SDSS grads’ film, When The Party’s Over, a finalist in Forest City Youth Film Festival

When The Party’s Over, a film by Peer Wahlquist, Emelia Auster and the Stratford District Secondary School film club, BearCast, has been named a finalist for best narrative at the Forest City Youth Film Festival in London.

For former Stratford District Secondary School (SDSS) students Peer Wahlquist and Emelia Auster, writing, directing and producing their film, When The Party’s Over, with help from their friends and family was the perfect send-off to high school as they embarked on their post-secondary lives.

Now, that film is a finalist for best narrative at the Forest City Youth Film Festival in London – something both had dreamt of for as long as they’d been making movies with their friends as part of SDSS’ award-winning film club, BearCast, founded by Wahlquist, the club’s head director and editor, in 2023, and with Auster serving as head writer.

“It’s about a group of friends at the unexplained, mysterious, end-of-the-world, apocalyptic event, and they decide the way they want to spend the last day of their lives is by having a little party at one of their houses,” Auster said. “It was very much inspired by the kind of parties Peer and I went to with our friends; we shot it in one of their houses where we regularly had those parties. They’re just kind of hanging out and seeing how they can balance each other’s emotions in the midst of everything going on.”

“I believe it was really written around the thought of, obviously, all of these parties we would go to with our friends, and really the thought that at the end of this year of high school, we would pretty much grow distant from these friends and not see them as often,” Wahlquist added. “That was almost representative of our end-of-the-world theme, and that’s what kind of ties it all together.”

While looking ahead to his final year of high school at the end of Grade 11, Wahlquist said one thing he wanted the BearCast club to accomplish before everyone finished high school was to make a film worthy enough to be a finalist at the Forest City Youth Film Festival.

With that as their goal, Auster set to work writing a script over their Grade 12 Christmas break.

“The script was outlined over the course of a couple weeks and then I wrote it when we were stuck in a snowbank driving home after Christmas,” Auster said. “I wrote the original script in probably a couple of hours and then we rewrote and edited it with the rest of our team once we started working together in February.”

The film was shot over the course of one very long, 12-hour day inside their friend’s house, with their friends serving as actors and crew, each coming and going as they were needed while Wahlquist and Auster stuck it out for the entire shoot.

“It wasn’t great for our friends who had a calculus test the next day,” Auster laughed.

“They weren’t very happy about that,” added Wahlquist.

Once the film was shot, Wahlquist spent several month editing it to perfection, relying on the advice of a few professional editors and sound mixers he knows to get it exactly how both he and Auster had envisioned.

By May, the film was ready to submit to the film festival, and in August, they received word that When The Party’s Over had been named one of five finalists for best narrative. The film will have its premiere screening on Oct. 28 during the Forest City Youth Film Festival Screening and Awards Show at London’s Wolf Performance Hall. The films that perform well at the London film festival will then advance to the Ontario Youth Film Festival.

While Wahlquist, who is currently studying film studies at Sheridan College in Oakville, will attend the screening and awards ceremony in London, Auster said she will try to watch the ceremony live from her dorm room at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where she is studying English literature.

“It’s kind of surreal because we did it and then immediately moved on to these totally different portions of our life,” Auster said. “Sometimes Peer texts me saying, ‘Oh, we got rejected from this other (film festival),’ and, ‘We got into this other one.’ And I would be like, ‘Oh, I kind of forgot we did that because I’ve been studying for three hours.’ It’s actually really lovely because it makes sure Peer and I and the rest of our team are still connected.”

While the film won’t be made available on YouTube until after it is screened at the film festival later this month, previous films by the BearCast film club can be found on Instagram under the handle, @SDSS.bearcast.