Star and screenwriter Sonja Bennett's feature film "Preggoland" opens May 1st in Canada

Star and Screenwriter Sonja Bennett’s Feature Film Preggoland will be released in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal in Canada on May 1 and in the US on May 8 to a limited release in 10 cities.

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Preggoland is very much Sonja Bennett’s baby (pun intended!). The movie marks her foray into screenwriting; in addition to starring in the Canadian indie, the award-winning actress penned the script.  Sonja realized there weren’t as many roles for women over 30, so she decided to be proactive about her career by writing herself the juicy lead she’d been craving.   “I was interested in exploring of how motherhood changes female friendships, the artifice of this giant clique of motherhood and the pregnancy pedestal,” Sonja shares. Inspiration came from Bennett’s
own experience of becoming pregnant with her now five-year-old son.

Montreal’s Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky) directs Preggoland, a laugh-out-loud comedy about a 35-year old woman Ruth (Sonja Bennett) whose high school friends have moved onto motherhood, while she’s still partying in the parking lot. But when Ruth is mistakenly thought to be “with child,”
her life changes – old pals embrace her, strangers give up their seats and her father (James Caan) approves of her for the first time. How can she keep up the ruse? Also starring are Laura Harris (Ruth’s baby-wanting sister), Paul Campbell (the
boss Ruth bonds with over a song), Jared Keeso (the doctor she surprises) and
Danny Trejo (the co-worker who surprises her).

The film opened to a much-hyped premiere as a Special Presentation at TIFF and in Sonja’s hometown at the Vancouver International Film Festival where it won the Most Popular Canadian Feature Film Award and was nominated for best BC film by the VFCC. Preggoland won the Best screenplay award at the Fargo film festival and most recently, on March 15, the film won the audience choice award for best feature film at the Omaha Film Fest and screened at Miami 2015. Upcoming festivals include Sonoma International Festival on March 27, the Gasparilla Film Festival in Tampa Bay Florida where Preggoland will be the closing night film and the film has also been accepted into the Bejing Film Festival.

Dorkshelf says “Preggoland has a stellar script and a star making performance from writer and lead Sonja Bennett.” Scene Creek billed the film “smart and savvy” while NOW Magazine said “Bennett’s written a sharp comedy that explores the societal pressure on women without children and gives a knockout performance as bad girl Ruth.”

After taking two years off to make Preggoland Sonja books her first role back as a ballerina with a blood disorder in the third season of ABC’s drama/thriller Mistresses. She and her husband (Ed Quinn) get tangled up in the lives of one of the Mistresses in an interesting way. Sonja will join the series stars Jes Macallan, Rochelle Aytes, Yunjin Kim, and Jennifer Esposito.

Acting for more than 10 years, Sonja Bennett has appeared in critically acclaimed films such as Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies, Elegy starring Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz, and TIFF opening night film Young People Fucking – for which she earned a Vancouver Film Critics Circle award. The Vancouver native has kept an equally busy profile on the small screen with recurring roles in Eureka, Battlestar Galatica, Blade: The Series. Her performances in Random Acts of Romance, In No Particular Order, Cole and the TV series Godivas and Cold Squad garnered her Leo Gemini, and Genie nominations.

Shot in Vancouver, the film is produced by Kevin Eastwood (Fido) and Dylan Collingwood, Fake-a-baby Productions, Titlecard Pictures Inc. and Optic.