***Advanced tickets for Saturday, June 21 at 11:30 p.m. have sold out.  Standby tickets will be available at the AFI Silver box office approximately 45 minutes prior to showtime.  Tickets are not guaranteed and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.***

Guy Maddin grew up in Winnipeg. Fact. Winnipeg is located near the geographic center of North America. Fact. Winnipeg is the coldest major city in the western hemisphere. Fact. Guy Maddin’s mother is “a force as strong as all the trains in Winnipeg.” Well, maybe not.

Both surreal documentary and “docu-fantasia,” as the filmmaker has aptly described it, MY WINNIPEG is Maddin’s most hilarious and personal film to date. A tribute to the hometown that has enchanted and intoxicated him since birth, Maddin proclaims, “It's been my muse since long before I ever picked up a camera.”

Framed as a goodbye letter, Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr, who also stood in for Maddin in COWARDS BEND THE KNEE) moves away after spending his entire 50 years in Winnipeg. He boards a train to escape his city, its ghosts, and, of course, his mother (brilliantly performed by Ann Savage). With ecstatic irreverence, Maddin disregards the lines between documentary and fiction, between reality and myth, between private rumination and collective history. He merges archival footage with personal home movies and delirious re-enactment. The film captures a certain truth, but primarily that of Maddin’s imagination.

At the heart of the film is the question of whether personal memory is any more suspect than local myth and collective history If Maddin believes what he tells us to be true, then who are we to argue with him? Whether the journey is filled with fact or fantasy—or some combination of the two—it is well worth the ride.

—Sky Sitney