El Toro

In the 1960s, in the industrial city of Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, the DeGagné family ran a truck-stop diner. It is no longer there, but the now-adult DeGagné children have vivid memories of it. Danielle Sturk’s film tells the story with remarkable creativity. The combined testimonials make the diner’s bustle rise up from the past, while reconstructions, archival footage and stop-motion animation capture the energy of the small world of the diner, a witness to an era. From French Canadian origins to economic troubles, love stories to tragedies, quaint anecdotes to epochal events, the wonder and pain of the everyday are brought to life before our eyes with imagination, humour and melancholy.