Movies
VIFF 2021: Bipolar
Reminiscent of its monochromatic brethren Dead Man and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Queena Li’s Bipolar is an odyssey all its own: a buddy comedy featuring a broken-hearted musician and technicolour lobster that sends the Orpheus myth crashing through the looking glass. In the Tibetan capital of Lhasa
VIFF 2021: Flee
Leaving a home behind collapses a set of connections to the world; for the refugee, who cannot return, it means to watch those connections disappear without the power to renew them or prevent their distortion by memory. Amin Nawabi, the pseudonymous subject of Flee, recounts his family’s forced departure from
VIFF 2021: Three Sisters
Laced with poisonous black humour and deliciously vindicating moments, this blistering indictment of patriarchal abuse and religious hypocrisy would make Chekhov’s jaw drop to the floor. Three wildly different sisters are hit by life crises all at once. Thrifty, self-harming doormat Hee-sook (Kim Sun-young) is spurned by her goth daughter
VIFF 2021: Strawberry Mansion
In 2035, James (co-director Kentucker Audley) makes an honest dollar auditing the dreams of others and assessing them back taxes for the more extravagant elements of their nighttime fantasies. Setting up shop at the rural home of elderly, free-spirited Bella (Penny Fuller), he dives into the deep end of her
VIFF 2021: Him
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”—Margaret Atwood Over the course of one day, three men suffer humiliation or emasculation from women, reacting with self-imposed alienation and increasingly aggressive behaviour. Petter, a renowned filmmaker now denied funding for his latest
VIFF 2021: See for Me
Still coming to terms with her loss of sight, Sophie (Skyler Davenport) suddenly finds herself with more pressing concerns when the secluded mansion she’s housesitting is targeted by home invaders. When she frantically activates a new app that allows a volunteer to remotely serve as her eyes, she’s fortuitously connected
VIFF 2021: The Book of Delights
Marcela Lordy has made a film as thorny, erotic, and complex as the writing of one of Brazil’s most fêted writers, Clarice Lispector. Set in Rio, and based on Lispector’s novel with the same name, The Book of Delights is a compelling character study focuses on a complicated, intelligent, freedom-loving,
VIFF 2021: Kicking Blood
Robbie (Luke Bilyk) and Anna (Alanna Bale) cross paths courtesy of a “meet macabre:” he’s a despondent alcoholic in desperate need of a drink, while she’s a high-on-hemoglobin immortal who’s looking for her latest fix. Unexpectedly enchanted with his take-it-or-leave-it approach to life, a disarmed Anna stows Robbie away in
VIFF 2021: The Beta Test
In the post-Weinstein era, the fragile Hollywood ecosystem of predatory talent agencies and investors is a house of cards teetering on collapse. Jordan Hines (Jim Cummings), an ambitious but struggling agent trying to preserve his way of life, receives an anonymous invitation to a no-strings sexual encounter. Obsessed with uncovering
Don’t Say Its Name (BC Premiere! Featuring Director Q&A)
This small, snow-covered Indigenous community is about to see an upturn. Mining company WEC has just made an agreement for drilling on this tribal land, and it’s looking like everyone will benefit – except the land itself. Local activist Kharis Redwater is one of those protesting the deal when