Rental Family

Set in modern-day Tokyo, RENTAL FAMILY follows an American actor (Oscar winner Brendan Fraser) who struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese “rental family” agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients’ worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines … Read more

Rental Family: VIFF 2025

Need a respectable-looking mourner to fill out your funeral? Searching for a fake dad to impress the registration committee at your posh private school? Why not call Rental Family, a surrogate agency leasing stand-in actors for social settings. In this US-Japanese co-production from director HIKARI (who has several episodes of Beef in her filmography), Brendan … Read more

The Whale

From filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (BLACK SWAN, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) comes THE WHALE, the story of a reclusive English teacher (Brendan Fraser, in an Oscar-winning performance) living with  severe obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance  at redemption. Starring Brendan Fraser and based  on the acclaimed play by … Read more

The Mummy (1999)

The Rio Theatre‘s annual, seasonal deep dive into monster movies continues on Monday, October 24 with the 1999 fan favourite THE MUMMY, a rousing, suspenseful and horrifying epic about an expedition of treasure-seeking explorers in the Sahara Desert in 1925. Stumbling upon an ancient tomb, the hunters unwittingly set loose a 3,000-year-old legacy of terror, … Read more