Featured image: Mimi Kuzyck and Mark O’Brien in The Righteous. (Courtesy of Red Eye Media.)
Here’s another batch of interviews with releases from the past month or so, and all of which were feature debuts.
THE RIGHTEOUS
Here, I was able to speak with Mark O’Brien about his first film as director, The Righteous, which he also writes and stars in. The film, which premiered as part of last year’s Fantasia Film Festival, stars O’Brien’s Ready or Not co-star Henry Czerny, as well as Mimi Kuzyck.
Our conversation covers premiering at Fantasia, reuniting with Henry Czerny, the Canadian politeness of the film, shooting in Newfoundland and more in between. Find the conversation below on YouTube, or find my review from last year at Fantasia. The film is now available to stream on Arrow Video in the U.S., as well as rental services like YouTube, Google Play and Apple TV. It’s also available on YouTube, Google Play, Cineplex Store and Apple TV in Canada.
COP SECRET
For the second film in this post, I spoke with co-writer and director Hannes Þór Halldórsson for Icelandic action comedy Cop Secret, which he filmed in his last season as a professional goalkeeper in Iceland.
In the film, Iceland’s toughest cop is tasked with solving a string of bank robberies, and he starts to catch feelings for his new partner, Iceland’s other badass cop in a neighboring town who is actually comfortable with his sexuality.

In our conversation, he talks about skills that he’s used for both professions, creating the characters, coming up with the two main characters and co-writing the story with the film’s stars (Auðunn Blöndal and Egill Einarsson), as well as some of the film’s humour.
The film is available to rent on Google Play, YouTube and AppleTV+ in Canada and in the United States. You can find the interview directly below on YouTube.
THE PREY: LEGEND OF KARNOCTUS
I was also able to speak with the filmmaking brothers team of Cire Hensman and Matthew Hensman (who also co-wrote) for their film The Prey: Legend of Karnoctus. Their film features Danny Trejo and Nick Chinlund as mercenaries on a job who cross paths with a group of Afghan soldiers, where they intersect in a cave by a nearby a Taliban camp and wait out a cave in, and soon learn they’re being hunted by a beast called the Karnoctus.
They talk about toys and the Karnoctus itself, as well as what inspired the name for the beast and other films that helped inspire this project. They also chat about what it was like working with Danny Trejo. The film can be rented on DirectTV or in the Microsoft Store in the United States (and on the Microsoft Store in Canada). Check out the conversation below on YouTube.
