The Missing Girl

Mort (Robert Longstreet) is the schlubby, disillusioned owner of a comic-book store who spends his days surrounded by first issues, collectible action figures, and original animation cels, and his nights fantasizing about his beautiful young employee, the aspiring graphic novelist Ellen (Alexia Rasmussen of PROXY, which premiered in the Vanguard programme in 2013). When Ellen doesn't show up to work one day, Mort's worry escalates into full-blown paranoia as he begins conflating her possible fate with that of a girl who went missing when he was a teen — and he finds a focus for his fears when he discovers his former high-school classmate Skippy (Eric Ladin, The Killing, Boardwalk Empire) has returned to town. (Toronto International Film Festival)