Blueberry Grunt, Modern Whore, and Nika & Madison at the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival

The SJIWFF runs in St. John’s, NL from Oct. 21-25, 2025 | Get your tickets here

Reviewed by Eva Crocker 

The St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival runs from October 21st-25th with most films screening at the newly refurbished Majestic Theatre. 

I had the pleasure of seeing a few of this year’s highly anticipated features including; local legend Sherry White’s Blueberry Grunt, Nicole Bazuin’s buzzy Modern Whore, and Eva Thomas’ powerful Nika & Madison. 

Blueberry Grunt, is an intimate drama that follows a couple into the woods on a side-by-side to a remote camping spot where they plan to celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary. Alone in a cliffside marsh, Vivian (Liisa Repo-Martell) and Harold (Joel Thomas Hynes) find themselves confronting the ways they’ve each been changed by a traumatic event involving their teenage son. 

Blueberry Grunt captures the kinds of resentment and tenderness that are only possible in a relationship that’s weathered more than a decade and the birth of a child. Hynes and Repo-Martell are seasoned actors with a lot of chemistry, and White’s skillfully restrained script makes space for them to bring the complex contradictions of their relationship to life. The title is a reference to a dessert that Vivians usually makes with the spoils of their annual berry-picking excursion. Early in the film, Harold makes a lewd (but fairly tame) joke to a young man about the couple “grunting” in their tent on their anniversary. The joke is a little offputting yet, somehow, charming? The viewer notes Vivian’s exasperation but Harold is oblivious, we feel that she’s put up with a lifetime of these jokes and the charm is wearing thin. As the film progresses, White refuses to give us any easy answers about who is in the right. 

Modern Whore is a documentary adaptation of Andrea Werhun’s memoir with the same title, starring Werhun herself. The documentary collages together Werhun speaking to the camera about her experiences as an escort and stripper in Toronto, with interviews she conducts with her mother, her boyfriend, and some of her sex worker friends. Spliced between these conversations are highly stylized re-enactments of Werhun’s tales of life in the biz; these scenes have a nineties-does-the-sixities aesthetic, reminiscent of the queer cult classic, But I’m a Cheerleader. 

Werhun brings a campy sensibility to the re-enactments, often punctuating them with moments of slapstick physical humour. Her bubbly energy is propulsive and in places the film feels light and airy, however the project is not afraid to approach difficult subject matter and afford it the weight it deserves. When Werhun and her friends discuss the joys and difficulties of sex work, they often return the idea that what makes sex work isolating and at times dangerous is not the nature of the work itself, but the combination of societal stigma and criminalization.   

In the opening of the drama, Nika & Madison, the titular friends have drifted apart since Madison (Star Slade) left the reservation where they both grew up to attend university in Toronto. On a visit home, Madison is picked up by a white police officer who sexually assaults her in an empty parking lot. Nika (Ellyn Jade), using the Find My Friends app, comes upon Madison in the midst of the attack and ends up striking the man with a hockey stick in order to save her friend. Leaving the cop unconscious, the young women go on the run, knowing it’s only a matter of time before they’re caught and punished for the man’s abuse of power. 

One of the strengths of Nika & Madison is that in spite of the razor sharp tension pulsing through it, the film relaxes into the precious moments where the girls are able to reconnect by sharing a little bit of their respective worlds with each other. Nika takes Madison to a cherished trailer in the woods where she catches a fish for their breakfast, Madison dresses Nika up for a night of dancing in Toronto night clubs. Slade’s Madison is energetic and quippy, while Jade’s Nika is more sombre and pragmatic; the actresses’ performances highlight how the character’s differences often risk driving the duo apart, but complement each other exceptionally in the moments when they’re able to get along. The film is both a scathing critique of the racism and misogyny that’s endemic to Canada’s legal system, and a moving portrait of a friendship that manages to endure people growing up and choosing different paths. 

Each of these films dig deep into types of intimacy we don’t often see given the nuance they deserve on screen; Blueberry Grunt explores what love is like after you’ve withstood the perils raising a child together, in Modern Whore sex workers talk passionately the importance of spaces to connect with other sex workers, Nika & Madison brings to life a complicated friendship between two young Indigenous women. 

Eva Crocker is the author of two novels, All I Ask and Back in the Land of the Living, and the short story collection Barrelling Forward.  Her new short story collection Bargain Bargain Bargain will be published in 2026. She is a PhD Candidate in Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Program where is researching visual art from Newfoundland and Labrador.