Production soon to begin on local director’s film Europe in Ontario

Meet local director Robert Crowley Smith and producer Kevin Huhn, who will soon be seen on the streets of southwestern Ontario filming for their new documentary, Europe in Ontario.

Southwestern Ontario has a story about settlers to tell and will be explored in the new documentary Europe in Ontario. Local director Robert Crowley Smith and producer Keven Huhn are partners of MARKD productions, which is producing the film. They are both excited and a little bit nervous as this is their first feature film together.

This area of the province is home to a number of towns and cities of European heritage like Stratford, London, Kitchener (formerly Berlin), Waterloo, Cambridge and Paris. By exploring local voices and cultural traditions the film hopes to answer the central question, “What is the root of Europe in Ontario?”

As someone who doesn’t fly but enjoys travel, Crowley Smith feels that experiencing it here at home is special and getting to connect it with somewhere else is equally special and important. Huhn, who travelled across the country with his family in an RV was inspired by the experiences and sights they witnessed.

“Once you’ve travelled across Canada, you start going ‘We have a pretty cool country going on here,’ and the fact that Rob was from Stratford, we thought ok, we can’t get closer to home than London to Cambridge and everything in between,” said Huhn.

The film will be about the journey of going from town to town, exploring why these towns are named after European cities.

“We’ll be exploring history, culture, food, anything that is their connection to these other places,” said Crowley Smith.

This will be a year-long journey capturing the highlights. There will be different types of events in every town throughout the year that will culturally identify each spot where people will be inspired to attend. Connection, reaction, action is the goal of the film.

The host and narrator for the film will be Cat Callaghan, widely known as one of the text-to-speech voices on TikTok, and with national reach brings accessibility and continuity to the project. They will talk to mayors, merchants, people of the town and endeavour to uncover the celebrities of the town. For Stratford, think Colm Feore, Chef D from Kitchener who is the new president of K/W Oktoberfest, or Victor Garber from London.

“Each of the towns have somebody that’s been profiled so we want to get their perspective, what was it like growing up, what was it like living there?” questioned Huhn.

“We don’t really have any expected outcome, we just hope to reveal a good story along the way because the good story is what really drives people to want to watch or want to go there,” adds Crowley Smith.

It’s not just a historical piece, it’s also about what’s going on so people can get to experience it in film, then hopefully in person. The approach will be a mix of interactive and traditional storytelling with a combination of interviews about the history and culture as well as revealing the present through exploration with Callaghan.

“At the end of the day, the overarching purpose of the movie is not just to give somebody something to watch, but get them out of their seat and say, ‘I want to go experience that, I want to go meet someone at that shop, I want to go into that merchant, I want to go to the Stratford Festival, whatever we’ve captured in the movie,” said Huhn.

With funding, filming will begin this year with editing 2027 and hopefully a release in 2028. They are most excited about getting to each city and town to learn a little bit more about them than what’s written on paper or a website. Getting the local look and feel of the area will be so much better than pictures and videos.

“It’s going to be a collaborative effort to create this project. We’ve got the structure and view of the bones, but all the muscle and skin of it, you get to input,” said Huhn.

“We want this to be a film about communities made by communities. One of the things we’ve been told from the mayor of Cambridge is we’re doing a service to Canada for capturing the history and the culture on these areas for preservation of future generations,” said Crowley Smith.

The filmmakers will document their journey on social media for those interested in following along. Instagram is @markdproductions and Facebook, web is markdproductions.com.