The 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival kicks off Thursday, September 27th and runs through October 12th. This year, the Opening Night Gala features Midnight’s Children, Canadian director Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of the Booker Prize winning Salman Rushdie novel (with script and narration supplied by Rushdie himself), an epic, panoramic look at the history of India and Pakistan over a 50-year period. The Festival concludes with Leos Carax’s hypnotically cinematic Cannes’ award-winner, Holy Motors, closing out the Festival on the aforementioned Friday, October 12.
In between the opening and closing night films, over its 16-day running time, VIFF will unspool 380 features, documentaries and short films from 75 countries across the globe, with 107 Canadian films — making Vancouver the planet’s largest film festival screening Canadian fare.
As always, VIFF will showcase the efforts of a number of local filmmakers, including features by director Mark Sawers, Camera Shy, a black comedy about a corrupt Vancouver city councilor; an independent feature written by Kristine Cofsky, and co-directed by Terry Miles & Cofsky, In No Particular Order, a 20-something portrait of “a quarter-life crisis”; the world première of director Katrin Bowen’s relationship comedy, Random Acts of Romance, featuring local actress Amanda Tapping; and Bruce Sweeney’s new murder mystery / neo-noir police procedural, Crimes of Mike Recket.
On the documentary side of VIFF’s Canadian Images series, you’ll want to catch Julia Ivanova’s High Five: An Adoption Saga, a moving tale of a childless B.C. couple who end up on a rollercoaster ride to adopt five Ukrainian siblings, as well as acclaimed director Velcrow Ripper’s Occupy Love, a journey deep inside the Occupy movement, the global revolution of the heart that continues to erupt around the planet.
In addition to the Canadian Images programme series, many of the Festival’s trademark series will return: Dragons and Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia , which remains a core component, and highlight, of the 31st annual VIFF; the annual Spotlight on France series; the Nonfiction Features of 2012 series (95 documentary films, 80 of which are feature-length this year), an important component of which is the Arts and Letters series focusing on music from across the globe; and the largest and most looked forward to component of the Festival, Cinema of Our Time — a key can’t miss aspect of which is the International Shorts programme — featuring tremendously moving cinema from every corner of our planet, offering a window on our world and an insight into the lives of others who reside on every continent, and whose concerns, perhaps not so surprisingly, differ not so much from our own. And finally this year, World Wildlife Fund Canada returns to sponsor Garden in the Sea, VIFF’s thought-provoking environmental series, always well-attended and a highlight of the Festival.
Award-winning films screening at this year’s 31st annual Festival include: Michael Haneke’s tender, haunting and brilliant new movie, the Cannes’ Palme D’or winner, Amour; Sundance winner, The Sessions, a frank, funny and immensely touching indie drama that seems headed for Oscar recognition; Berlin Best Film winner La Demora, a powerful and closely observed psychological portrait of an arthritic, forgetful elder and the daughter who cares for him; and director Huang Ji’s remarkable début feature, the Rotterdam Tiger award winning autobiographical drama, Egg and Stone, centering around a fragile-looking 14-year-old girl who becomes the victim of terrible sexual abuse.
Films arriving on our shores which have garnered recognition elsewhere and should be considered worthy of inclusion on your Festival schedule include: Aquí y Allá, writer-director Antonio Mendez Esparza’s beautifully observant exploration of the stresses immigration places on family and self; Barbara, Berlin Best Director winner Christian Petzold’s crisply shot, mesmerizing story of love and subterfuge in 1980 East Germany; Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu’s (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days) tragic tale of religious and romantic conflict; Helpless, a superior Korean mystery suspense thriller from female Korean director Byun Young Joo that has set domestic box office records in Korea; Hemel, sort of a Dutch female version of Shame, Sacha Polak’s psychologically illuminating début turns Polak into a director to watch; and The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg’s film stars Cannes Best Actor winner Mads Mikkelsen as a kindergarten teacher accused of child abuse.
In addition, keep an eye out for Abbas Kiarostami’s Tokyo set drama Like Someone in Love, which explores the depths of unrequited desire, in an enchanting film about misfired passions and mistaken identities; Lore, Cate Shortland’s compulsively watchable tale of a Nazi-indoctrinated teenager who leads her siblings on a trek to promised safety in the immediate aftermath of World War II; No, Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s brilliant and absorbing account of one country’s unlikely route from oppression to democracy; A Royal Affair. Denmark. 1760s. German doctor Johann Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen) is taken on to attend to the questionable sanity of the erratic King Christiana, and quickly falls in love with the king’s beautiful wife, Queen Caroline (Alicia Vikander), an affair that threatens to consume them both; and Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard’s gritty, unvarnished, visceral, courageous follow up to The Prophet, starring Bullhead’s Matthias Schoenaerts and the always luminous Marion Cotillard.
Also recommended: Sister, Franco-Swiss writer-director Ursula Meier’s bittersweet, tragic, sometimes funny and always compelling Dardennes-
style social realist adolescent drama about two contrasting worlds: a high-altitude high-class Swiss ski resort and the proletarian ribbon-development plain down below; Tabu, Miguel Gomes’ surprising, enriching and poetic Venice award winner, shot in elegant black-and-white, and called the year’s best by the Telegraph’s Tim Robey, and a masterpiece by ViewLondon’s Matthew Turner; Three Sisters, Wang Bing’s Venice award winner, a deeply human, strikingly lensed look at an impoverished family whose rudimentary living conditions offer a sharp riposte to the illusion of China’s economic boom; and, Lucy Mulloy’s Una Noche, which took Tribeca by storm earlier this year, this subtle and refreshingly alive film following three Cuban youths on the day they decide to leave their lives and family behind and make the journey to the United States.
At the opening Press Conference held earlier in the month, Festival Director Alan Franey reported that the Festival established a record attendance of 152,000 in 2011, a figure VIFF is hoping to top in 2012. This year, VIFF will employ 10 screens at four theatres, centered mainly around the seven screens at the Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, while also utilizing Pacific Cinémathèque on Howe Street, the Vancity Theatre on Seymour, as well as the Vogue Theatre on Granville.
Ticketbuyers will also notice a new streamlined system this year. Instead of having to purchase advance tickets before 7 p.m. the night before a screening, moviegoers will be able to buy tickets an hour before the film starts. The new system is also expected to allow the Festival to send bar codes to Smartphones which can be scanned at the theatres.
Tickets are on sale online at viff.org, by phone at 604-685-8297, or in person at any of the venues mentioned above. Prices range from $400 for a full series Festival pass to as little as $175 for a weekday matinée pass. Regular admission is $13, rush tickets are $15, and the popular Cinematic 10 ticket pack comes in at $120.
For festival updates as this cinematic behemoth is underway surf to http://www.viff.org/festival, or simply return to VanRamblings each day.
C’mon back on Wednesday and Thursday for a full list of the 40+ films, and insight into those films, that VanRamblings is recommending for 2012. And return daily to VanRamblings, after that, for reviews, updates, programme information and more. Okay, here goes: one parting thought for today …
Cinéastes and film lovers should keep in mind that the vast majority of films that will screen at the 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival will never return to our shores. Sure, films like Amour and The Sessions have a distributor in place and are Oscar bound, but the smaller, independent films from Argentina, Jordan, Indonesia — well, you’re never going to see these life-changing films anywhere outside of our most beloved Festival by the sea, such notion offering every good reason to take in a VIFF film in 2012.
