- For his French-class assignment, a high school student weaves his family history in a news story involving terrorism, and goes on to invite an Internet audience in on the resulting controversy.
- Simon, a Toronto high school student, has been raised by his maternal Uncle Tom since Simon's parents, Rachel and Sami, died in a car accident eight years ago. Tom, a tow truck driver, decided to move to the city into Rachel's house and assume the mortgage, something he could ill afford, largely not to disrupt Simon's life, but equally to get away from his and Rachel's father, Morris, an openly bigoted man. That upbringing has made Tom a sullen and angry man. Morris only recently passed away. Rachel and Sami met when she, a violinist, brought her instrument in to be serviced, Sami the repairman. Simon now owns his mother's expensive violin, which Tom would like to sell to help pay the mortgage and Simon's imminent university tuition. One day at school, Simon's French teacher Sabine reads a French newspaper story from several years ago as a translation exercise for the class, the story about a pregnant woman traveling to Israel, her then boyfriend who, unknown to her, planted a bomb in her luggage intended to blow up while the airplane was in flight, meaning that if it was not caught before departure, which it was, it would have killed her and their unborn child. Because Simon interestingly translates the story from the perspective of him being that unborn child now a teenager, Sabine, who is also the school's drama teacher, asks Simon to flesh out the story as a play, either in French or English. Simon begins to pedal the story widely as his reality, in other words that the woman in question truly was his mother Rachel and the bomber truly was who ended up being his Palestinian father, Sami, which may or may not in fact be true. Simon, Sabine and Tom all have to make decisions surrounding this issue, which they do to help their individual self deal with his or her own reality of the situation.—Huggo
- Simon is a young orphan being raised under the care of his uncle Tom. The early scenes of the film show him filming his conversation in the hospital with his dying grandfather. Through the eyes of Simon we see the grandfather as a caring, wise man, while through the perspective of his uncle we see the racist, backwards side. Simon's grandfather hated Simon's father and claims that he intended to kill Simon's mother in the car crash when, as Simon finds out at the film's conclusion, he had an eye condition. This condition prevented him from being able to drive at night, as the glare from oncoming headlights would blind him. The evening of the car crash reveals a different side of the story, causing the memories of each character to meet head on, connecting disparate stories of each character to unite in an Egoyanesque conclusion.
Simon's family narrative is cleverly knit into a news story presented to Simon by his high school French teacher as a translation exercise. An article is read by the teacher about an attempted bombing of an aircraft by a man who put explosives in his pregnant wife's luggage. Simon gets the idea to translate the story and write it from the perspective of the child in the woman's womb. The teacher encourages Simon to develop his story as a drama exercise, however Simon presents it to the class and to the world via the Internet as if he really was that child. The teacher's silence, as we find out later, is owing to her relationship with Simon's late father who died, with his mother, in a car crash when he was still a child. The narrative of the car crash and the attempted bombing of the plane become intertwined as a way for the characters to deal with their past experiences, which they have all been trying to deny.
The film is about a search for identity in a digital age where the truth is oftentimes irrelevant. Simon's story of his suicide bomber father is met on the Internet with sympathy, anger, and even support as we see a skinhead on webcam telling Simon that his father was a hero. The alienation experienced by Simon in relation to the world-wide response he receives to this made-up story ultimately serves as a mechanism that forces him to turn away from his computer and video screen to face the actual issues he experienced as a child. Simon's story takes a twist that involves all the other characters in his life, everyone's narrative culminating in the piecing together of a fragmented past that needed to be re-examined in order for those in the present to be healed and re-connect with the people in their lives.
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