TIFF spotlight: Connor Jessup and ‘Boy’

TORONTO – The Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing. Here’s a look at a Canadian project trying to break through at the 11-day movie marathon:

Film: “Boy”

Synopsis: This short film follows the spirit of a boy who dies in a bicycle accident, and then silently trails a classmate home from school.

Director: Connor Jessup

Hometown: Toronto

Age: 21

The backstory: Jessup is a former kid actor whose credits include the indie film “Blackbird” and sci-fi TV series “Falling Skies.” He next appears in the second season of ABC/CTV’s “American Crime.” He also stars in the Canadian TIFF feature “Closet Monster.”

On learning to direct: “It’s one of the advantages of being on sets for most of your adolescence. You can go to film school and it can be helpful and you can learn a lot, especially theoretically, but a lot of it is just like the day-to-day, etiquette and working (routine) — how a crew functions, what different people’s jobs are. And that’s something you learn being around those people, so that’s been a great fortune of mine.”

On TIFF’s decision to combine Canadian and international shorts into the same program this year: “I always thought that as great as it was that TIFF was and continues to support Canadian films … there’s something about putting films in a Canadian section that felt a little ghettoized to me. It felt like that was a whole section of movies people could write off.”