By John Corrado

★★★ (out of 4)

The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

The debut feature from Toronto-born director M. H. Murray, I Don’t Know Who You Are is an anxiety-inducing drama that primarily takes place in the aftermath of a horrific sexual assault. The film centres around Benjamin (Mark Clennon), a struggling musician in Toronto barely making ends meet playing local gigs and giving saxophone lessons, who is not really ready to commit to a new relationship after a falling out with his old boyfriend.

When he is walking home drunk from a party one night, Benjamin is violently sexually assaulted by a stranger in an alley. Because of the high chance he has been exposed to HIV, he is prescribed PEP (post-exposure prophylactic) at the emergency room, but a full round of this medication (that he needs) costs nine hundred dollars (that he doesn’t have).

There’s also a ticking clock element to all of this; the medication is only effective if he takes it within the first 48-72 hour window following exposure. Because it unfolds over a contained period of time, with onscreen title cards counting down the days, Murray’s film is able to build drama and tension out of Benjamin trying to track down the cash to pay for the medication, as he faces the indignity of essentially needing to beg others for help.

Every step of the way, Murray allows us to be right there with Benjamin, from the anxiety and terror of being followed and assaulted, to showing the many ways he is forced to fend for himself in the aftermath of it. Clennon (who also produced the film) delivers a gripping, powerful performance that makes us feel his character’s predicament, and sympathize with his increasingly desperate measures. Heightened by Spencer Creaghan’s fittingly dramatic jazz score, I Don’t Know Who You Are is an evocative debut film that captures a sense of tension, without exploiting the situation at the centre of it.

Public Screenings: Thursday, September 7th, 9:30 PM at TIFF Bell Lightbox; Friday, September 8th, 10:00 PM at TIFF Bell Lightbox