festival The DOXA Documentary Film Festival is a documentary film festival based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is held annually held for 10 days in May, and is presented by The Documentary Media Society, a non-profit organization. The festiv ...

, prior to playing at the

28th Fantasia International Film Festival The 28th Fantasia International Film Festival was held from 18 July to 4 August 2024 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Juries Compétition Cheval Noir * Matt Johnson (director), Matt Johnson, Canadian filmmaker – Jury President * Steve Dollar, ...

on July 20, 2024.

Critical reception

''Adrianne & the Castle'' received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its emotional depth and visual storytelling. On ''

RogerEbert.com ''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times ...

'', Clint Worthington wrote: "For all its wistful magic, ''Adrianne & the Castle'' is a film about grief and what happens when you lose the very thing that defined your life up to that point. Grading the film A- on '' IndieWire'', Lauren Wissot wrote: "Personally, I saw ''Adrianne & The Castle'' as a queer hetero love story between a female drag queen and her submissive partner, even if that very 21st century assessment feels totally out of sync with the couple’s turn-of-the-20th-century aristocratic lifestyle. And yet the ambiguity of Walsh’s film is also the greatest strength of the intoxicating story it tells in such intimate and specific detail, a story whose moral is to throw such mundane thinking aside and embrace the higher truth that love conquers all — doubt and death alike."

References

External links

* 2024 films 2024 documentary films Canadian musical documentary films 2020s Canadian films English-language Canadian films {{2020s-Canada-documentary-film-stub