Level 16

Level 16
Movie studio poster
Directed by	Danishka Esterhazy
Written by	Danishka Esterhazy
Starring	Katie Douglas Celina Martin Peter Outerbridge Sara Canning
Production company	Dark Sky Films
Release date	February 20, 2018 (2018-02-20) (Berlin International Film Festival)
Running time	103 minutes
Language	English

Level 16 is a 2018 sci-fi thriller by filmmaker Danishka Esterhazy. It follows a group of girls who live at a "school" which educates them about how to be perfect young women for families that they are told will eventually adopt them. Two girls work together to uncover the truth about their captivity.^[1][2][3]

Plot[]

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Sophia and Vivien, young girls and best friends, excitedly discuss the future adoptions they are being prepared for. They and the other girls on Level 10 wash their faces in front of a camera in an allotted, regimented time. Vivien stops to help Sophia and in doing so exceeds her time limit; in terror, she is dragged away by guards to be punished.

The girls live in an isolated and windowless boarding school run with military precision, with stress placed on applying face cream and taking vitamins. They are coached to follow the "feminine virtues" of being obedient, clean, and healthy, and avoid "vices" such as curiosity and anger, with the threat of being deemed "unclean" and punished for breaking rules. They are not taught to read or write and warned that the outside air is toxic. They live on numbered levels and are moved up approximately once a year.

Several girls are moved up to Level 16, the final level before adoption, and Vivien is reunited with Sophia for the first time since Level 10. The girls are given beautiful dresses as a "reward" and told to wear them to bed. Sophia warns Vivien not to take the daily vitamins; Vivien does so when she sees the normally white pill is now blue. The blue pills are revealed to be heavy sleeping pills. Vivien and Sophia pretend to sleep as guards enter the bedroom. Vivien and another girl, Olivia, are carried out and laid on beds in a lounge. The facility manager, Miss Brixhil, presents the sleeping girls to a middle-age couple, who admire the girl's untouched beauty. They choose Olivia and make plans to purchase her. Vivien is returned to the bedroom and another girl, Rita, is removed.

Vivien manages to escape the bedroom unseen at night, but cannot open any of the doors without a key card. She and Sophia become suspicious when they are injected with a "flu" vaccine by the facility's doctor, Dr. Miro, causing painful red rashes. Ava reports Vivien for "unclean" behavior and Miss Brixhil locks her in a box. When Sophia attacks a guard and steals a key card from him, she is searched but the card cannot be found. She is taken away. The other girls are warned they will be punished daily until the card is found. Vivien finds that Sophia has hidden the card in the headboard of her bed. A conversation between Miss Brixhil and Dr. Miro reveals that the four groups of girls spend most of their time drugged, with each group being woken up for five hours a day to clean and feed themselves.

During the night, Vivien finds Miss Brixhil and overpowers and sedates her. Vivien finds a floor of cells where she frees Sophia. They explore a crude operating room full of corpses, where the missing Rita is dead and skinned on a table. They find videos that reveal they are products in a rejuvenation clinic, raised in a sterile environment so that rich "sponsors" can have the skin of young girls transplanted onto them to appear more youthful.

Sophia and Vivien are about to escape the building, but Sophia insists on returning to save the other girls. Vivien forces a weakened Miss Brixhil, who is revealed to have also had the surgery, to tell them the truth. Sophia and Vivien lock her in the box and lead the girls out of the facility, pursued by guards. Sophia is stabbed and injured, but she and Vivien manage to hide in a shed. Dr. Miro arrives to speak to them through a window, attempting to convince them to return. He reveals that all the girls’ birth parents sold them as babies. An enraged Vivien cuts her face with a scalpel so the clinic cannot use her, while Miro cries out in anguish. The guards take him away to see the mastermind of the operation. A gunshot is heard; Miro has presumably been killed for losing control of the clinic.

The girls are found in the morning by Polish-speaking emergency services and taken to safety.

Cast[]

• Katie Douglas as Vivien
• Celina Martin as Sophia
• Peter Outerbridge as Dr. Miro
• Sara Canning as Miss Brixil
• Sara DaSilva as young Vivien
• Lori Phun as young Sofia
• Amalia Williamson as Rita

Production[]

Filming[]

Filming took place in a retired police station in Toronto that was built in the 1930s. Esterhazy was given complete freedom to use and adjust the building in any way she saw fit, and used this to create a "very real and gritty" set.^[4]

The film was slated to have its television premiere on August 24, 2019 on CBC Television.^[5]

Casting[]

The role of Doctor Miro was portrayed by Peter Outerbridge, an actor who director Danishka Esterhazy had admired for years. Sara Canning, a friend of Esterhazy who played the lead part on her first feature film Black Field, was cast as Brixil in a role that was specifically written for her by Esterhazy.^[6] Katie Douglas, who was cast as Vivien, was a young emerging actress who impressed upon her first audition. Of Douglas's performances, Esterhazy said "Every day on set she would surprise me — in the very best way."^[7]

References[]

External links[]

• Level 16 at IMDb

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