Toronto neighbourhood shines in ‘Lady Bird for the ‘hood’

Moving is never easy, but for some, leaving their neighbourhood might as well be no different than moving to another country. 

The comfort and allure of home, even if home has limited opportunities, sits at the core of Serville Poblete’s latest feature, Sunburn, a slow-burn, slice-of-life comedy set in and around an apartment complex in Toronto’s St. James Town.

The film just had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. 

The film chronicles a day in the life of a group of young people grappling with small questions (how to stay cool on a scorching hot day) and big ones (what to do with the rest of their lives). Instead of leaning into the drama of every young person’s existential angst, Poblete focuses on the most profound joy most inherent in youth: friendship. 

“I think I was always curious about kind of what it meant to be a boy, what it meant to kind of love your friends because I think we don’t really get to see that in the context of platonic love,” Poblete, who was born and raised in St. James Town, tells YourCityWithIN. 

The film follows multiple groups of friends, but the story centers on the dynamic between Shay (Joshua Obra) and Vince (Dashawn Blackwood), two young men coming of age on Bleecker Street. 

Their ages aren’t clear, but viewers can assume they’re in their late teens or very early twenties, still spending hot summer days pontificating on philosophical questions, trying to outrun a precocious sibling, and working up the courage to chat up another young neighbourhood woman struggling with a big decision. 

The two leads are quintessential ‘big kids,’ worrying about dating, acne and fleeing from a cockroach (a common and unwanted bedfellow in almost any high-rise), from whose perspective we get to watch a bit of youthful roughhousing. 

The film doesn’t dwell on tragedies (although it doesn’t shy away from them either), but instead focuses on the nuances of friendships, with a male friendship anchoring the story. 

Pobelete says he wanted to explore the idea of loving a friend unconditionally, and also show how darker-skinned men and young boys can be vulnerable and soft, especially in places where men are expected to conform to hyper-masculine ideals.

“I grew up in sports and toxic environments. Because I grew up as a young man in those environments, I always wanted to kind of reshape what it meant to be a young man and to grow up in these systems that kind of harm our worldview,” he says. 

“That was something I think I’ve always been interested in, so in Sunburn, that’s kind of the soul of it.”

Poblete’s detour from more traditionally “masculine” pursuits such as sports into the arts happened, he says, organically. 

“I didn’t imagine I’d be a filmmaker. I was playing sports growing up, and I kind of wanted to be a professional athlete as a kid because the two options, at least for me as a kid growing up, were either being a rapper, a singer, or an athlete.” 

Poblete said he always felt drawn to film and has fond memories of renting movies with his parents at the convenience store next to his building. Whenever he was assigned projects in school, he gravitated towards more visual and story-based elements. 

When an athletic career looked more and more out of reach, he took a job at the Wellesley Community Centre and reconnected with a friend who was maneuvering from a soccer career into acting. 

Since Poblete was taking a film course at George Brown College (which he says he did to make his mother proud), he asked his friend if he was interested in making a film and from that, his 2021 film Altar Boy was born.

Serville Poblete

After that, Poblete tackled a number of projects, directing Lovely (2024), King’s Court (2025) and the award-winning documentary In The Morning Sun (2026). 

Interestingly enough, Poblete says his chief inspiration for Sunburn, his third feature and the first one he wrote, was Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s critically acclaimed 2017 film. 

“I watched Lady Bird, and I really love that film, but I always told myself, like, I’m not a white girl from the suburbs, so why am I resonating with this film? And I just realized, you know, that it was a perfect example of being a young person growing up and making mistakes and being human,” he says.

“I wanted to kind of make a Lady Bird for the hood.” 

While channelling the feel of Lady Bird was no easy feat, Poblete says he took care to ensure his cast reflected the neighbourhood’s demographics. 

“It’s important for me as a director to make something intentionally and find people to play those roles. Then the step further is that once I get those actors who are Black, who are Filipino, who are this diverse spectrum of actors, then how do I push that further with the nuances of their characters and stories,” he says.

Poblete also says he intended to focus on the beauty of the neighbourhood itself, one enriched by the spirit and joy of the people who call it home (even as some struggle to leave it behind). 

“I think places like St. James Town are just so beautiful, and it took me a long time to kind of fall in love with a place I wanted to leave as a kid. But I think leaving a place that you cherish is so universal. I know it’s a big immigrant experience, but I think it’s also just like a human experience when you leave a place that you’ve built memories and relationships,” he says.

“I think, to me, it always felt like the right story structure for this film because I think it was just such a personal thing for me and a universal feeling at the end of the day.” 

With the film making its world premiere at TIFF, Poblete says that while he doesn’t necessarily consider Sunburn a “Toronto film,” it still strives to highlight lesser-known pockets of Canada’s biggest city.

“I think Toronto has a lot of beautiful pockets that represent the city that I think are kind of forgotten or lost unless you kind of know where to look, and I look at Bleecker like that. You know, it’s a place where it’s kind of surrounded by so many tall buildings and if you don’t know where to look or where to walk through, you kind of miss the community, right?”

Sunburn, which premiered at TIFF on Sept. 14, will also screen on Sept. 16 and 19.