Euphoria Star's New 94% RT Drama Is About Being "Completely Imperfect" In Your 20s

2 days ago 5

Barbie Ferreira's Grace smiling with her head tilted in Mile End Kicks

Published Mar 20, 2026, 4:30 PM EDT

Barbie Ferreira has found her next leading role in the SXSW release Mile End Kicks, which she and her creative team pulled from a certain chapter in their lives to make.

Alongside Ferreira, the film's ensemble cast includes Crime 101's Devon Bostick, The Iron Claw's Stanley Simons, FUBAR's Jay Baruchel, Red Rooms' Juliette Gariépy and Paying for It's Emily Lê, among others. Much like Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, Levack has pulled from her own experience as an arts and entertainment journalist for Mile End Kicks, which debuted at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews from critics, currently holding a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Barbie Ferreira's Grace looking surprised in Mile End Kicks

Now, in honor of its latest festival premiere, ScreenRant's Ash Crossan interviewed Chandler Levack, Barbie Ferreira, Devon Bostick, Stanley Simon and Juliette Gariépy in our SXSW media suite to discuss Mile End Kicks. When asked about her leading character and what drew her to the role, Ferreira explained that the core of Grace's journey is about "really blossoming into who she thinks she wants to be" and her arc being about "figuring one's self out" and understanding "you can't stop" chasing what you want, not matter "how much you mess up":

Barbie Ferreira: It's just a really great story about a woman in her 20s, and what I love about the character is that she's completely imperfect, and sometimes you're rooting for her, sometimes you're not, and it's just deeply relatable.

Bouncing off of their reflections on their characters being in their 20s, the group all went on to express the feeling that said time in one's life is simultaneously "fun" and "hard," particularly for those who are "trying to find yourself through how other people perceive you." Levack even denoted jokes on social media in which some were looking at Mile End Kicks as "a horror movie," calling it "the scariest movie at SXSW" for the way it shows everything from "kissing someone on the ground that might have bedbugs" to hoping to make someone your partner, opining that the "20s are the world part of your life that you don't actually know is terrible yet":

Chandler Levack: It's because you just want to be seen, and validated, and you want love, and you're terrified to admit it. And Devin said something really, really smart about how sometimes, you consciously try to date the worst person imaginable, because you don't love yourself. And I think, for me, writing a rom-com was really fun because I got to kind of write my imaginary boyfriend, or something, and you really, you get to write about your own ideas of love, and how you're trying to find it. And so, it was really wonderful to just have these incredible actors, to sort of to get to collaborate with them, and see them kind of personify these characters that were kind of my imaginary friends for like 10 years, since I was writing the script.

Mile End Kicks Is Levack's "Joker Origin Story"

ScreenRant: We are here with Mile End Kicks, which I saw, and love. I'm so excited to talk about it. I just want to start with just what the origin of the idea was, how it came to be.

Chandler Levack: Well, it's kind of like my Joker origin story.

ScreenRant: Please elaborate.

Barbie Ferreira's Grace smiling while looking at Arhi in Mile End Kicks

Chandler Levack: As a music critic, I think I imprinted on the movie Almost Famous when I was 15, and I was like, "How do I just live inside the movie? I will become the main character." So, I dropped out of university when I was 19, and I wrote for Spin, and The Village Voice, and started working at an All Weekly in Toronto. So, that was kind of my life, that was my late teens and early 20s. And then, when I was 24, I was like, "I'm moving to Montreal." I'd never decided to live in another city before. I was like, "I'm just going to completely — for the summer — commit to living in Montreal and see what it's like." It really was the most cinematic summer of my life, and it was really at the epicenter of an exciting time in Montreal's music scene and the rock scene, when bands like Mac DeMarco and Grimes were playing these tiny loft shows with, like, 200 people in a windowless room that's filled with cigarette smoke. I thought it was incredible. I loved rom-coms so much, and I really wanted to do what my version of a rom-com could be, which is built with the worst kinds of sex, drugs, and rock and roll a person in their young 20s could have.

