Director: Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader, the writer behind Taxi Driver and director of First Reformed, closes out a long run of stories about confession and guilt with this 2024 drama built around a dying man's final interview.
What is Oh Canada about?
The film follows Leonard Fife, an ailing documentary director, as he sits for what becomes one last interview with two former students. Decades earlier he had left the United States rather than be drafted into the Vietnam War, joining tens of thousands of Americans who crossed into Canada during that period and built new lives there. Facing the end of his life, Fife uses the cameras rolling in front of him to unravel the tidy, admired version of his own biography, admitting choices, betrayals, and relationships he kept hidden from his wife and from the public for years. What starts as a tribute interview turns into something closer to a deathbed confession, jumping between the old man speaking now and the younger man living through the events he describes.
Cast & crew
Richard Gere plays the elder Fife in one of his more stripped-down late-career performances, opposite Uma Thurman as his wife Emma. Jacob Elordi takes on the role of Fife as a young man in the flashback timeline, while Michael Imperioli and Caroline Dhavernas round out the interview crew and supporting cast.
Context & significance
Oh, Canada is adapted from Russell Banks' novel Foregone and premiered in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. It reunites Schrader with Gere more than four decades after American Gigolo, and returns to themes the director has circled his whole career: men trying to explain themselves before it's too late.
Where & how to watch
Oh, Canada streams on K-Time with a Farsi-language interface, Persian dubbing, and Persian subtitles, so Persian-speaking viewers can follow Fife's story in either format. The film's page here is free to read; watching it requires only logging into a K-Time account, with no separate purchase involved.