CLOSING NIGHT!
CHRISTIE PITS Park
Sunday, AUGUST 24, 2025
10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU
With the short film Love Stinks
On August 24th, the curtain closes on Toronto Outdoor Picture Show’s 15th anniversary season with a beloved modern-day Shakespeare adaptation hitting the big screen at Christie Pits Park for Closing Night. All summer long, TOPS has commemorated its own coming of age with a programme titled When We Were Young, a series of films about the ups and downs of growing up, getting to know ourselves (at any age), and – sometimes – falling in love for the first time.
For TOPS’ 15th anniversary Closing Night, we invited the audience to vote for their favourite coming-of-age film among a list of contenders. Beloved late 90s teen cult classic 10 Things I Hate About You overwhelmingly won our voters’ hearts, and we look forward to bookending the summer season with it!
A clever, modern reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You is a pre-Y2K coming-of-age romantic comedy and cultural touchstone. Featuring an up-and-coming cast of teen actors then on the edge of stardom (Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Larisa Oleynik) as would-be romantic matches, the film plays out as a high school battle of wit and courtship. As the film translates Shakespeare’s play to a modern-day American suburban setting, it honours the source material’s themes of identity, rebellion, and first love, which continue to resonate with young audiences over 25 years later.
The Closing Night screening of 10 Things I Hate About You is rounded out with a short film by Canadian Screen Award-winning Toronto filmmaker Alicia K. Harris. Harris is an accomplished writer-director whose films are rooted in Black girlhood and in preserving the fleeting feelings of youth, and we’re delighted to showcase her work on Closing Night.
With its affectionate and deliberately awkward depiction of teen angst and burgeoning sexuality, Alicia K. Harris’ short film Love Stinks is a delightful pairing with 10 Things I Hate About You. Set in the late 80s with a John Hughes teen flick aesthetic, this short film finds thirteen year-old Jessica navigating some of the thorniest teenaged challenges – with the help of her best friends and a revealing adult magazine she found in her parents’ bedroom. Using a tone that is both comedic and tender, Harris delicately portrays the complexities of girlhood, offering audiences a poignant coming-of-age capsule.
10 things i hate about you
Directed by Gil Junger, 1999
With short film Love Stinks, directed by Alicia K. Harris, 2016
Sunday, August 24, 2025
Venue: Christie Pits Park
Admission: Free/PWYC (no ticket required to attend)
Donations make our programming possible (click here)
Event details:
Eats & Treats for sale @ 6 pm / Showtime @ sundown (~ 8:30 pm)
Programme runtime: 1hr 50min
BYOBlanket & Chairs
Films are screened with captioning
Please click to read about additional accessibility features
Content advisory: This programme contains mild profanity, mild sex & nudity, mild violence, and mild alcohol/drug use.
Christie Station
