Vengeance Is Mine Leading Lights

Michael Roemer’s Vengeance Is Mine follows Jo, a troubled young woman who returns to her Rhode Island hometown to confront childhood wounds. Jo is ostensibly there to reconnect with her dying adoptive mother, but instead finds herself drawn into the life of her neighbour. What begins as an attempt to confront one family’s past gradually becomes entangled with another family’s dysfunction.

There is once again a spiritual similarity on the surface to the plot of my film and this one that I really love: the importance of place, and, for me in particular, shooting on Vancouver Island, specifically where I grew up in Nanaimo. The contrast between the visual beauty of a landscape and the internal familial dysfunction. The attempt to face unprocessed grief by essentially travelling back to where we came from.

I found a wonderful kinship with the way Roemer allows the story to evolve. The film doesn’t take you where you expect, but it never abandons you entirely. The emotion builds in such a delicate way. I found permission to trust the audience, regardless of the expectations of genre. This grounds the film in a cumulative effect, and by the end you’re hit with an emotional punch that feels earned rather than forced.

Sophy Romvari, Leading Lights Guest Programmer