Firecrackers Is A Raw Nerve Of A Film And An Explosive Debut

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.

Drawing inspiration from her own brushes with sexual harassment, Mozaffari constructs a man’s world that seems specially made to break women down. But from the opening scene, we know Lou won’t go down easy. She’s introduced in a fight, grabbing another girl’s hair at the scalp, and hurling her rival to the ground, then pummeling until her knuckles tear. She’s a tomboy with a foul mouth, split-lip, and a hard stare. She favors long basketball shorts and oversized t-shirts that swallow her slim limbs and small…