Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

“Why are you so angry all the time?” The heroines of writer/director Jasmin Mozaffari’s debut feature Firecrackers have plenty of reasons to rage. Living in poverty in a suffocatingly small Ontario town, recent high school graduates Lou (Michaela Kurimsky) and Chantal (Karena Evans) have little hope for their futures. All they see around them is squalor, crappy jobs, abusive boys, addiction, intolerance, and violence. This is why these battle-hardened besties, who throw punches as easily as f-bombs, have plotted a way out. For a year, they’ve scraped together the wages earned cleaning scuzzy motel rooms so they can runoff to New York. They’ve slung they’re possessions into a pair of garbage bags, compiled one thousand dollars into a tattered envelope, and arranged a ride with a pick-up truck-owning pal. But a horrid incident derails the pair’s plan, pitching them down a path littered with stinging tears, shattered glass, and wretched compromises. [Read more…]