And yes, there were local digs: Mandel opener John Mendoza says he’s noticed so many Tim Horton’s franchises sprouting up in Vancouver he saw one in a Starbucks.
"I wanted something that sounded like those sorts of folktales that my grandfather and grandmother would tell me, and the African epics that I read, which are decidedly not western."
The direction-design team has slipped a postmark up into the sky above the sepia scene—turning the set into a kind of three-dimensional vintage postcard.