Beyond the Short Official Premiere

A man orchestrates a successful double-ended rental scam, until his greed compromises everything.

Using forged documents, Charlie is able to secure a lease for a luxury penthouse he would not otherwise be able to afford. While not paying rent, he uses the penthouse to lure in tenants posing as the landlord, stealing numerous rental deposits. It’s a lucrative gig, until his enemies come back for him.

FROM THE DIRECTOR

“‘Charlie’ is based on a real news story in Toronto about a man who stole money from his landlords, and from his tenants while posing as the landlord himself to steal their deposits. I was fascinated by this story when I first read it, though upon first impression it seemed like a pretty boilerplate scam. My fascination piqued digging into what the news article didn’t tell. A more comprehensive image of the character and story started to form based on personal accounts in the comment sections on various social media platforms covering the story.

I was also able to interview some of the people involved to get better insight into who this person was. If you live in Toronto, or really any major city in North America over the last decade, you know how much of a battle it is to find good housing. Unfortunately, it’s gotten even worse since we made the film. Charlie is the personification of greed and sociopathy in the housing market, he operates on opportunism, short-sightedness, and exploitation. As I write this in February 2023, rents have increased in Toronto by a staggering 25% since last year. This is almost certainly due to landlords that over leveraged themselves by buying multiple properties while interest rates were low. These same landlords are now forced to make up the higher borrowing costs by imposing them on their tenants.

What Charlie is doing is illegal, but he shares the same level of incompetence as these ‘legal’ landlords. While making the film, I wanted it to have a kinetic energy that built up while we watch Charlie try to dig himself out of his own hole. The camera doesn’t keep still while we watch him operate his scam and the whole thing feels like a blur to match his short-term thinking. The whole scheme is smooth, and visually I wanted it to share the same slick and in-control method of operation. Charlie gracefully shifts from victim to victim, raking in thousands of stolen dollars, and it disappears almost as quickly as it came in.

The second half of the film is Charlie’s financial hangover, and it’s a bad one. I wanted the second half to feel like a caffeine-induced panic attack. The spoils of Charlie’s scam feel like a distant memory now, and I wanted the viewer to share Charlie’s anxiety, with shots and scenes that are more up close and personal and linger longer. Unlike the first half of the film, where one shot blends smoothly into the next with motion, each scene is punctuated with a hard cut, giving a more jarring feeling while we watch Charlie scramble for life.

Ultimately, Charlie doesn’t learn his lesson. People like this rarely do. In the end, Charlie pitches some sort of luxury development for his soon-to-be victim investors. I wanted the visual metaphor for the final image of the film to match his pitch. As he leads his victims out of frame, and we’re left looking at what Charlie is really selling, an ugly, barren, plot of land devoid of life.

Charlie, like all con artists, is a salesman. He paints a beautiful picture for his victims and exploits their imagination. However, if they were to open their eyes for just a second, they would see the big pile of garbage that he’s really trying to sell to them.”

-Matt Horvat