Tender Loving Care: VIFF 2026
Tender Loving Care: VIFF 2026
The Vancouver International Film Festival returns for their 45th year this October 1-11 for another curated season celebrating the best in independent, Canadian, documentary, and international shorts and features.
Best friends and fellow social workers Amy (Kate O’Flynn) and Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson) work amidst public crises and a lack of institutional support. Alienated from her own family, Rosie is something like a stepdaughter to Amy’s parents, Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), who round out the foursome at the heart of Tender Loving Care. Surrounded by a rich periphery of lives and struggles, Amy and Rosie approach the dangerous, difficult work of caring for the dispossessed with all the strength they have.
As usual, writer-director Mike Leigh doesn’t plot an arc so much as he constructs lively, provocative vignettes. Some of them are funny, some tragic, and many balance the two. Every performance in the film is superb and infused with the realism Leigh is famous for. Compassionate, keenly perceptive, and graced with a hard-won wisdom, this is a film about struggle and perseverance.
Thursday, October 8
Doors 8:30 pm | Film 9:00 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.
Tickets HERE
VIFF thanks the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations for their continued stewardship of the unceded and occupied land on which our work takes place. As an organization founded and predominantly directed by settlers and immigrants, we understand our responsibility to seek out and build authentic relationships with Indigenous communities, and to allow this ongoing dialogue to influence our practices. As part of this process, we remain committed to collaborating with and supporting Indigenous artists, filmmakers, curators, and audiences.
