NBA star Kyle Lowry interviewing for We The North.KISHAN MISTRY/Supplied
Actor Simu Liu drew inspiration for his successful debut as the first Asian superhero in a blockbuster Marvel comic film from an unlikely source: the NBA’s Toronto Raptors.
In We The North, a documentary on the basketball team’s 30th anniversary premiering in theatres on Friday, Liu is one of many immigrant fans who tells a story of being a kid from the suburbs who found their Canadian identity in a upstart basketball team, filled with players with something to prove.
In 2019, Liu had courtside access to the Raptors’ run to the NBA finals through his friendship with guard Jeremy Lin. The Harbin, China-born, Mississauga-raised actor was also about to take on his first starring role in a big-budget film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, as a reluctant martial arts expert. In the documentary, Liu said: “If the Raptors could win a championship, I knew I could be Shang-Chi.”
The Raptors did hoist their first NBA championship that spring, while Liu’s movie proved a box office smash. Telling the story of the basketball team’s highs and many lows over three decades through the eyes of ardent fans from a variety of ethnic communities, along with players and executives, makes We The North the latest film from production house Uninterrupted Canada to marry sports with social commentary.
“This documentary is a love letter to the fan base,” said We The North producer Vinay Virmani, CEO and chief content officer at Uninterrupted Canada.
“Growing up in Toronto, the Raptors were more than a team. They embodied our identity. They taught us to embrace who we are,“ said Virmani. “This team has always been a beacon of inclusion, uniting us and standing up for important causes.”
We The North, a film authorized by the Raptors, tells the inside story of the team’s history through the eyes of both fans and the team’s owners, executives and players. Deft editing by Oscar-nominated director Sami Khan ensured honest emotion, rather than corporate sound bites, made it to the screen.
Raptors founder John Bitove starts to cry when talking about the team’s passionate following. Team president Masai Ujiri responds with a Cheshire cat grin when pressed on why he risked league officials’ wrath and a hefty fine by yelling “F--- Brooklyn” to fans ahead of a playoff game against the Nets.
For all the intimate access to executives and athletes such as Kyle Lowry and Vince Carter who defined the Raptors on the court, the stars of the documentary are fans who came of age with the team.
Official poster of We The North: From Prehistoric to Historic.Supplied
The most memorable characters in We The North are hip hop musician Kardinal Offishall, who talks about team members like Carter helping introduce Canadian rappers to mainstream audiences. Broadcaster Parminder Singh, the voice of NBA Canada Punjabi, describes finding a sense of belonging in a crowd of white and Southeast Asian kids doing Punjabi dances in Jurassic Park – the public square near the arena – to celebrate a win. And Muslim writer Shireen Ahmed, who recalls feeling part of Canada after the team began to stock hijabs with Raptors logos for the NBA faithful.
Basketball star LeBron James and business manager Maverick Carter founded Uninterrupted in 2015 as a platform to let athletes tell their own stories. In 2020, the company sold a minority stake to investors including Nike Inc., Epic Games, RedBird Capital Partners and Fenway Sports Group in a transaction that valued the business at US $725-million.
In 2019, Virmani, along with musician Drake, James and Carter, launched Uninterrupted’s Canadian division. Uninterrupted Canada is part of Virmani’s larger platform, the Good Karma Co., that produces content with sports and social themes for corporate clients, including automaker BMW and CIBC’s Simplii Financial division.
In 2022, Virmani produced Black Ice, a documentary on anti-Black racism in hockey. The film won the People’s Choice award for documentaries at the Toronto International Film Festival.
On Friday, Cineplex will premier We The North at 43 theatres across the country for a four-day run. Bell Media, a division of BCE Inc., provided a portion of the funding for the documentary and will run it on streaming service Crave in March.
The Raptors’ anniversary film is part of a wave of sports programming generated in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, when big screen productions were forced to shut down.
In July, 2020, Netflix drew huge numbers of viewers to The Last Dance, a series chronicling basketball star Michael Jordan’s championship seasons with the Chicago Bulls released. Virmani said the documentary showed there was an untapped audience for sports stories, and a new way to present athletes. He said: “The real challenge and opportunity lies in transcending the traditional limits of documentary filmmaking, daring to innovate and offer audiences a fresh, uncharted perspective.”