The Plague: VIFF 2025

Canadian Premiere Abandoned by his mother at an all-boys water polo camp, 12-year-old Ben (Everett Blunck) is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Almost debilitatingly shy and terrified of incurring the wrath of his feral campmates’ pint-sized ringleader (Kayo Martin), Ben joins the braying pack in mercilessly tormenting Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), an … Read more

Tuner: VIFF 2025

A talented piano tuner (The White Lotus’ Leo Woodall in a breakout role) discovers that the patience and precision that allow him to excel at his day job are even more valuable when moonlighting as a safe cracker. Having scored an Oscar for Navalny, Daniel Roher shifts seamlessly into narrative filmmaking with this jazz-infused crime … Read more

Follies (“Folichonneries”): VIFF 2025

After 16 years of marriage and two children, François and Julie have lost their spark in the bedroom. In an effort to reconnect, they decide to open up their relationship and rediscover their sexuality — but polyamory isn’t as easy as they hoped. Juggling family life while searching for matches on a swingers’ app, the … Read more

Pillion

Colin (Harry Melling) is a young gay man who lives with his parents and sings in a barbershop quartet. He meets Ray (Alexander Skarsgard), a leather-clad, hyper-masculine biker straight out of a Tom of Finland drawing. They hook up in a dark alleyway — a one-way transaction that sets the power dynamic for their relationship. … Read more

Father Mother Sister Brother: VIFF 2025

Canadian Premiere Jim Jarmusch is a master of short form cinema, evidenced not only by the diner compendium Coffee and Cigarettes, but in his early films Down by Law, Mystery Train, and Night on Earth, each of which wrapped simple vignettes into a pungent narrative bouquet. So it seems fitting that the erstwhile Young Turk … Read more

Train Dreams: VIFF 2025

There’s a strain of American pastoral cinema that found a patron saint in Terrence Malick and talismans in the solemn reveries of Badlands and Days of Heaven. Train Dreams belongs to this tradition, and it’s a thing of beauty. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson and set in the Pacific Northwest during the first … Read more

A Useful Ghost: VIFF 2025

And now for something completely different: an absurdist comedy about ghosts inhabiting home appliances that is simultaneously a rousing, radical work of historical excavation. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s film is a wacky, whimsical look at Thai politics, from the distant past to its recent history. The film opens with the purchase of a vacuum cleaner revealed to … Read more

Our Hero, Balthazar: VIFF 2025

Balthazar (Jaeden Martell) attends a private school in New York, where he spends his nights performatively condemning gun violence in front of a ring light, mostly in the hopes of impressing his crush. But when Balthazar receives a series of alarming messages from an online troll who may be planning a school shooting themselves, Balthazar … Read more

Idiotka: VIFF 2025

Canadian Premiere Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov) is an aspiring clothing designer who lands a spot on a new fashion competition show. A third-generation immigrant living in the Russian part of West Hollywood, she helps her ailing grandmother and ex-con father pay bills by selling counterfeit clothes online, but when the producers show more interest in her … Read more

Foreigner: VIFF 2025

Set in 2004, Yasamin (Rose Deghan) is an Iranian teenager who has recently immigrated to Canada with her family. Desperate to fit in, she practices her English by studying sitcoms and succeeds in befriending three popular girls at school — mean girls with permanent smiles and soulless eyes. When her new friends convince Yasamin she … Read more