To the Moon – Canadian Film Fest 2025

March 24 to March 29, 2025
FILM FESTIVAL
Canadian Film Fest
Canadian Film Fest 2025
A single father and his teenage daughter deal with their relationship woes in To The Moon. Sam (Jacob Sampson) is a closeted gay single father living with his 16-year-old daughter, Ella (Phoebe Rex), with whom he does a choreographed Moondance every morning. Sam struggles with his closeted status after he meets a man named Wyatt (David Light) in a sushi restaurant. At the same time, Ella enters a school musical to be close with a boy named Alden (Calem MacDonald), becoming frenemies with Isobel (Maria Young) in the process. Meanwhile, Sam and Ella’s neighbour Claire (Amy Groening) begins writing a novel about their Moondance ritual while occasionally being visited by strange people.
To the Moon Synopsis
To the Moon is a romantic comedy written and directed by Kevin Hartford. The film’s protagonist, Sam, played by Jacob Sampson, hasn’t been in a relationship since his daughter, Ella, played by Pheobe Rex (Kids vs Aliens), was born. Together, they perform a Moondance for their morning cardio, which Sam somehow believes could prevent the moon from crashing into the Earth, which provides his new neighbour Claire with the perfect material for the novel she has started on. When Sam meets a man named Wyatt, he has to contend with his status of being a closeted gay man.

My Thoughts on To the Moon
To the Moon can almost be described as two romantic comedies in one, as it moves back and forth between Sam’s LGBTQ romance and Ella’s teen movie escapades at his high school, with a subplot that involves her trying to acquire Extacy for her crush, while getting embarassed by a grand gesture by the nerdy Huck (Austin Marks). The latter plotline eventually drops off in favour of the former and To the Moon introduces a sci-fi element late in the film that is interesting, but happens too far into the running time to come off as anything more than a punchline.