Movies
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: 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: Dream Team
Two sexy Interpol agents: No St. Aubergine (Esther Garrel, Call Me By Your Name) and Chase National (Alex Zhang Hungtai, formerly of Vancouver’s Dirty Beaches) travel to Mexico to investigate a conspiracy involving deadly, poisonous gas-emitting coral. Dream Team is a bizarro homage to 90s basic cable television; a bleary-eyed binge-watch of a six-episode
VIFF 2024: Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
Canadian Premiere There’s no place like home for the holidays and the extended Balsano family gathers to celebrate Christmas Eve together for perhaps the last time. The traditional Xmas party: the ladies gossip in the kitchen, the men smoke cigars outside the garage, and the children play video games in
VIFF 2024: Black Dog
Guan Hu’s film, winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes, tells the story of two discontented souls and the bond that grows between them. The action takes place in 2008, as the Beijing Summer Olympics approach; following a stint in prison, Lang (Eddie Peng) returns to his hometown
VIFF 2024: A Different Man
Edward (Sebastian Stan) is a facially disfigured man who leads a life of self-consciousness and awkward social encounters. His new neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) is an aspiring playwright, and for a moment it looks like he might have a chance at romance with her; alas, she rejects him. Soon after,
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 2023: Wild Goat Surf
World Premiere It’s 2003, and 12-year-old Rell “Goat” Barrel (Shayelin Martin) and her mom Jane (Caitlyn Sponheimer) are scheming and scrounging their way through another Penticton summer. Having illegally sublet the house they’re renting; they’re now holed up in a RV park bordering Skaha Lake. From this modest base of
VIFF 2023: White Plastic Sky
One hundred years in the future, humanity is facing the consequences of the environmental degradation they’ve wrought: at the age of 50, every citizen is voluntarily transformed into a tree so that they might supply oxygen to a withering world. Stefan (Tamás Keresztes) is at peace with all of this
VIFF 2023: Union Street
World Premiere Interspersing interviews with archival footage, Union Street documents the history of Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley, the formerly Black neighbourhood which was destroyed by the construction of the Georgia viaduct in the 1970s. This local history speaks to systemic racial injustice towards Vancouver’s Black community that has continued to this