TORONTO - Refusing to believe his mother has left the family for good, 10-year-old Leon lays out a series of smooth stones next to his bedside table, each one marking a day he's spent without her.
Longing to share the caribou hunt with his father, young Maniq looks out over a sparse northern landscape wondering when his family will return to the desolate island where he's been left alone with his grandmother.
Tormented by a volatile father who says her mother didn't want her, 14-year-old Lily runs away from home to find the truth about her mother's disappearance.
Young people abandoned by their families -- in both literal and figurative senses -- pop up frequently in this year's slate of films at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Alongside Leon's story in "C'est pas moi, je le jure!" (It's Not Me, I Swear!), Maniq's tale in "Before Tomorrow" and Lily's anguish in "The Secret Life of Bees," children are forsaken one way or another in "Kabuli Kid," in which a baby boy is left in the back of a taxi; "Lost Song," in which postpartum depression comes between a troubled couple and their ability to care for their first child; and "Only," in which a pair of 12-year-olds run amok through a northern Ontario motel.
"Slumdog Millionaire," one of the most talked about films at the festival this year, takes a different spin on abandonment by focusing on a young boy who is tossed onto the streets of Mumbai after his mother is murdered. The U.K. film is directed by Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting").
Young protagonists pop up in films from a variety of countries, but an especially high number seem to populate the Canadian offerings, says the festival's director of Canadian programming, Steve Gravestock. Genres and storylines vary widely among them, but in most, the young characters struggle with an adult world they find hard to understand.
"Part of it is them trying to resurrect the family structure or create an alternative, as for example with `Nurse.Fighter.Boy,"' says Gravestock, referring to a Toronto film in which a 12-year-old immerses himself in a world of magic to protect his ailing mother.
"But there's certainly a sense that the parents in the films are not what you would consider model parents. They're either neglectful or, as in the (case of) `Only,' they're subsumed by their own concerns."
Among Quebec directors, coming-of-age stories set in the '60s seem to be the theme-du-jour.
Francis Leclerc brings "Un ete sans point ni coup sur" (A No-Hit No-Run Summer), about a 12-year-old Expos fanatic who bonds with his father through baseball after being rejected by a hotshot coach, played by Roy Dupuis. In Lea Pool's "Maman est chez le coiffeur" (Mom is at the Hairdresser's), young Elise must hold the family together following her mother's abrupt and angry departure in the years before feminism.
Philippe Falardeau is behind the aforementioned "C'est pas moi, je le jure!", a bitingly funny, yet heart-wrenching account of a 10-year-old's unravelling upon his parents' divorce.
"We all live (through) some kind of abandonment, whether it's a person dying or a person abandoning you, a person disappointing you or somebody leaving for another city," says Falardeau, whose past festival favourites include 2006's "Congorama" and 2000's "The Left-Hand Side of the Fridge."
"For me, that was more interesting than just making a point about family disorder."
Falardeau says one of his most terrifying nightmares as a child was to be left alone in the woods.
"It has to do with a primal fear we all have," says Falardeau, whose film is set for release in Quebec on Sept. 26.
"And it's worse when you're a kid. ... I remember clearly when I was 10 -- I had some really philosophical questions about life and death but I could not word them and I had this big anguish in me, existential anguish in me that I could not express, but I had it."
It's no coincidence, too, that all these children are made to ponder such heavy questions as they approach, or emerge from, puberty. These are the years that form identity, notes Falardeau, with these rights of passage common to all youth, whether it's the '60s or today.
Gravestock suggests that several of these films are putting adults under the microscope more than children, detecting a harsh commentary underneath the youth-driven storylines.
"A level of responsibility ... is what unites a lot of these films and how we discharge or deal with that kind of responsibility," he says. "We're not taking the kind of responsibility we might, is my guess."
The festival runs through Sept. 13.
