Movies
VIFF 2024: Rumours
World leaders assemble in Germany for their annual G7 summit tasked with drafting a provisional statement on the current (unspecified) crisis. Isolated from the media in a remote gazebo, they slowly set to work, distracted only by the personal anguish of Canada’s PM (Roy Dupuis), a handsome man beset with
VIFF 2024: To a Land Unknown
Cousins Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah), two Palestinian refugees stranded in Athens, turn to purse-snatching, shoplifting, and sex work to scrounge up funds for the fake passports they need to move their family to Germany. When Reda loses their savings to a heroin addiction relapse, Chatila devises a
VIFF 2024: Fréwaka
Canadian Premiere Shortly after the death of her estranged mother, Shoo (Clare Monnelly) a primary care nursing student takes a placement in a remote Irish village to care for Peig (Brid Ni Neachtain) a reclusive, elderly woman who lives in fear, haunted by her experiences in a Catholic asylum. The
VIFF 2024: Secret Mall Apartment
Did you ever wish you could live at the mall? In 2003, that’s just what Michael Townsend and several of his friends did, creating one of the most original guerilla art projects of the 21st century, building and furnishing a hidden 750 sq. foot apartment — complete with couch, cabinet, even
VIFF 2024: William Basinski: Arcadia Archive
Acclaimed ambient and experimental composer William Basinski presents the Canadian Premiere of Arcadia Archive: an immersive, transcendent live performance that combines music drawn from Basinski’s extensive archival work with 40+ year-old tape loops. For this special VIFF Live concert, Basinski will premiere a new work – a prayer for peace, channeled
VIFF 2024: Else
Following a mediocre one-night stand, Anx and Cass are forced into lockdown together in Anx’s apartment. A mysterious virus is causing people’s bodies to melt and fuse with the surfaces of inanimate objects. All the infected can do is moan in pain as their body slowly merges with whatever they
VIFF 2024: GIFT: A Film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi X Live Score by Eiko Ishibashi
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Eiko Ishibashi, who scored director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning film Drive My Car (VIFF 2021) presents the Canadian Premiere of GIFT—a new silent film directed by Hamaguchi, and accompanied by a dynamic, live soundtrack performed by Ishibashi. Developed in collaboration with Hamaguchi’s latest feature film, Evil Does Not Exist (VIFF 2023), GIFT has been hailed
VIFF 2024: Paying For It
Sook-Yin Lee adapts a graphic novel by her ex-boyfriend, Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, about the end of their relationship and Brown’s subsequent decision to start paying for sex. Dan Beirne (The Twentieth Century) plays Brown, and he’s joined by a cast that includes Emily Lê as Lee stand-in Sonny and
VIFF 2024: 40 Acres
Two hundred years after the first Civil War, the descendants of African American farmers who settled in rural Canada struggle to keep famine at bay. Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) and her husband Galen (Michael Greyeyes) have raised their kids to live off the land and protect their home. Their safety
VIFF 2024: Párvulos
Many years after a viral zombie outbreak, three brothers are forced to fend for themselves, living off the land in a cabin in the woods. With their parents long gone, the eldest, Salvador is tasked with feeding and protecting his brothers, but his amputated leg means he needs assistance from