Category Archives: A & E

Arts Friday | Attend the New York Film Festival Right Here in Vancouver

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Every year towards the end of September, both our homegrown Vancouver International Film Festival and the heavily-juried New York Film Festival get underway, presenting the best in cinematic art to be found anywhere across the globe.

As occurs each year, both VIFF & NYFF share fifteen or more films, as is the case once again this year. Here are the 15 films on offer at the New York Film Festival that will also screen at the 41st annual Vancouver International Film Festival …

(film titles for each film link to VIFF’s website for the film, allowing you to purchase a ticket)

Aftersun

6:30pm, Friday, September 30th, International Village 9
9:15pm, Sunday, October 2nd, International Village 9

In one of the most assured and spellbinding feature débuts in years, Scottish director Charlotte Wells has fashioned a textured memory piece inspired by her relationship with her dad, starring Paul Mescal and Francesca Corio as a divorced father and his daughter whose close bond is quietly shaken during a brooding weekend at a coastal resort in Turkey.

Alcarràs

6:15pm, Friday, October 7th, SFU Woodwards
2:30pm, Sunday, October 9th, Vancouver Playhouse

Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Carla Simón’s follow-up to her acclaimed childhood drama Summer 1993 is a ruminative, lived-in portrait of a rural family in present-day Catalonia whose way of life is rapidly changing.

All That Breathes

12:30pm, Sunday, October 2nd, International Village 8
9pm, Wednesday, October 5th, SFU Woodwards

In this hypnotic, poignant, and beautifully crafted documentary, New Delhi-based filmmaker Shaunak Sen immerses himself with two brothers who for years have been taking it upon themselves to save the black kite, their city’s endangered birds of prey, which the general population largely sees as nuisances despite their essential role in the city’s ecosystem.

Corsage

6pm, Monday, October 3rd, Centre for the Performing Arts
6pm, Thursday, October 6th, Centre for the Performing Arts

In a perceptive, nuanced performance, Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) quietly dominates the screen as Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who begins to see her life of royal privilege as a prison as she reaches her fortieth birthday. Marie Kreutzer boldly imagines her cloistered world with both realism and fanciful imagination.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

9pm, Thursday, October 6th, The Cinematheque
6pm, Saturday, October 8th, VIFF Centre – Vancity Theatre

In their thrilling new work of nonfiction exploration, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Leviathan) burrow deeper than ever, using microscopic cameras and specially designed recording devices to survey the wondrous landscape of the human body.

Decision to Leave

9:15pm, Friday, September 30th, Centre for the Performing Arts
9pm, Thursday, October 6th, Centre for the Performing Arts

A Busan detective is increasingly obsessed with a murder suspect in a puzzling new case: a middle-aged businessman has mysteriously fallen to his death and his wife might be to blame. Park Chan-wook won the Cannes Best Director award for this twisting Hitchcockian detective thriller, one of his most enveloping and accomplished films.

EO

4pm, Sunday, October 2nd, Vancouver Playhouse
9:30pm, Saturday, October 8th, Centre for the Performing Arts

At age 84, legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski has directed one of his spryest, most visually inventive films yet, following the travels of a peripatetic donkey named EO who begins as a circus performer before escaping on a pastoral trek across the Polish and Italian countryside.

The Novelist’s Film

9:15pm, Tuesday, October 4th, International Village 9

For his playful and gently thought-provoking 27th feature, Hong Sangsoo takes on the perspective of a prickly middle-aged novelist, Junhee (Lee Hye-young), whose dormant creativity is stoked following a chance encounter with a famous actress (Kim Min-hee).

One Fine Morning

9pm, Sunday, October 2nd, Centre for the Performing Arts
6pm, Tuesday, October 4th, Centre for the Performing Arts

The intensely poignant and deeply personal latest drama from Mia Hansen-Løve (Bergman Island) stars Léa Seydoux as Sandra, a translator and single mother at a crossroads, torn between the romantic desire she feels for a married man (Melvil Poupaud) and her obligation towards her sick father (Pascal Greggory).

