by Brent Yang

Vertical has nabbed U.S. rights to Clement Virgo’s feature film, “Brother,” following its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.

Virgo wrote the screenplay and adapted the story of two brothers facing questions of masculinity, family, race and identity from David Chariandy’s novel of the same name. The film stars Lamar Johnson (“The Hate U Give,” “The Last of Us”), Aaron Pierre (“The Underground Railroad,” “Foe”), Kiana Madeira (“Fear Street” franchise) and Marsha Stephanie Blake (“When They See Us”).

The film is slated for a day-and-date release this summer.

Brother, director Clement Virgo's intense portrait of two Jamaican-Canadian siblings growing up in a Toronto suburb during the 1990s, swept the third night of the Canadian Screen Awards (CSAs) after winning 12 of its 14 nominations in the cinematic arts categories.

Among its many laurels were best motion picture, achievement in direction for Virgo, and performance in a leading role for Lamar Johnson, a rising Canadian star who has appeared in The Last of Us and Your Honor.

The very first email Toronto filmmaker Clement Virgo received on Wednesday morning was from Scarborough author Catherine Hernandez.

“It said, ‘Congratulations. Well deserved’,” Virgo tells ET Canada. “At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about.”

Then he checked the news and saw that his movie “Brother”, a coming-of-age story set in Scarborough that he wrote and directed, received 14 Canadian Screen Awards nominations, topping all nods in the film category.

Clement Virgo's Brother, a coming of age drama set in Scarborough, Ont., in the 1990s, leads all films with 14 nominations at the Canadian Screen Awards, followed by Stephane Lafleur's science-fiction comedy Viking, which picked up 13 nods on Wednesday when the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television announced its contenders for this year's awards.

By Corey Atad

Clement Virgo’s acclaimed new film is testament to family and community.

On Tuesday, Elevation Pictures officially debuted the first trailer for the Canadian director’s epic new drama “Brother”, which was selected as TIFF’s Canada’s Top 10 this year.

By William Stottor

Immaculately structured and impressively transferred from page to screen, Brother retains the ferocity, tangibility and emotional heft of David Chariandy’s novel.

By Perri Nemiroff

Aaron Pierre and Lamar Johnson headline with raw, soulful performances.

By Robert Daniels

Two Jamaican-Canadian brothers hailing from Scarborough, a neighborhood in Toronto, look up at a soaring transmission tower. The older sibling Francis (Aaron Pierre, “The Underground Railroad”) explains to his younger brother Michael (Lamar Johnson, “The Hate U Give”) that the higher you climb, the more the reverberations of the electricity buzz and shake you. If you make one false move, it can instantly fry you. But they can make it to the top for the area’s best view if Michael follows Francis’ every motion. These inseparable siblings could not be more different; Francis is handsome, broad, and undaunted. Michael is hesitant and tiny. Nevertheless, the pair implicitly trust each other. And they begin, step-by-step, climbing the tower that will become a metaphor for their lives.

By Wendy Ide

Clement Virgo’s supremely confident and affecting drama stars Aaron Pierre and Lamar Johnson as siblings growing up in Toronto in the 1980s

By Radheyan Simonpillai

Lamar Johnson and Kiana Madeira take us back in time to experience Black struggle and joy