Tina Kakadelis
Canadian filmmaker Clement Virgo is returning to the Toronto International Film Festival with his latest film, Steal Away. The movie is based on Karolyn Smardz Frost’s non-fiction book Steal Away Home, which chronicles the story of Cecilia, who escaped slavery and ended up in Toronto. The book details her decision to leave, the vibrant Black community she found in Toronto, and her return home to Kentucky after the end of the Civil War. Virgo uses this book as a jumping-off point to weave a fictional story of two princesses. Part fairy tale, part thriller, Virgo’s take on Cecilia’s story focuses on her relationship with the young mistress she grew up with and their complex relationship. Ahead of the film’s world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, Clement Virgo sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss the new world he created for Cecilia’s story, the difficulty of writing teenage girls, and the young actors at the heart of the film.
In Steal Away, Cecilia becomes Cécile (Mallori Johnson), a confident teenage girl seeking asylum who arrives at the home of Fanny (Angourie Rice), a sheltered rich girl. Cécile is unlike anyone Fanny has ever met before. Cécile is compelling and charismatic. All eyes in the room fall on her, while Fanny cannot command a room even when she’s standing in front of it. In Steal Away’s version of these young women, they live in a place that seemingly exists out of time. The setting evokes imagery of World War II-occupied Europe and the Antebellum South. Despite the fact that Cecilia’s journey is tied to a specific place and time, Virgo felt that by bending genres, he would be able to thematically tell her story in an ultra-stylized reality that still feels close to our own.
“I love the historical nonfiction that it was based on and I wanted to tell that story, but try to find a different way of telling it,” remembers Virgo. “My last film, Brother, was a more naturalistic or realistic depiction of a family drama. I’ve been sort of dabbling in genre and looking at films that I’ve loved over the years. I was really keen on trying to do worldbuilding where I could construct my own rules and reality.”
“I love fantasy, sci-fi, and folktale films. They allow you the space to tell a story, but also you can do what I call smuggling these ideas into them so that perhaps on the second or third view, you say, oh, right, I just saw it as a kind of straight-ahead, coming-of-age movie,” describes Virgo. “Then you realize…is this about the South? Is that about the migrants? Is this about the refugee crisis in Europe? Kind of smuggle those ideas in.”
When you think of fantasy or science fiction, you often think of big-budget spectacles. By Virgo’s own admission, Steal Away didn’t have the benefit of a large budget. In order to still give the impression of a large-scale epic, Virgo had to focus on what he could control.
“We had to really control the frame. If you want to build a world, you have to make sure that whatever’s in your frame evokes the world you’re trying to create,” explains Virgo. “Say Cecilia’s costume, for instance. We really wanted to evoke a kind of Afrofuturist fantasy quality to her. Is she royalty? Is she a princess? With her hairstyle, makeup, and costumes, I wanted the audience to lean in a little bit and figure out how to untangle this world. Is this the past? Is this the present? Is this a sci-fi Jane Austen world?”
“I really trust that the audience will go there with me, you know?” asks Virgo. “I don’t like being dragged through stories as a viewer. Being told this is what it is, this is the plot, grab me by the hand and pull me through. I love the puzzle box of what it is that I’m watching?”
Steal Away opens like another science-fiction fantasy epic with yellow text over the image of a starry sky. While Star Wars opens with “A long time ago…,” Steal Away opens with “once upon a time.” Both lines evoke a sense of storytelling that existed long before modern times and will endure long after. Virgo sees this opening line as a magical entry point, a means of asking the audience to forget about the world outside the theater for a little while. To believe in fantastical worlds and what they have to teach us.
“That phrase, once upon a time, conjures up a world you’re going to be led into and tells you the story is not going to take place in the world we’re living in now,” says Virgo. “The world we’re living in now, we live it every day. It’s kind of mundane, but if I tell you ‘once upon a time,’ you open yourself up to new possibilities.”
“I think Joseph Campbell lays it out beautifully for us in the idea of a hero with a thousand faces. This monomyth that we’re trying to seek out, we look for stories to try to figure out how to live and to find our values and to find out who we are.”
While one might think the sci-fi aspects would be the most intimidating part of Steal Away, Virgo was open about the effort he put into making sure he was capturing the true experience of what it’s like to be a teen girl. Virgo co-wrote the script with Tamara Faith Berger. In addition to sharing a screenwriting credit, the two are also married, which allowed for honest collaboration.
“I’m not a teenage girl. I’ve never been a teenage girl. I was a little bit terrified. In some ways, that’s what excited me about it,” recounts Virgo. “I wanted to see if I could actually tell it in a truthful way.”
“I also had to find partners, collaborators to keep me honest and to keep me in check,” continues Virgo. “I made sure I had a DP who would check me with my gaze, you know what I mean? Why am I pointing the camera at that? Sophie Winqvist Loggins, my DP, would help me navigate that. Just really surrounding myself with collaborators who would help guide me so that when I’m nervous and scared, I could look at them and they could say, yeah, this feels accurate, this feels right.”
Two of those collaborators are Rice and Johnson, who play Fanny and Cécile. The characters are so deeply intertwined that one is rarely on-screen without the other. Rice is a familiar face from her roles in The Nice Guys, last year’s musical version of Mean Girls, and Mare of Easttown, but Johnson is a newcomer fresh out of Julliard with a handful of credits to her name. Together, they needed to cultivate an air of fascination, distrust, and intrigue between their characters that is one of the propelling forces at play.
“As a director, I’m not going to tell anyone how to be a teenage girl,” smiles Virgo. “I just have to watch and have them sort of show me the characters. Once I had Mallori and Angourie together and saw the chemistry and the dance they had together…I mean, part of directing for me is really letting go of control. Seeing what’s happening in front of the camera and just capturing it. Not feeling like I have to hold on to it and manipulate it.”
