About the film
Mufflers, honks and drilling: the perpetual soundscape of Toronto. Fed up with sleepless nights, a couple of activists take the fight to City Hall in the hopes of changing the outdated noise bylaws.
Director
Cat Mills
Producer
Lisa Rideout
Writer
Cat Mills
Editor
Erin Gulas
Cinematographer
Godfred Adjei
Sound
George Petrovic
Composer
Mathew Chalmers
Runtime
8 MIN
About the Directors
Cat Mills
Cat Mills is an award-winning filmmaker with a passion for the unconventional. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, holding a BFA in Film Production. Cat is the winner of the 2016 and 2020 Hot Docs Short Pitch competition and the director of seven short films, including Big Men, Small Dogs, which went viral with over a million views. Cat is a fellow of the CFTPA Producers Internships program, the Documentary Channel Doc Accelerator Program and the DOC Breakthrough Program. Her work has appeared on CBC, TVO, Al Jazeera, BBC, RT and NBC news. Cat resides in Toronto and has a passion for b-movies, sharks and espresso cups.
Artist Statement
I first met Ingrid through the Toronto Public Space Committee. She had introduced herself at a meeting and said she was fighting against noise pollution in the city. Noise pollution was something I wasn't overly familiar with. Sure, noise is annoying, but is it really that big of a deal?
Apparently, it is. Prolonged exposure to noise can lead to serious negative health outcomes, like diabetes and heart disease. I wanted to explore noise pollution in a way that was quirky and fun—to capture the frustration, angst and annoyance we feel when a loud muffler rattles past us or when we have to shout at the friend who is sitting next to us in a busy area. I also wanted to ask the question: what should Toronto sound like? Traffic and sirens, or birds and buskers? Most importantly, I wanted to follow people who saw a problem in their community and tried to fix it. If Ingrid and Daniella can do it, so can I…and so can you.
