VIFF 2021: The Boathouse

Already anxious and skittish, Anne (Firecrackers’ Michaela Kurimsky) could’ve found a less triggering summer job. With her music professor Natalia (Kelly Martin) having gone missing, Anne’s been hired on by Natalia’s husband, Dominic (Alan Van Sprang), to be a live-in nanny at a lakeside cottage. After winning over the couple’s skeptical kids, Anne finds her … Read more

VIFF 2021: Bipolar

Reminiscent of its monochromatic brethren Dead Man and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Queena Li’s Bipolar is an odyssey all its own: a buddy comedy featuring a broken-hearted musician and technicolour lobster that sends the Orpheus myth crashing through the looking glass. In the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on a luxury pilgrimage, a … Read more

VIFF 2021: Flee

Leaving a home behind collapses a set of connections to the world; for the refugee, who cannot return, it means to watch those connections disappear without the power to renew them or prevent their distortion by memory. Amin Nawabi, the pseudonymous subject of Flee, recounts his family’s forced departure from Kabul, their fearful year shut … Read more

VIFF 2021: Strawberry Mansion

In 2035, James (co-director Kentucker Audley) makes an honest dollar auditing the dreams of others and assessing them back taxes for the more extravagant elements of their nighttime fantasies. Setting up shop at the rural home of elderly, free-spirited Bella (Penny Fuller), he dives into the deep end of her outdated VHS archive of dreams. … Read more

VIFF 2021: See for Me

Still coming to terms with her loss of sight, Sophie (Skyler Davenport) suddenly finds herself with more pressing concerns when the secluded mansion she’s housesitting is targeted by home invaders. When she frantically activates a new app that allows a volunteer to remotely serve as her eyes, she’s fortuitously connected with Kelly (Jessica Parker-Kennedy), an … Read more

VIFF 2021: The Beta Test

In the post-Weinstein era, the fragile Hollywood ecosystem of predatory talent agencies and investors is a house of cards teetering on collapse. Jordan Hines (Jim Cummings), an ambitious but struggling agent trying to preserve his way of life, receives an anonymous invitation to a no-strings sexual encounter. Obsessed with uncovering the people behind the letter, … Read more

Vancouver Bad Ass Film Festival 2021: Funhouse

Canadian premiere of Vancouver writer/director Jason William Lee‘a new epic star studded action-packed horror feature FUNHOUSE (2020, 106 minutes) starring Skarsgard, Guerrero, Benefield, Retamal, and many more with appearances by most of the Vancouver genre film community. Followed by moderated Q&A with the director and attending key cast and crew. FUNHOUSE: How many likes for … Read more

Fallen Angels (2020 Restoration)

Lost souls reach out for human connection amidst the glimmering night world of Hong Kong in Wong Kar Wai’s hallucinatory, neon-soaked nocturne. Originally conceived as a segment of CHUNGKING EXRESS, only to spin off on its own woozy axis, this hyper-cool head rush plays like the dark, moody flip side to Wong’s breakout feature as … Read more

Best Sellers

Lucy Standbridge (Aubrey Plaza) has inherited her father’s publishing house, and the ambitious would-be editor has nearly sunk it with failing titles. She discovers she is owed a book by Harris Shaw (Michael Caine), a reclusive, cantankerous, booze-addled author who originally put the company on the map decades earlier. In a last-ditch effort to save … Read more

Mogul Mowgli

Zed, a young British rapper, is about to start his first world tour, when a crippling illness strikes him down, and he is forced to move back in with his family. He tries to find himself between an international music career and Pakistani family traditions. Starring musician and Oscar-nominee Riz Ahmed (THE SOUND OF METAL) … Read more