Locations included Nomad Vintage, the Arlington Hotel and the gas station.
According to novelist-turned-screenwriter Daniel Ninkovic, the movie is a dystopian thriller that looks at themes around how we chose to protect the earth.
“All that pressure we see placed on individuals with regards to climate change and sort of you know ‘do your part, have fewer kids, ride a bike, become vegetarian’….I kept thinking these are more and more restrictions that we’re placing on people.”
Nonkovic says he wrote the story in the summer of 2022.
“There was a heatwave and I just went through a break up and there was this climate anxiety I was experiencing. It’s something I feel like my generation deals with a lot; this pressure to reduce, reduce, reduce. There’s a sense of guilt and almost hopelessness to trying to limit your carbon emissions as an individual. Meanwhile, corporations pollute more per second than you or I could do in our lifetimes.”
Director Michael Marentette joined in, explaining how the shoot at the Arlington that day tied into the storyline:
“Human lives are exchanged in carbon credits essentially. That’s how money is exchanged in that world. And in this location, he’s been stranded (the main character) in a place where he has no money, water is super scarce and he goes looking for refuge in this town.”
This isn’t the first time film crews have come to Maynooth, drawn by its historic buildings and frontier-town feel. Marentette shared with MooseFm what he saw as the appeal of the location
“The general store, all the storefronts are really picturesque. Plus the interiors. You know, everything here…The Arlington is from the 1800s, the Nomad Vintage, all the antique objects…there’s stuff in there from the 1700s….so it looks like an emporium of curiosities.
“This town just really has a lot. Super creative town, great people.”
Cap and Trade is being produced by Ninkovic and Marentette, who is originally from Bancroft and now lives in Toronto (the two met in a philosophy course at U of T).
According to Ninkovic the title is a ‘tongue in cheek’ double entendre about how companies, when they reach their carbon limit, can trade or purchase credits off other companies to keep polluting.
“The idea was sort of like, what if we treated people as the sum of their carbon? And that they could “cap” someone and claim their lifetime credits. So there’s definitely a cynical gallows humor about people willingly killing each other to increase how much carbon they can emit (i.e. how much water you can use, how much meat you can eat, how many kids you can have, what vehicles you can use). It’s this old joke from comedians, that a murderer is technically carbon neutral.”
The film crew wrapped the shoot Sunday afternoon and headed back to Toronto Sunday evening.
