Franky Winter (Josh Wiggins) and Ballas Kohl (Darren Mann) have been best friends since childhood. They are high school royalty: handsome, stars of the swim team and popular with girls. They live a perfect teenage life – until the night of Franky’s epic 17th birthday party, when Franky and Ballas are involved in an unexpected incident that changes their lives forever. Giant Little Ones is a heartfelt and intimate coming-of-age story about friendship, self-discovery and the power of love without labels. A sensitive and touching look at that point in adolescence when freedom is both intoxicating and terrifying, and feelings are both elegiac and erotic.

Adolescents face enormous pressure to make life-defining decisions every day and they want to lock in their identities sooner than later. All of this pressure is exacerbated by physical and social changes. Franky is under more pressure than most. His life was altered when his father (Kyle MacLachlan) left his mother (Maria Bello) for a man. Franky is left confused and angry toward his father for breaking up the family. Things are further confused for Franky when his wild birthday party ends in a sexual encounter no one could have imagined, including his best friend and girlfriend. As Franky’s world crumbles, he and his friends are forced to decide what kind of people they want to be.

Kyle MacLachlan and Maria Bello star alongside up-and-comers Josh Wiggins (2018 TIFF Rising Star), Darren Mann (Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and Taylor Hickson (Syfy’s Deadly Class) in Director Keith Behrman’s Giant Little Ones, a coming-of-age story about the power of love without labels. Hickson plays Ballas’s sister, who shares a past with Franky.  Bello,  who plays Franky’s mother and is an executive producer, wrote the book, Whatever… Love Is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves, after telling her 12-year-old son that she was in a relationship with a woman. 

It’s the second feature by Toronto/Vancouver writer/director Keith Behrman (award-winning Flower &Garnet).  Producer is Allison Black (Mean Dreams). The film received three DGC (Directors Guild of Canada) nominations, won the Vancouver Film Critics Circle’s Best Screenplay for a Canadian Film and made TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten list.

Giant Little Ones opens March 29, 2019 at the Bell TIFF Lightbox Theatre, 350 King Street West, Toronto

Tickets

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, lifestyle, entertainment and hospitality. He has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He enjoys discovering delicious eats, tasting spirited treats, and being mesmerized by musical beats.