Brother

Clement Virgo's 2023 Canadian film adapts David Chariandy's novel. Francis and Michael, sons of Caribbean immigrants growing up in Scarborough in Toronto, meet questions of masculinity, identity and family, with the hip hop scene of the early 1990s setting the atmosphere. As tensions escalate, a chain of events begins that changes the brothers' lives permanently. Virgo moves the story across three time frames and withholds what happened; that structure shows, through form, how grief fractures memory. The brotherhood between Aaron Pierre and Lamar Johnson is the film's strongest element. The mother played by Marsha Stephanie Blake carries the cost of immigrant parenthood quietly. The film showed at the Toronto International Film Festival and won best film at the Canadian Screen Awards. Who it's for: viewers who like Canadian independent cinema, immigrant family stories and literary adaptations. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding content about police violence and death by shooting, or who will struggle with a fragmented timeline.