format:35mm, Colour, English
running time:Feature Film
writer/Director:Sook-Yin Lee
story editor:Marguerite Pigott
producer:Trish Dolman
co-producer:Kryssta Mills
development financing:Movie Central,
BC Film, Telefilm, COGECO
Status:Packaging

Year of the Carnivore is a bittersweet comedy, a coming-of-age story about a girl with an unrequited crush on a boy who thinks she's bad in bed, so she goes out to get more "experience".

SAMMY SMALLS is an impish 21-year-old tomboy. Sammy is tiny, less than five feet tall. With a crazy mane of curly hair, tied in an elastic band, she possesses an offbeat beauty. She works as a store detective at Big Apple Food Town. Her job is to deliver shoplifters to her boss who beats them up so they never re-offend. Sammy feels guilty over her part in the dodgy scheme and wants to quit, but doesn’t feel like she has any other options. She certainly isn’t moving back home to live with her unhappy and over-protective parents.

Meanwhile, Sammy has an unrequited crush on scruffy Eugene Zaslavsky, 24, a musician who plays the most enchanting music. He’s perfect for her, funny, irreverent, charming and as much of an oddball as she is, but the problem is, he has no desire to be in a relationship. After a disastrous encounter that goes beyond the boundaries of their friendship, Eugene suggests they play the field to get more experience. Following his dvice, Sammy hatches a plan. Instead of delivering shoplifters to her boss, she blackmails them into giving her sex lessons in an abandoned shack in the woods behind the supermarket. While Sammy searches for sexual awakening, Eugene is on his own path to finding love, which ultimately leads them back to each other.