Twentysomething university student Katie Arneson (played with arrestingly intensity by Kacey Rohl) is struggling to balance life and school. Estranged from her father and damaged by the death of her mother, Katie is trying to cope with not only financial stresses in her life, but also a recent cancer diagnosis. To deal with both, she starts an online funding campaign to pay her way through school and for the ongoing cancer treatments. Trouble is, Katie’s cancer story is fake; she’s made it up as a personal fundraising scheme. While initially convincing, cracks soon begin to appear in her story. Pressure mounts when her girlfriend, her father, university officials, as well as nurses and doctors, start asking Katie for proof of her condition. Her increasingly desperate strategies to maintain the fiction will lead her into dangerous territory. A fascinating, tautly constructed psychological drama, White Lie is a searching examination of millennial identity and morality in the age of social media.
Selected as one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2019
Official Selections: Toronto, Vancouver, Whistler, Palm Springs
“Driven by nuanced, persuasive performances and shot with an urgent, jittery tension, White Lie is a compelling close-up character study of a recklessly needy anti-heroine caught in an impossible dilemma of her own making. Nervy and kinetic, it succeeds as a small-scale psychological thriller.”
- Stephen Dalton, Variety
“Directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas's film about a student faking a cancer diagnosis is an incisive psychological drama.”
- Norman Wilner, NOW Magazine
“A gripping cautionary tale for the Fake News era.”
- Stephen Dalton, Variety
- Year2019
- Runtime96 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- DirectorCALVIN THOMAS, YONAH LEWIS
Twentysomething university student Katie Arneson (played with arrestingly intensity by Kacey Rohl) is struggling to balance life and school. Estranged from her father and damaged by the death of her mother, Katie is trying to cope with not only financial stresses in her life, but also a recent cancer diagnosis. To deal with both, she starts an online funding campaign to pay her way through school and for the ongoing cancer treatments. Trouble is, Katie’s cancer story is fake; she’s made it up as a personal fundraising scheme. While initially convincing, cracks soon begin to appear in her story. Pressure mounts when her girlfriend, her father, university officials, as well as nurses and doctors, start asking Katie for proof of her condition. Her increasingly desperate strategies to maintain the fiction will lead her into dangerous territory. A fascinating, tautly constructed psychological drama, White Lie is a searching examination of millennial identity and morality in the age of social media.
Selected as one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2019
Official Selections: Toronto, Vancouver, Whistler, Palm Springs
“Driven by nuanced, persuasive performances and shot with an urgent, jittery tension, White Lie is a compelling close-up character study of a recklessly needy anti-heroine caught in an impossible dilemma of her own making. Nervy and kinetic, it succeeds as a small-scale psychological thriller.”
- Stephen Dalton, Variety
“Directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas's film about a student faking a cancer diagnosis is an incisive psychological drama.”
- Norman Wilner, NOW Magazine
“A gripping cautionary tale for the Fake News era.”
- Stephen Dalton, Variety
- Year2019
- Runtime96 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- DirectorCALVIN THOMAS, YONAH LEWIS