Clement Virgo says he wanted to ‘create a space of my own’ with Steal Away.

If his 2022 Scarborough-set drama Brother marked something of a homecoming for Toronto filmmaker Clement Virgo after a long stretch working in American television, then his follow-up feature Steal Away is another defiant departure.

Loosely based on Karolyn Smardz Frost’s non-fiction book Steal Away Home , which chronicles the journey of a teenage slave named Cecelia Reynolds from Kentucky to Canada and back again, Virgo’s film is half Afrofuturistic fairy tale, half psychosexual potboiler, and entirely impossible to pinpoint geographically.

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Mallori Johnson and Angourie Rice star in Steal Away, loosely based on Karoly

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