Pacifiction

9pm, Saturday, October 1st, International Village 9
5:30pm, Sunday, October 9th, Vancouver Playhouse

Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra reconfirms his centrality in the contemporary cinematic landscape with this mesmerizing, slow-building fever dream about a French bureaucrat (a monumental Benoît Magimel) drifting through a fateful trip to a French Polynesian island with increasing anxiety.

R.M.N.

9:30pm, Saturday, October 1st, Vancouver Playhouse
9pm, Thursday, October 6th, Vancouver Playhouse

Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days), who dramatizes the tensions of a modern Romania still beholden to dangerous traditions, returns with a gripping, mosaic-like portrait of a rural Transylvanian town riven by ethnic conflicts, economic resentment, and personal turmoil.

Scarlet

3:30pm, Thursday, October 6th, International Village 10
9pm, Saturday, October 8th, International Village 9

One of contemporary cinema’s most versatile talents, Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden) proves again he is as comfortable in the realm of folklore as he is in creative nonfiction with this enchanting period fable that delicately interweaves realist drama, ethereal romance, and musical flights of fancy.

Stars at Noon

9pm, Monday, October 3rd, Vancouver Playhouse
1pm, Saturday, October 8th, Centre for the Performing Arts

In Claire Denis’s surprising contemporary thriller, a dissolute young American journalist (Margaret Qualley) and an English businessman (Joe Alwyn) with ties to the oil industry meet by chance while on different, mysterious assignments in modern-day Nicaragua and tumble into a whirlwind romance.

Stonewalling

9pm, Saturday, October 1st, The Cinematheque
2:45pm, Tuesday, October 4th, The Cinematheque

A young flight-attendant-in-training’s plans to finish college are thrown into doubt when she discovers she’s pregnant. Not wanting an abortion, she hopes to give the child away after carrying it to term, while staying afloat amidst a series of dead-end jobs. Beijing-based wife-and-husband team Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka’s film is an urgent critique of a modern-day social structure that has few options for women in need of care.

Triangle of Sadness

9pm, Monday, October 3rd, Centre for the Performing Arts
9pm, Sunday, October 9th, Centre for the Performing Arts

Ruben Östlund’s wildly ambitious Palme d’Or–winning Buñuelian satire follows two hot young models (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) who rub elbows with the super-rich on a luxury cruise gone haywire.

Arts Friday | Vancouver International Film Festival Special Presentations

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Here we are, less than two weeks away from the singular cinematic arts event of the autumn season, the much anticipated 41st annual Vancouver International Film Festival.

Next Friday, September 23rd, VanRamblings will publish our annual introductory VIFF column, with all the information you’re going to need — ticket and pass prices, and where to secure these valuable items and how much time you should set aside for lining up, the best cafés, bistro, restaurants and bars nearby Festival venues — including the VIFF 41 films that are, quite simply, must-attends.

Talking about must-attends, have we got a treat for you today: the twelve finely curated, award-winning, future Oscar-contending Special Presentations, the celebrated and critically-acclaimed films that will début in Vancouver over the course of the 11-day running time of the 41st annual Vancouver International Film Festival.


Empire of Light
6pm, Friday, September 30th
The Centre for the Performing Arts


Decision To Leave
9:15pm, Friday, September 30th
9pm, Thursday, October 6th
The Centre for the Performing Arts


The Grizzlie Truth
2pm, Saturday, October 1st
6pm, Wednesday, October 5th


The Son
6pm, Saturday, October 1st
The Centre for the Performing Arts


The Banshees of Inisherin
9:15pm, Saturday, October 1st
The Centre for the Performing Arts


EO
4pm, Sunday, October 2nd
The Vancouver Playhouse

9:30pm, Saturday, October 8th
The Centre for the Performing Arts


One Fine Morning
9pm, Sunday, October 2nd
6pm, Tuesday, October 4th
The Centre for the Performing Arts


Corsage
6pm, Monday, October 3rd
6pm, Thursday, October 6th
The Centre for the Performing Arts


Triangle of Sadness
9pm, Monday, October 3rd
The Centre for the Performing Arts


Stars at Noon
9pm, Monday, October 3rd
The Playhouse

1pm, Saturday, October 8th
The Centre for the Performing Arts


The Whale
5:45pm, Sunday, October 2nd
The Centre for the Performing Arts


Women Talking
9:15pm, Wednesday, October 5th
The Centre for the Performing Arts

Each of the films titles, italicized and in red, link to the VIFF webpage for the film, which will allow you to read about the film, discover the various awards the films have garnered at Festivals prior to arriving at VIFF, and to purchase tickets, if you’re of a mind to do so — and we hope such is the case.

