My Salinger Year

My Salinger Year (2020) — watch online on iFILM, a Canadian-Irish drama directed by Philippe Falardeau, adapted from Joanna Rakoff's memoir, with Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver in the lead roles.

Fresh out of college, Joanna arrives in mid-nineties New York with an unfinished manuscript and a vague plan to become a poet. She ends up as an assistant at a determinedly old-fashioned literary agency, where her exacting boss — played by Weaver — has banned email and still dictates letters by hand. One of those letters goes to J.D. Salinger. Then the phone rings, and the reclusive author on the other end turns out to be warmer than anyone she has met in the city.

Falardeau keeps the film quiet and specific: no grand speeches, just the accumulation of small choices that define a year and, maybe, a life. Stream My Salinger Year online on iFILM.