REEL | Britt Lower Shelves the 'Darkest Miriam' x CFF 2025

"I will call you darkest Miriam from now on."

Canadian Film Festival

Sophomore writer/director Naomi Jaye adapts the experimental novel, The Incident Report by Canadian poet Martha Baillie, in the introspective romantic drama Darkest Miriam. Starring Britt Lower as the understated eponymous Toronto librarian, the quietly introspective film is a naturalistic exploration of social anxieties in public spaces.

Tom Mercier, as Miriam's Slovenian painter love interest, complements Lower's soulful performance sublimely. Familiar Canadian faces, Sook-Yin Lee and Jean Yoon, appear in small roles as co-workers who add to the offbeat urban portrait of the fictional Allan Gardens branch of the Toronto Public Library system.

Elements of paranoia, isolation, grief, and loneliness permeate Darkest Miriam's slice-of-life sense of everyday discomfort. There's a distancing but stylish quality to Jaye's stark direction and literary character study. Structured through the random (often disadvantaged) people Miriam sees daily and a series of incident reports she files at work, the film turns its sadness into a greater artistic tapestry of repressed emotions.

Darkest Miriam screened at both the 2024 Whistler Film Festival as part of the Canadian Made program and as the opening night film of the 2025 Canadian Film Festival in Toronto.


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