Hey, Toronto has a new mayor! And for the first time in thirteen years, it’s someone who actually might care about all of its residents rather than just the ones she knows personally. Gives one hope, it does.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, I welcome author and actor Priya Guns, who starred opposite Devery Jacobs in V.T. Nayani’s This Place, which premiered at TIFF last fall and returns to the Lightbox next Friday for a special screening with Nayani, Devery and co-star Golshan Abdmoulaie in attendance.

It’s a tender and moving love story, and it’s also about how hard it is to live in Toronto if you don’t have money or status; that’s a theme I’m seeing in quite a few films this year, as it happens, and I hope Olivia’s election last night lets next year’s crop be a little more hopeful.

But mostly Priya wanted to talk about Boots Riley’s audacious debut Sorry to Bother You, a politically charged satire about capitalism and exploitation (and, um, horse DNA) which landed like a hand grenade on the cinematic landscape in the summer of 2018 … and then just sort of disappeared from the conversation when Disney acquired Fox. But it’s still out there, and it’s still brilliant, and Priya had a great deal to say about it.

Go listen! Subscribe on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  or download it directly from the web to avoid the eyes of the prison-horse-industrial complex.

And then you should catch up to the latest Shiny Things, where I wrote about Criterion’s new 4K release of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and — once again — the renewed relevance of physical media after the  latest round of streaming deletions. (Snap up that Star Trek: Prodigy set while you still can, kids.)

You’ll need a subscription to read it, but fortunately I have a 14-day free trial offer right here! I know, I know. I’m the best.