FILE PHOTO - The Peach

Image Credit: City of Penticton

A new coming-of-age movie that will be showcased on Crave is featuring a beloved Okanagan city.

Growing up in Alberta, director Caitlyn Sponheimer spent every summer in Penticton, a location she wanted to showcase with her film Wild Goat Surf.

Wild Goat Surf, produced by Raging River Films and Studio 104 Entertainment, follows the life of 12-year-old Goat and her experience with her single mother while living in a Penticton trailer park in 1994. 

Director, writer, actor and producer of the film, Sponheimer said the city has a special place in her heart.

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“I feel like my summers were spent growing up in Penticton so I just know it so well… Penticton and the Okanagan Valley means so much to me and I am so nostalgic about it so I wanted to write a film that encompassed that nostalgia,” she said.

“It had to be Penticton because I wanted to show and put it on screen as a way to preserve my childhood almost.”

An old motor home her parents used on their vacations will be used in the movie.

“It also talks about the issue of child poverty in B.C. which is quite bad so it's just a low-income family that ends up living in an RV park during the summer,” she said.

The 12-year-old has a dream of surfing in the ocean but is land-locked in the Okanagan.

This is Montreal-based Sponheimer’s first full-length movie. She has a background in shorts and music videos.

In Canada, the movie will be available in November, December, 2023 on Crave's streaming service.

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Crews will be filming in Penticton from Aug. 22 to Sept. 22 at various locations, including The Peach, along Skaha Lake Beach and around South Beach Gardens campground.

Due to staffing shortages and because caterers are incredibly busy during a packed wedding season, Martianne Munro, production co-ordinator, said the crews are in need of a caterer during filming in the South Okanagan.

The catering will need to serve meals twice a day and the schedule varies during the shoot, to roughly 40 crew members.

“We really love to support local businesses but we are running into some walls,” she said. “They’re taxed to the max because of staffing and just the amount of demand on them after COVID,” she said.

Any catering companies that are interested can reach out to wildgoatsurf@gmail.com.

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