ScreenRant: Did you have a love triangle that year?

Chandler Levack: Oh, I wish. No, I think it was just many aborted attempts to have people make out with me.

ScreenRant: So who is Archi in the grand scheme of Mile End Kicks?

Devon Bostick: I play Archi. I guess Archi's pretty chill. Pretty chill, pretty sardonic, pretty stoned, and clearly has a crush, I would say, but is slow to act on it. And he just likes to make music, and I think he's happy with where he is, aside from maybe being unhappy with some internal conflicts that he's got going on.

ScreenRant: Do you relate to him? You seem quite chill.

Devon Bostick: I relate to him in that I'm that great mix of chill, and completely neurotic, with deep anxiety. My hands are sweating right now. Yeah, I'm chill.

Juliette Gariépy: He's perfect.

Devon Bostick: Yes, I relate to him a lot, yeah.

Stanley Simon: Yeah, my character's name is Chevy, and he's the lead singer of Bone Patrol, and he thinks that he's the best musician in the world, and he has an intimate affair with Grace. And he's kind of a douchebag.

ScreenRant: How was it? Was it fun to channel a douchebag?

Stanley Simon: Yeah, it was really fun to do the music, and play in Bone Patrol, and be a lead singer, and just bring that ego out of me. I don't know, just be me. But also be funny, because Chandler wrote a funny script.

ScreenRant: Yeah, absolutely. Let's go back here. The roomie. Tell me about your character and what she's about.

Juliette Gariépy: She's that French-Canadian baddie, or she doesn't know she's a baddie, maybe. She needs to step into that. She's with this boyfriend, who's kind of not supportive, and they're all trying to do this whole music thing, but she's having a hard time putting herself out there. And then meeting Grace and another creative — I think she has many hopes for their relationship, and it ends up being more complicated than that. But honestly, growing up in Montreal myself, I related to Madeline a lot in the sense that — DJs should always be women. We're the ones popping our p----es off on the dance floor, so why are we not the masterminds of it? It's kind of crazy that it's all men. So yeah, I thought that was very fun to have the opportunity to be a little fun DJ.

Chandler Levack: The film, it's kind of like a love letter to Montreal, and we shot it in Mile End. So yeah, there are a lot of local writers in the Montreal alt-lit scene, there's a poetry reading scene, and they read their work in the film. We have Dishwasher, who's an iconic Montreal musician that does live performances in the Banks Islands. That opens the movie. So I was really excited to work within that community, kind of find this strange pipeline between 2011 and now, and sort of also introduce the cast to Montreal. Juliette's a local, but it was amazing just to kind of see them have this wonderful summer in Mile End, and see Montreal through their eyes.

Stanley Simon: Also shout out to the crew. The shot crew. Montreal, the film industry there is alive and well, and they're bada---s.

Chandler Levack, Barbie Ferreira, Devon Bostick, Stanley Simon, Juliette Gariépy with Ash Crossan in ScreenRant's SXSW media suite for Mile End Kicks

ScreenRant: I think it's perfect that this movie is at SXSW, the combination of music and film. What is all of your favorite movie soundtracks of all time?

Juliette Gariépy: Anything Miyazaki. Sorry, I have to be the nerd who says it. Of course, Sirat coming out, I feel like that has brought a lot of music energy into our screens that we haven't seen before.

Devon Bostick: I'm going to go with the Boogie Nights soundtrack.

Barbie Ferreira: I love the Betty Blue soundtrack. It's very French and instrumental. So good. The Jackie Brown soundtrack's also really good.

Stanley Simon: I'd say the Blade Runner soundtracks, or maybe Sergio Leone films.

Chandler Levack: I'm in with The Wedding Singer soundtrack. It just totally introduced me to '80s music, and there are so many bangers on that. "Rappers Delight," The Smiths, and The Cure. And that movie was such a wonderful pastiche of '80s culture, and it rocks.

Mile End Kicks hits theaters in the United States and Canada on April 17!