UPDATE: 30 September 2014 – TRU LOVE can now be pre-ordered from iTunes (Canada & US), for a 7 October release. The DVD, which can be pre-ordered from Wolfe Video, will be released on 4 November. (DVD bonus materials include deleted scenes and the short film Stormcloud from director Kate Johnson
“We actually wrote a version of the film that took place in spring, but it just didn’t feel right. We needed the isolation of winter. And it was indeed cheaper to shoot in February and more crew were available to work! The scene where Tru and Alice are sitting in big Muskoka chairs under the pink umbrella by the lake as snow is falling got a lot of laughs at the London BFI Flare film festival. Someone commented, ‘Are you Canadians crazy?? Sitting in those chairs in the snow?’ Just for the record, we had about seven months of winter in Toronto this year – and yes, that does make you crazy enough to sit in chairs outside in a snowstorm!!”
—— Shauna MacDonald on why Tru Love was filmed in winter (from SDGLN)
TRU LOVE was screened on the final day of the 2014 Inside Out Festival in Toronto. And because of that, Shauna MacDonald and Kate Johnston were interviewed about the film by Arthur Young of Radio Regent in Toronto (below is audio). MacDonald talks about the making of the film, (she envisioned Kate Trotter‘s character Alice as “Greta Garbo of the north”), and says they are aiming at a Toronto theatrical release in October. (The connection faded a bit in the last minute, so at that point, sound quality is diminished.)
TRU LOVE’s main character, commitment-phobic lesbian Tru (Shauna MacDonald), forms an unlikely but deeply touching bond with Alice (Kate Trotter), helping her to pick herself up and move on with her life and the possibility of a relationship between the two sparks into life. When Suzanne (Christine Horne) witnesses a tender moment between mother and friend her subsequent actions stress the relationship of all three women, leading to a heartbreaking climax.
The film won the grand prize for Best Feature Film at the 2014 Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, which also named Kate Trotter Best Actress for her portrayal of Alice. MacDonald and co-director Kate Johnston won the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award at the Toronto Inside Out Festival, which also gave TRU LOVE the Best Audience award.

Co-directors Shauna MacDonald and Kate Johnston with Inside Out festival Director of Programming Andrew Murphy
TRU LOVE will next be screened at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco on 20 June (6:45pm at The Castro Theatre). Another Canadian film, GERONTOPHILIA, directed by Bruce LaBruce and starring Pier-Gabriel Lajoie and Katie Boland, will follow at 9:30pm.
Shauna Macdonald will appear as an as yet unspecified character in Season 2 of the Netflix series HEMLOCK GROVE. She will also appear in a Hallmark movie called MIDNIGHT MASQUERADE, currently filming in Sudbury, Ontario.