Season 1 | Love in the Mile-End
2025 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Maurane
Genres: comedy, documentary, satire
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
A DIY Montreal dating show dangles $500 in front of skaters, artists, and recent grads to get them talking about their worst dates and weirdest theories of love. The competition mechanics are a fig leaf; the interviews are the whole point.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
$500 is the perfect prize budget — low enough to attract weirdos, high enough to make them honest. This is reality TV stripped of network cynicism.
Prize money small enough to make everyone honest is the precise design insight that turns reality-TV format into actual documentary curiosity — Rehearsal scaled to a Mile-End cafe. Real craft thinking.
A $500 prize is small enough to make everyone honest — that's the craft choice the whole conceit rests on, and rebuilding reality-TV grammar at micro-budget scale is a smart inversion. Curious to see it land first time out.
Reviews
The show is less focused on being an actual competition than on its playful interviews with idiosyncratic personalities.