Onwards and Sideways

Friday, September 18: This screening will be presented with open captions.

With heartache, laughter, and hard-won connection, the latest from Oscar-nominated director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, TIFF ’05’s Proof) stars Oscar nominee Laura Linney (TIFF ’08’s The Savages) and Rhys Ifans (TIFF ’23’s Mother Couch) as strangers whose lives become gradually entwined when both are diagnosed with Parkinson disease at the same clinic, on the same day.

Tony (Ifans) is a schoolteacher. Emma (Linney) is a composer and piano teacher. Both lead busy lives in their charming East Anglia village — and both find their status quo shattered upon learning they have Parkinson disease. They meet, minutes after hearing the news, in the health clinic lounge, and immediately start to compare symptoms and strategies: Emma suffers a tremor — she dubs herself “Emma with the tremma” — while Tony does not. Emma resolves to raise awareness while Tony prefers to keep his condition on the down low, so as not to endanger his employment. But as time passes — those “five good years” their neurologist prognosed — their lives increasingly intersect, most especially at the Parkinson ballet class, where they find community — and each other.

Written by Paul Mayhew-Archer (The Vicar of Dibley), Onwards and Sideways takes a sober look at what it’s like to navigate life with a degenerative disease, yet never loses its sense of wonder — nor its sense of humour. Linney and Ifans embrace their characters’ irreverence and desire to live life fully, while also embodying the formidable physiological challenges that come with Parkinson disease. This is a story about the myriad ways the body can surprise and frustrate. It’s also about the undeniability of love. 

Content advisory: mature themes