North of Normal

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Based on her riveting memoir, North of Normal follows Cea Sunrise Person’s
unconventional childhood in the wilderness, her complicated relationship with her
perpetually pot-smoking teen mom, and her incredible path to a version of normalcy
on the runways of Paris.

Having spent her early years in a wilderness commune founded in the 1970s by her anti-establishment grandfather Dick (Robert Carlyle), Cea (initially River Price-Maenpaa, then Amanda Fix) is forced to shed her alternative upbringing and acclimatize to civilization when her mother, Michelle (Sarah Gadon), tires of Dick’s chauvinistic reign. Granted, this doesn’t keep Michelle from careening between bad romances as she and Cea carve out a nomadic existence.

CBC podcast NORTH OF NORMAL

'North of Normal' Review: Carly Stone delivers a poignant adaptation

Review includeds TIFF interview!

In the late 1960s, when ideology-based communes and experimental living situations were sprouting everywhere, a counterculture American couple, weary of ‘corporate America’ and ‘establishment values,’ moved to the western Canadian wilderness to live what they viewed as a more free, natural lifestyle. They brought their pregnant teenage daughter, Michelle, who soon afterwards gave birth to a daughter. That daughter, Cea Sunrise Person, went on to become a model and fashion entrepreneur and eventually to write a bestselling memoir of her life with this unusual family, one that was by turns humourous and bitter. Director Carly Stone’s latest film, North of Normal, is an adaptation of that memoir, one that captures the tone and the mixed feelings of the original book and the emotional adventure that was Cea’s upbringing.

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