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 via 1970s Uher tape machines … Read more

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 risky human smuggling scheme to … Read more

VIFF 2024: Timestalker

Seemingly pathologically incapable of remembering the past, Agnes is condemned to repeat it time and time and time and time again in this outlandish romantic comedy from writer-director-star Alice Lowe. Agnes’s downward spiral kicks off in 17th century Scotland when she falls for the disinterested Alex (Aneurin Barnard) at a public execution, only to meet … Read more

VIFF 2024: She Loved Blossoms More

Canadian Premiere Hedgehog (Panos Papadopoulos) is desperate after the loss of his mother. Eager to bring her back from the dead, he and his brothers Dummy and Japan put their heads together to build a time machine out of odds and ends in her wardrobe. Initial tests prove horrific failures, as the brothers lose a … Read more

VIFF 2024: Seeds

Ziggy is a thirtysomething Kahnawake Mohawk woman with a burgeoning career in Toronto as a social media influencer. Shortly after signing a sponsorship contract with Nature’s Oath, a seed company with questionable ethics, she is called back to the rez to house-sit for her cousin (Dallas Goldtooth). Things take a turn for the worse, however, … Read more

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 a TV and PlayStation — … Read more

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 personal and political scandals. Yet … Read more

VIFF 2024: Rita

At 13, Rita (Giuliana Santa Cruz) flees from an abusive home life, only to be detained by the government in an all-girls shelter that resembles a prison. Though she has stopped believing in fairy tales, her fellow wards prophesize that she is the warrior angel who will liberate them from the wicked social workers and … Read more

VIFF 2024: Realm of Satan

“This is the age of Satan! Satan rules the Earth!” Scott Cummings’ film proclaims before opening on the live birth of a baby goat that is later breast-fed by a hooded woman in a dark barn. Should that sound shocking, Realm of Satan is actually a humanizing portrait of the modern Satanist; less a traditional documentary and … Read more

VIFF 2024: Presence

Moving into their new home, the members of the Payne family are saddled with considerable baggage. With legal trouble already looming due to her workplace misconduct, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is called out by her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) for the overt favouritism she bestows on their competitive, callous son Tyler (Eddy Maday). Meanwhile, daughter Chloe … Read more