''Waydowntown'' (stylized as ''waydowntown'') is a 2000

Canadian film The cinema of Canada dates back to the earliest known display of film in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, in 1896. The film industry in Canada has been dominated by the United States, which has utilized Canada as a shooting location and to bypass Britis ...

directed by Gary Burns and starring

Fab Filippo Fabrizio "Fab" Filippo (born November 30, 1973) is a Canadian actor. Personal life Filippo was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His parents are first generation Italian immigrants (his mother is from Campora San Giovanni in Calabria). He bri ...

Don McKellar Don McKellar (born August 17, 1963) is a Canadian actor, writer, playwright, and filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. He is known for directing and writing th ...

, Marya Delver and Michelle Beaudoin. The film is a

dark comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...

that explores office culture and its effects and often uses

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

to achieve its thematic goals. The film is set in

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

, Alberta, where many downtown buildings are connected by the

Plus 15 The Plus 15 or +15 is a skyway network in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is the world's most extensive pedestrian skywalk system, with a total length of 16 kilometres (10 miles) and 86 bridges connecting 130 buildings, as of 2022. Calgary often h ...

, an extensive network of indoor

skywalk The SkyWalk is an approximately 160 metre enclosed walkway connecting Union Station to the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre (SkyDome) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Part of Toronto's PATH network, the SkyWalk passes above the York Street ' s ...

s. Because of this network, the hustle and bustle of the traditional "main street" has been replaced by recirculated air, food courts, and fluorescent lights. The result is a bleak and often humorous

about Canadian corporate culture.

Plot

The film centres on a group of office colleagues in downtown Calgary, Alberta, who bet a month's salary on who can last the longest without going outside by using the system of covered walkways that connect the buildings. The film takes place over one lunch hour on day 24 of the month-long competition. Things start to become complicated as the office prepares for the company founder's retirement party. The film's title is derived from a particular form of suicide where one smashes the (non-openable) window of one's high-rise office and then jumps through. In the movie, one of the characters has accumulated a 2-litre pop bottle full of marbles in the hopes of breaking his window. The dark joke for this is referenced in the film : "a 15 bus takes you downtown, uta bottle of marbles takes you way downtown."

Cast

as Tom Bennett *

as Brad * Marya Delver as Sandra West * Gordon Currie as Curt Schwin *Jennifer Clement as Vicki * Tammy Isbell as Kathy *Tobias Godson as Randy *James McBurney as Phil

Production

The majority of the film was shot in TD Square, the

Calgary Eaton Centre The Core (stylized the CORE Shopping Centre), which consists of TD Square, the Holt Renfrew building, the Lancaster building (Simons), the Stephen Avenue Place shops, Scotia Centre, and the former Calgary Eaton Centre, is the dominant shopping ...

, and

Bankers Hall Bankers Hall is a building complex located in downtown Calgary, Alberta, which includes twin 52-storey office towers (197 metres high), designed by the architectural firm Cohos Evamy in postmodern architectural style. The first building, known ...

. The company's offices are situated in the TD Canada Trust Tower. The low-budget film was shot digitally and later transferred to 35 mm.

Reception

The film has a 70% freshness rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

. Most critics praise the satirical elements, casting, and plot. Others find the film to be humourless and incomplete, and the plot to be too nonsensical and uninteresting. The film won the Best Canadian Film Award prize at the 2000

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...

. In 2001, an industry poll conducted by '' Playback'' named it the 10th best Canadian film of the preceding 15 years. The film was shown at the

Calgary International Film Festival The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, in late September and early October. CIFF is the largest international film festival in Alberta and the sixth largest in Canada. In 2020, thei ...

on September 19, 2019, to celebrate its 20th anniversary. In 2023, Barry Hertz of ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

'' named the film as one of the 23 best Canadian comedy films ever made. In 2025, in celebration of the film's 25th anniversary, the film was shown at

Revue Cinema The Revue Cinema is a cinema in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Built between late-1911 and early-1912, it is a designated 'heritage' site and is Toronto's oldest standing movie theatre in use for showing movies. When news of its closure became public, ...

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

as part of the 11th annual

National Canadian Film Day National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

References

External links