Patrick Huard: The ’Hood In Me
2025 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Tara Johns
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
In a souvenir shop off an alley, veteran performer Patrick Huard, playing shopkeeper Pops, tests young apprentice Nathan with stories and objects tied to resilience and responsibility, until a final choice proves the boy ready for the job.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Looks like a straightforward mentorship parable on the surface, which is exactly why I'm skeptical—though I'm curious whether Johns finds something genuinely weird in the shopkeeper-as-sage setup that punches past the greeting-card energy.
A formally disciplined five-minute chamber piece that treats the souvenir shop as a stage for intergenerational ritual; the restraint and symbolic weight of objects suggest a filmmaker aware of how Chekhov and contemporary coming-of-age cinema have both handled quiet moral instruction.
The entire film hinges on whether that final choice—Nathan's decision—actually feels earned through small, specific behavioral moments rather than narrative decree, and if Johns commits to letting the actor's face carry the weight of a single moment rather than spelling it out.