.

We’re always told how lucky we are to live in such a diverse, multicultural, and internationalized county, but the real advantages of this become apparent when we can experience each other’s rich, deeply complex lives and stories through that most magical lantern of media: the cinema.

April 7 – 11, 2010 marks the 10th Anniversary of the ReelWorld Film Festival, which screens features, shorts, documentaries, animation, and music videos from the Aboriginal, Asian, Black, Latino, Middle Eastern, South Asian and other multi-racial communities. As part of the festival, ReelWorld presents the feature debut of independent Canadian filmmaker Lenin M. Sivam, titled simply 1999, which offers an honest and intricately researched portrait of gang violence in Toronto.

The film gives us the story of three young Toronto men, two of whom are embroiled in the gang lifestyle of the streets while the third is a recent immigrant from Sri Lanka and a diligent University student. In the tradition of such tense and compact real-life stories, the film portrays events that take place over the course of one day, starting with a violent shooting on a suburban street and unfolding into profound consequences that will irreversibly alter the three protagonists’ lives forever.

ReelWorld tells us that the film’s creation involved extensive research and interviews in order to present “a rare insider’s perspective on the wave of gang violence that shook the Tamil community in Toronto in the 1990s.” 1999 has already shown at various festivals and picked up a few awards, too, such as the “Best Film Award (Midnight Sun)” at the Oslo Tamil Film Festival in 2010.

You can catch 1999 on Friday, April 9 at 5:00 p.m. and Sunday, April 11 at 2:30 p.m. at Canada Square Cinemas — 2190 Yonge St. (at Eglinton Ave. West). Click here to see a more detailed description of the film.