The VIFF digital Festival Guide is now available; click on the preceding link.

While picking up our Media Pass to VIFF41 on Friday afternoon — at the VIFF Centre on Seymour Street, just north of Davie Street — VanRamblings also secured a hard copy of the 41st annual Vancouver International Film Festival film guide.

Arts Friday | Vancouver International Film Festival | Sept. 29 – Oct. 9th 2022

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In Vancouver, and across the province of British Columbia, we may find ourselves in the midst of civic elections in villages, towns and cities in every far flung corner of our province, but as you’re no doubt aware, life goes on.

At the end of September each year for the past 41 years (in the early years, VIFF happened in the spring), come rain or come shine, the good folks long associated with the Vancouver International Film Festival — who have spent the past 12 months curating film submissions from thousands of filmmakers, and visiting almost every film festival screening films in almost every country on our, it seems, ever smaller globe — present the best in world cinema to appreciative British Columbia audiences, cinephiles and cinéastes who love film, and those persons in our city who look forward each year to opening a window on this vast world of ours, to gain insight into how folks who live in every country across the planet live their lives, and how their struggles mirror our struggles.


VIFF’s Director of Programming, Curtis Woloschuk, introduces the depth and breadth of the 41st annual Vancouver International Film Festival. A must watch.

Vancouver International Film Festival: a humanizing experience like no other.

Each Friday in September, VanRamblings will present  you with insight into the 41st annual Vancouver International Film Festival — which films are can’t miss in 2022, and demand to be seen on the big screen (screening at the 1800-seat Centre for the Performing Arts is a Festival must), the tiny gems that are always at the heart of VIFF each year, which films Vancouver is sharing with other film festivals screening simultaneously to Vancouver’s homegrown festival by the ocean, the celebrated award winners, and so very much more.

135+ feature films
102+ shorts
25+ events
11 days

The VIFF 2022 digital guide will be available for download after September 15.

The VIFF printed guide will be available across Metro Vancouver on Sept. 20.

So many films to look forward to, and so many films to move and change you.

Arts Friday | 2022’s Film Festival Season | An Oscar Season in Preview

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With cooling weather finally having taken hold, and the heat of the summer season soon to be but a fond memory, today VanRamblings will set about to preview the always provocative cinematic season of serious import,  the fall film festival season

As we discover each September, autumn is the season for all of our senses.

The feel of cooler temperatures after a long summer. A warm, visually pleasing palate of reds, oranges and browns. The taste of pumpkin spice in everything.

The sound of crunching leaves underfoot.

The smell of woodsmoke.

Like spring, autumn is a season of transition, a reminder of the value of change, in this case from a bright, buzzing, verdant summer of picnics in the park, towards the darker, quieter, more redolent calm of autumn and winter. It’s a journey inward; first experiential, then intellectual, delving into the collective unconscious.

“Autumn light is the loveliest light there is,” wrote author Margaret Renkl. “Soft, forgiving, it makes all the world an illuminated dream.”

In a cinephile’s world, dreams come to the fore in the fall through the release of films which will take on Oscar importance in the winter season to come.

Telluride, Venice, Toronto, New York each early autumn introduce the films which will fill our film consciousness over the many months yet to come.

