Out-of-work, UK actors Sam and Mark are in a pickle about what to do with their time in lockdown. Escaping into the violent online world of Grand Theft Auto V, they happen upon an amphitheatre. Inspired, they decide to mount a full production of Hamlet in the city of Los Santos, a perfect setting for Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy. … Read 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
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
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
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 house in the woods holds … Read more
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
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
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 are touching. Holed up for … Read more
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 as its “concentrated, wordless flipside” … Read more
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 Andrea Werhun as Yulissa, the … Read more
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