WIFF features Windsor-shot film on opening night

CTV Windsor: The Control at WIFF After a successful international film festival run, "The Control" is coming home for WIFF. Melanie Borrelli reports.

After a successful international film festival run, "The Control" is coming home to Windsor.

The Windsor-shot sci-fi thriller is the only new locally produced feature film to be playing at WIFF.

"It's fun for local Windsorites to see and try to recognize, almost like a Where's Waldo of all of these different locations and people,” says co-director Michael Stasko. “So when we go show it in France they don't realize ‘Oh that's Ojibway Park in the background.’ They just see it as a park."

The Dot Film Company flick was produced, co-written, and co-directed by Stasko and Eric Schiller, both from Windsor.

Stasko, Schiller and fellow Windsorite and producer Theodore Bezaire, have worked together on several other films, including Things to Do(2006), Iodine(2009), The Birder(2013), and the upcoming Boys vs. Girls, which is coming 2019.

The Control follows Mike, a brilliant programmer, and Eric, a morally questionable neurochemist, as they attempt to create a game-changing VR multiverse, backed by a mysterious corporation with plans to colonize space.

But as Mike and Eric perfect their immersive dream machine, it becomes harder and harder to know what is real, and what is an illusion.

"Basically it's about two scientists who are trying to create a cutting edge virtual reality system in order to send hibernating astronauts to distant planets," says Stasko.

The film has already earned several accolades.

It premiered at WorldFest Houston, where it won a Platinum Remi award. It also played Motor City Nightmares in Detroit where it won Best Sci-Fi Feature.

At the International Filmmaker Festival in Nice, France, it won Best Director(s)(Stasko/Schiller) and Best Lead Actress(Sharon Belle). It has also played at Montreal World Film Festival, Toronto Indie Film Fest and Great Lakes International Film Festival.

"It hits a certain niche, but the niche that it hits it hits really hard,” says Stasko.

Showtime is 9:15 p.m. Monday at the Chrysler theatre.