Here is one for the locals. Our friends at Toronto True Crime Film Festival are returning, not with a fesival but year-round programming at one of the city's hallowed venues, the Hot Docs Cinema. They are kicking of the programming with a screening of the outrageous festival circuit fave, The Pez Outlaw.
Join Toronto True Crime as they drop the ‘Film Festival’ from their name and usher in a new era of exciting year-round programming at Hot Docs Cinema!This unforgettable underdog story follows the adventures of Steve Glew, a small-town Michigan man who embarks on a risky and lucrative venture: smuggling rare European Pez dispensers into the United States by the thousands and making millions in the process. Will he finally be able to pull his family out of debt and quit his monotonous, mind-numbing job? Not if his arch-nemesis "The Pezident" (CEO of Pez USA) has anything to say about it!Expertly crafted by the team behind Bitconned, Alabama Snake and The Legend of Cocaine Island, this film isn’t your ordinary true crime fare. The Pez Outlaw is a genre-bending, stranger-than-fiction documentary that is filled to the brim with colourful characters (including Glew playing himself in stylized reenactments of his escapades), dripping with irresistible charm, and more wild than the Wonka chocolate factory!The Pez Outlaw received Special Jury Recognition at SXSW and was the winner of Fantasia Film Festival’s Audience Award for Best Documentary as well as Calgary International Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award in the International Documentary Feature section. Hot Docs event page
Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel will participate in a post-screening Q&A with Toronto True Crime's Lisa Gallagher. The screening is happening on Thursday, February 29th and you can buy your tickets here.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Some of the team at Toronto True Crime are also on the programming team with me at Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival, where we screened The Pez Outlaw back in 2022. Don't know why anyone would be bothered about us helping our friends get word out about their other projects but we thought we'd mention this connection before something gets peturbed enough to make us the subject of someone else's documentary.