Opening night! Fort York
Thursday, june 12, 2025

William Shakespeare’s

Romeo + Juliet

With the short film When Love Came To Kill Us

On opening night, Toronto Outdoor Picture Show sets the stage for this summer’s 15th anniversary When We Were Young programme with William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the tale of star crossed lovers transports the scene to 1990s Venice Beach, complete with MTV-style saturated colours and rapid-fire editing. But for all its postmodern playfulness and nostalgic pre-Y2K soundtrack, the heart of the film remains a timeless coming of age story about the mad rush of young love, tested loyalty and friendship, and the pressure to conform to parental and social expectations. Nearly 30 years after its release, Romeo + Juliet remains an iconic film for millennials who grew up with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes posters on their walls, The Cardigans and Radiohead CDs in their Discmans, and Harold Perrineau and John Leguizamo’s indelible lines as Mercutio and Tybalt committed to memory. Whether you’re seeing this masterpiece for the first time or the 30th, experiencing its extraordinary production design and thrilling score under the open sky at Fort York will be a memory you won’t soon forget.

Toronto filmmaker Alicia K. Harris’ short film When Love Came To Kill Us, inspired by Canadian musician Jessie Reyez’ album of the same name, could have been tailor-made to pair with Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Poetic and dramatic, it enfolds two young lovers in magic hour light at the moment that they discover they can’t escape their shared fate.