Dawn returns home to Nova Scotia to mourn the death of her mother and repair the estrangement with her father, John Andrew. An ancient tractor becomes the focus for the mechanically-minded Dawn, but her father’s long-simmering resentments heighten tensions. Watching his daughter work to restore the tractor, he realises that reclaiming this relationship depends on his own coming out: supporting Dawn publicly and fighting malicious small-town transphobia.
Director's Biography:
Nova Scotia, Canada based, award-winning performer and veteran of The Trailer Park Boys, Thompson, a COTB alum, trained at the UK’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Canadian Film Centre (2015), and was one of the eight Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC 2016/17) where she was also the recipient of the Feature Film Award for her screenplay Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor.
Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor was one of twelve projects invited to the Meryl Streep/Nicole Kidman Writers Lab and one of ten international scripts invited to Cannes for the Breaking Through The Lens initiative in 2019. This, Thompson’s debut feature film, was shot in Nova Scotia in the summer of 2020 and made its world premiere at the Inside Out Film Festival in Toronto, May 2021.
Thompson’s short films have played festivals around the world. Pearls, the precursor to this feature and also starring Robb Wells, was one of the last BravoFact shorts. Her short Duck Duck Goose (2018), explored the impact of school lockdowns, and was selected by Telefilm Canada for the Not Short on Talent program at Clermont-Ferrand before playing across Canada and in the US, as well as being a finalist in CBC’s Short Film FaceOff.