VIFF 2023: I Used to Be Funny

Sam Cowell (Rachel Sennott) used to be funny. She used to spend her nights working the comedy clubs of Toronto and her days as an au pair for Brooke, a young teen struggling with the recent passing of her mother. Now Sam hides from the world, tormented by PTSD from an unseen event. Faced with … Read more

VIFF 2023: How To Have Sex

Sixteen-year-old Tara and her two best friends arrive at a Greek party town ready to let their hair down. They scope out the scene and quickly make friends with a group of suitors across the hall. Convenient because Tara’s friends decided that it’s time for her to lose her virginity. But while Tara is indeed … Read more

VIFF 2023: Float

World Premiere During the summer before college, city girl Waverly (Andrea Bang) finds herself in Tofino, completely alienated by the local beach culture. Things start to look up when she meets the local lifeguard Blake (Robbie Amell), who welcomes her into his life. And when he finds out that she doesn’t know how to swim … Read more

VIFF 2023: Fitting In

Lindy (Maddie Ziegler) has a problem. She’s 16, doing well in school, and she has a boyfriend in her sights… But a routine gynecological examination reveals her body doesn’t conform to expectations, not her own and not society’s. Born with a rare reproductive syndrome, she is told she will never conceive and penetrative sex will … Read more

VIFF 2023: Close To You

Drawn home for the first time in a long time by his father’s birthday, Sam (Elliot Page) finds himself aboard a train out of Toronto hurtling towards a family he hasn’t faced since transitioning four years earlier. Onboard, he makes a chance encounter with an old friend, Katherine (Hillary Baack), and sparks instant chemistry, bringing … Read more

VIFF 2023: Animalia

With her affluent husband and his oppressive family away on a day trip, Itto (Oumaïma Barid) intends to savour some solitude in their opulent home. But when an ominous meteorological event blows in, all of Morocco is plunged into a state of emergency. Forced to evacuate and thrust from her sheltered privilege, the heavily pregnant … Read more

VIFF 2021: Three Sisters

Laced with poisonous black humour and deliciously vindicating moments, this blistering indictment of patriarchal abuse and religious hypocrisy would make Chekhov’s jaw drop to the floor. Three wildly different sisters are hit by life crises all at once. Thrifty, self-harming doormat Hee-sook (Kim Sun-young) is spurned by her goth daughter and diagnosed with cancer. Mi-yeon … Read more

VIFF 2021: The Worst Person in the World

In turns riotous and reflective, and boasting one of the year’s most transfixing performances, Joachim Trier’s latest is a protracted coming-of-age tale that immaculately captures that phase of early adulthood in which we’re all natural disasters leaving trails of destruction in our wakes. An aspiring surgeon when we meet her, Julie (Renate Reinsve) soon takes … Read more

VIFF 2021: The Girl and the Spider

Both very sly and very daring, Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s long-awaited follow-up to The Strange Little Cat (VIFF 2013) is largely set in a spacious bohemian apartment, as tenant Mara (Henriette Confurius) and various friends and family gather to help Mara’s longtime roommate, Lisa (Liliane Amuat), move out. But the story here takes a backseat … Read more

VIFF 2021: The Book of Delights

Marcela Lordy has made a film as thorny, erotic, and complex as the writing of one of Brazil’s most fêted writers, Clarice Lispector. Set in Rio, and based on Lispector’s novel with the same name, The Book of Delights is a compelling character study focuses on a complicated, intelligent, freedom-loving, slightly damaged woman, Lóri (Simone … Read more