The first of the important later summer film festivals occurs amidst the mountain landscape of Telluride, Colorado, which locale will be overrun with cinéastes over September’s Labour Day weekend, where prestige filmmakers ranging from Canada’s Sarah Polley (Women Talking), Luca Guadagnino (Bones and All), Sam Mendes (Empire of Light), Alejandro G. Inarritu (Bardo), Todd Field (TÁR), Sebastian Leilo (The Wonder), and Scott Cooper (The Pale Blue Eye) are set to garner the most buzz among the film cognoscenti, each of these filmmakers recipients of much past Oscar glory, each film highly anticipated, each film Oscar bound.

Overlapping the Telluride Film Festival is the 79th annual Venice International Film Festival, the Biennale Cinema, which will run from Wednesday, August 31 thru Saturday, September 10, where many of the films débuting at Telluride stateside will also feature in the star-studded Venice locale.

The big buzz film in Venice this year is White Noise, Noah Baumbach’s first film since Marriage Story. White Noise is a zany adaptation of Don DeLillo’s seminal novel about a Hitler Studies professor (Adam Driver) and his beleaguered wife (Greta Gerwig) whose lives are threatened by a toxic event.

Also at Venice: Andrew Dominik’s evocative drama Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, who disappears into the role as she struggles to cope under the glare of the spotlight. Add Bobby Cannavale as her second husband, Joe DiMaggio; Adrien Brody as her third husband, Arthur Miller; meticulous production design & luminous cinematography, and you have a potential awards-season juggernaut, streaming on Netflix Sept. 28th.

Olivia Wilde’s psychological chiller, Don’t Worry Darling, sees Florence Pugh and Harry Styles embody a picture-perfect ’50s couple whose unbridled passion for one another turns to suspicion when the former begins to fear that something sinister lurks beneath their carefree existence. Prepare for jump scares, glorious interiors, and Chris Pine as the film’s menacing mastermind.


A TIFF programme screen capture of Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film, The Fabelmans

As the Telluride and Venice festivals wrap, the film festival season focus will turn to a renewed Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), now in its 47th season, running from Thursday, September 8th through Sunday, September 18th, as TIFF marks a return to its pre-pandemic days of in-person screenings, after two scaled-down editions spent in hybrid mode the past couple of years.

The big buzz film débuting in Toronto this year is Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which will have its world première at this fall’s TIFF, with the iconic Oscar-winning director attending TIFF for the first time ever.

A long-in-the-works semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans is described by producers as a “deeply personal portrait of 20th-century American childhood,” which focuses on a family based in post-Second World War-era Arizona, the film following the young Spielberg facsimile Sammy Fabelman (played by Gabriel LaBelle) as he grows up with his father (Paul Dano), mother (Michelle Williams) and uncle (Seth Rogen). After discovering a “shattering family secret,” Sammy dives into the wonder of cinema to cope and find a path forward.

With a screenplay by regular Spielberg collaborator Tony Kushner (Munich, Lincoln, and last year’s West Side Story), The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s latest shot at awards-season glory. The film’s première represents a huge coup for TIFF.

The New York Film Festival  has lined up titles from Kelly Reichardt, Claire Denis, Alice Diop, Joanna Hogg, and more for its Main Slate this year. Women directed or co-directed 13 of the 32 Main Slate films, amounting to about 41%.

The NYFF has returned to the city that never sleeps for its 60th year at the Lincoln Centre, which recently announced Laura Poitras’ new documentary, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, to serve as the festival’s Centerpiece film. A story about art, politics, addiction, and David v. Goliath battles, the documentary chronicles the life of photographer Nan Goldin and her fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest, the Léa Seydoux-starring romantic drama One Fine Morning, is also part of the Main Slate, as are Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon; Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up; Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter; Alice Diop’s Saint Omer; Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun; and Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage.

Another Oscar bound film? Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, a biopic about the lynching of Emmett Till, and his mother’s pursuit of justice.

As has been the case since it’s inception 41 years ago, the NYFF runs in tandem with the Vancouver International Film Festival, our somewhat truncated festival set to run from from Thursday, September 29th through Sunday, October 9th.

The importance of festivals to culture and society cannot be underestimated, as they set about to provide empathetic insight into our often confusing world. Film festivals also provide the opportunity to switch off your everyday life, to become enmeshed in the lives of people from across the globe.