Monica's News: Polly Gallant-McLean Makes Child's-Eye-View of Smalltown Life Come Alive
By Liz Braun
Rating: B
Canadian filmmaker Pamela Gallant makes her feature directorial debut with Monica’s News, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in small-town Nova Scotia in the 1970s.
Monica’s News is the sort of understated storytelling that sneaks up on you. It’s an unexpectedly powerful depiction of childhood and the way children move through the world, observing everything, even though they don’t always fully understand what they see.
Allegra Fulton and Polly Gallant-McLean in Monica’s News
Casey Richards (Polly Gallant-Mclean) is a quiet nine-year-old leading the kind of life nine-year-olds led before the internet. She’s outside all summer in the village where she lives, wandering the woods and the river at her own pace and sometimes hanging around her older brother and his friends.
Casey has a bike and she’s keen to have a paper route even though her brother mocks her ambition — paper routes are just for boys.
She is a bright, observant kid; nobody really notices Casey, but she notices everything. When she finally does get a paper route, it puts her in closer contact with various high profile locals — she encounters Hazel (Allegra Fulton), for example, an outspoken woman the other kids vaguely fear. She learns that Hazel’s daughter wants a divorce, an unheard-of scandal.
Casey observes the power wielded by the parish priest. At the general store, she watches the owner, her Uncle Chester (Kevin Kincaid) wax obsequious around customers. Casey begins to see his harder side, however, in the cruel way he speaks to his teenage daughter Monica (Elisa Paszt), Casey’s older cousin.
Casey looks up to Monica and always gives her a free copy of the newspaper she delivers. And Monica treats Casey as an equal, showing the little girl her secret reading spot under a local bridge.
It’s 1974, and Monica is interested in “women’s lib” — secretly reading feminist publications in her reading hide-away by the river.
Monica hangs out with a couple of local boys, other kids like her who are counting down their final year of high school and getting ready to escape into the wide world. They jokingly call themselves the Underground Social and Sexual Revolution Club, and Casey is obviously thrilled to be around these older kids.
But, as Casey comes to understand, female independence is a divisive notion in the village, and — then as now — female sexuality is viewed as a threat. The story turns dark; Monica disappears and Casey’s world is turned upside down.
Even in turmoil and tragedy, Monica’s News unfolds in an unhurried fashion, all of it told from Casey’s point of view.
Her observant eye sees beauty in the tiniest elements of the natural world. Her body language in the company of dubious adults speaks volumes.
As Casey, child actor Polly Gallant-McLean is completely believable as a ‘70s kid, all deference in the company of adults but otherwise free-spirited and still very much a child at age nine — the “pre-teen” era being not yet upon us. Her impressive performance anchors the storytelling.
Monica’s News is an affecting drama that meticulously recreates the era. It will not be lost on women viewers that due to social pressure, Casey eventually has to give up her paper route.
She takes up babysitting.
Monica’s News won Best Director (Pamela Gallant) at the 2025 Screen Nova Scotia Awards, where the film was also nominated for Best Feature.
Monica’s News: Written and directed by Pamela Gallant. Starring Polly Gallant-McLean, Elisa Paszt, Kevin Kincaid, Allegra Fulton. The movie is in Toronto at Cineplex Yonge & Dundas, March 20 (select cast will attend a Q & A after the 7 pm screening) and March 22, and in Vancouver at VIFF Cinema in April.