3.5 out of 5 stars

What better job to have as an introverted, slightly paranoid person than a librarian? You take care of everyone else’s stories without disclosing yours, and you reign over your little universe ruled by the Dewey Decimal System, where every book (read: everyone) has a designated space. For Miriam Gordon (Britt Lower), it’s the ideal position: she exists in the margins, walking along the stacks, going through her routine and keeping to herself. She’s a closed book (pun intended): unreadable, mysterious, if only because she’s utterly disconnected from everyone else around her. Even when she finally connects with someone, she has difficulty opening up.

Janko (Tom Mercier) is an equally awkward Slovenian immigrant, a painter moonlighting as a cab driver. They meet in the Allan Gardens park, near the public library branch where Miriam works; she sits on the benches by the greenhouse to eat her lunch every day, and he starts sitting opposite her. He asks for her stories early in their courtship, but Miriam says she has none; she’s too busy handling the ones at the library. Janko decides to nickname her Darkest Miriam, as she keeps her cards close to her chest; he prods, longing to connect, while she ping-pongs between finding her courage to make some audacious advances, and fighting against her flight response.

After premiering at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival in the summer of 2024 and a limited run in cinemas across North America in April 2025, Darkest Miriam premieres in the UK at the Dundead Film Festival. The film is adapted from the 2009 novel The Incident Report by Martha Baillie, and director and screenwriter Naomi Jaye (The Pin) is very familiar with the source material: this is her third adaptation of it, as she told me in an interview. She mounted an art installation for her master’s thesis in 2019 and remounted it as an immersive video installation in 2022. She sees the story less as a linear narrative and more like a collection of moments from Miriam’s life, a complex character study. The following information will let you in on what kind of tone you might expect from Darkest Miriam, as Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) joins as an executive producer.

My first impression of Darkest Miriam was that it reminded me of Amélie (2001), and not just because of Lower’s and Audrey Tautou’s signature baby bangs. Miriam is a quirky character, living in her bubble and acting as a witness to her environment more than an active participant, much like Amélie, but there is a distinctly sadder undercurrent to Miriam’s universe versus Amélie’s whimsical and bright world.

The film opens with Miriam listing things from her daily life: how the light switches at the library are stiff, describing the patrons of the library and their various eccentricities, and filing incident reports for found dentures, damaged books and random altercations between patrons. The library is not only Miriam’s refuge, but also for many underserved or neglected groups: Jaye delicately highlights how joy and sadness, beauty and pain, can coexist in the same spaces, with not only the library as a shared space but the park as well, where one can find solace and connection, whether it be in an encampment for the homeless or the lush gardens or the greenhouse.

Miriam is jolted into action by two unrelated incidents. After a nasty fall into a construction hole, she has an unfortunate visit to the accident and emergency room, where she struggles to answer the intake nurse’s questions or to name an emergency contact other than her boss. Meanwhile, at work, she starts feeling uncomfortable; someone is leaving her notes tucked in books or lying around the library, ranging from concerning to threatening. It’s clear the notes’ author knows her, as they reference her late father’s favourite opera, Rigoletto and describe her with details such as her freckled hands, her movements around the library and her interactions with the library’s users. The notes are not a figment of her imagination: they’re real, as she shows them to her boss, and then to a police officer who tells her there’s nothing they can do until the author of the notes acts on their vague threats.

Miriam’s father is a mysterious figure in her life: she mentions him as one of the library’s patrons at the very beginning, and we catch glimpses of him reading in a basement filled with stacks of books along the walls, but he doesn’t show up alongside Miriam. Later on, she reveals to Janko that he passed away, even though she had previously told him he was alive and selling insurance. It seems Miriam hasn’t grieved him, and he haunts her memory. Could he be behind the ominous notes?

In the end, it’s not the destination that matters, but the way we get there. Darkest Miriam is a deep exploration of Miriam’s psyche, and the mystery of the notes is but a device to drive her evolution. Said evolution is clearly illustrated from the start with the two main spaces where Miriam’s public and personal personas are challenged. The library and the greenhouse act as complete, opposite characters: where the library is orderly and somewhat oppressive, the greenhouse is bright and chaotic, full of unrestrained life. While the library is the place where Miriam feels safe at first, she longs for the freedom of the greenhouse.

Britt Lower is a quiet and powerful presence as Miriam. She shows a softer, more delicate side of her than in her role as the fiery Helly in Apple TV’s Severance, flexing her range as a character actress. She has intriguing chemistry with Tom Mercier (We Are Who We Are), and they play off each other in an adorable, soulful way. Janko is the perfect foil to Miriam: more direct, he coaxes her into opening up and letting go, while she perceives him fully. Mercier is soft-spoken, an equally strong presence on-screen across Lower.

While Darkest Miriam is destined for a smaller auteur audience, it nevertheless delivers a little gem of a movie. It shows Naomi Jaye’s skill as a writer-director with a fresh perspective, while showcasing Lower and Mercier’s acting talents. It was nominated in a total of six categories at the 2025 Canadian Screen Awards, including ‘Best Motion Picture’ and ‘Achievement in Direction’ for Jaye, ‘Performance in a Leading Role’ for Lower, and ‘Performance in a Supporting Role’ for Mercier. If you can catch it while it screens in the UK, I highly recommend you do, and for those of you in North America, you can rent it on AppleTV+.

CANADA | 2024 | 87 MINUTES | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Naomi Jaye.
writer: Naomi Jaye (based on the novel ‘The Incident Report’ by Martha Baillie).
starring: Britt Lower, Tom Mercier, Sook-Yin Lee & Jean Yoon.