Blackberry: Jay Baruchel, Michael Scott, James Tiskin, Matt Johnson, Ben Petrie and Ethan Eng in Johnson's film. Photograph: National Amusements, his no-budget breakout from 2013, which cemented his reputation on the festival circuit, was an inventive, unnerving, unexpectedly entertaining film about North American school shootings. Operation Avalanche, his 2016 follow-up, offered a conspiracy-led history of Stanley Kubrick’s supposed involvement in a fake moon landing.
Adapted from the book Losing the Signal, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s tale of tech hubris, Johnson’s film unpacks the history of the iconic phone, from its inception to the disastrous 2007 design for BlackBerry Storm – a device that failed to keep pace with the newly introduced iPhone. “I like to refer to Research in Motion as being like the very best ice collectors, who would go out to the Arctic and bring back ice in salt, so people could refrigerate their food,” says Johnson. “And then Steve Jobs invented the refrigerator. It doesn’t matter how good you are at collecting ice after someone’s invented the fridge. It’s impossible to compete.
I think just the fact that the story was being told was huge for them. They were quite shocked to see themselves on screen at all“We had to shoot secretly because we were making the film without the participation of BlackBerry, and they are still powerful around that region,” says Johnson. “I’ve gotten to know Jim since the premiere, and he’s a wonderful guy. It was important I didn’t meet him before. I would have been too accommodating – I’m a Canadian.