People don’t believe me, but working for TIFF is so much easier than covering it.

Attending a film festival as a journalist and critic is a gauntlet — three weeks of prep, ten days of screenings and interviews — and it’s exhausting.

On the programming side, it’s months of work, but all the hard stuff — the screenings, the inviting (and the passing), negotiating the various logistics — was finished weeks ago. The festival is the celebration, the part where we introduce the movies to audiences and the larger world, and I tell you, it is the most fun I will have all year. It turns out I really love this job.

And one of the movies I’m most excited to put in front of a crowd is Shook, the feature debut of Amar Wala, who joins me for this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie. It’s a charming, spiky and unapologetically authentic movie about a young writer figuring himself out in today’s Toronto, and people are going to love it.

Amar picked Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, with which his own film has certain emotional resonances, even though the characters and storylines are completely different. I’ll just say this: Saamer Usmani’s Ash and Awkwafinia’s Billi would have a lot to talk about if they ever ran into each other in an airport.

It’s a fun conversation, and you should listen in. Subscribe at all the usual spots — Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts —or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you sit in  impotent silence at a family gathering. We’ve all been there.

Also, I’m still keeping up with the Shiny Thingses — the next couple of weeks may be spotty, but last week I wrote about Ishana Night  Shyamalan’s The Watchers, just released on 4K by Warner Home Entertainment, and Robert Rodriguez’ Mariachi Trilogy, newly remastered and reissued in an impressive boxed set from Arrow Video. Go on, subscribe! You know you want to.