RKSS Collective, Turbo Kid

Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf and Michael Ironside star in the tale from The RKSS Collective about a young man who does battle with an evil mob leader in a barren landscape deprived of water.

Epic Pictures co-finance and serve as executive producers and handle international sales on the Park City At Midnight selection. Anne-Marie Gélinas, Ant Timpson, Benoit Beaulieu and Tim Riley produce.

The film premieres on January 26 followed by screenings on 27, 29 and 31. CAA co-represents US rights and Raven Banner is the Canadian distributor. Epic will screen Turbo Kid at the EFM in Berlin next week.

This is a huge punt but was Turbo Kid inspired by your short T Is For Turbo?
Yes. We made the short to compete in the ABCs Of Death competition. One of the anthology’s producers, Ant Timpson, liked what we did and offered to help us make a feature inspired by it. He suggested that we participate in the first edition of the Frontières co-production market at the Fantasia Festival, and there we found our Canadian producer, Anne-Marie Gelinas. 

What gave you the idea?
We always loved post-apocalyptic films and wanted to play with the genre. 

I love the world you created. What were the influences?
Thank you! Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior was an inspiration, as well as BMX Bandit, Goonies, Neverending Story, Brain Dead and Cherry 2000.

The electronic score is great. Again, what inspired your music choices?
We were inspired by the Italian post-apocalyptic films, John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder, with a hint of The Dog That Stopped the War – a Quebec film we watched as kids. We have worked with [Montreal-based synth maestro] Le Matos for many years and share the same sensibilities.

The gadgets and props have bags of charm. Loved the View-Master.
Here, we were going for nostalgia. We are BMX kids and love our childhood toys. The View-Master was one of our favourites.

Did you go through the usual casting process?
Most of these actors were our first choices, especially Michael Ironside. We wrote the script with him in mind. We did do the casting process with Munro Chambers, but he was the first we auditioned and we fell in love with him instantly. The entire cast fell in love with our over-the-top story and they truly brought it to life.

How did you get this crazy thing financed?
It’s a Canada-New Zealand co-production. The film was financed through Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Tax Credit programmes, the New Zealand Film Commission and pre-sales through our distributors: Filmoption, Raven Banner and Epic Pictures Group. We are fortunate to have public financing in Canada and New Zealand that made it possible.

Where and when did Turbo Kid shoot?
We shot in April 2014, mostly in a quarry in the middle of Montreal.

Nice and warm that time of year?
It was really cold during production – most days between -10 and ‐20 degrees Celsius. It was the coldest winter and spring in 70 years in Montreal. And in one location, inside the pool, it was actually 10 degrees colder. We were praying that our actors would not give up on us. Thankfully, the cast and crew had such great chemistry from the beginning that human warmth made up for the cold.

How did you hear you’d got into Sundance?
We were in New Zealand [on post] and [programmer] Charlie Reff called. It was still the middle of the night for us, we were barely awake. It instantly woke us up and we did the happy dance. We had dreamed of it for a while, but we were completely taken by surprise. We could not have asked for a better festival to have our premiere; it’s fantastic.

What are you doing next?
We have many projects in development, one called Elora, a revenge story, and hopefully a Turbo Kid 2. We just want to keep making movies.