It is only five kilometres from the Hyatt Regency Hotel on King West to Roncesvalles. That is, the increasingly gentrified strip in the city's west end, not the small Spanish village near the French border.
But for producer David Alexanian and anyone who has traveled the approximately 800 km-long Camino De Santiago pilgrimage, Roncesvalles represents a very symbolic location.
"It is the starting point of the route," says Alexanian, whose film The Way (short for the route's Anglicized name The Way of St. James) has its world premiere on Friday night at the Winter Garden Theatre.
The film, directed by and starring Martin Sheen (that's him above in a scene from the movie) as well as his son Emilio Estevez, is about an American doctor who heads to France after discovering that his son has died in a storm while walking the Camino. From the lobby of the hotel on Wednesday afternoon, Alexanian said that the film has yet to be screened to a wide audience.
Perhaps someone should get tickets for Toronto mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi. In the July issue of Toronto Life, he listed a scallop shell he received upon completing the Camino as one of his favourite things. Staff