Each year for a great long while now, the annual, very prestigious and oh-so-heavily juried New York Film Festival and Vancouver’s own glorious international film festival by the ocean have shared films. Both VIFF and NYFF begin almost on the same day, and while our own local festival completes its run Friday, October 11th, NYFF57 wraps only two days later.
Today on VanRamblings, we present the 17 films that will screen simultaneously at the 57th annual edition of the New York Film Festival, and the 38th annual wonderful Vancouver International Film Festival.
And this late addition to the VIFF 2019 programme schedule …
C’mon back tomorrow when VanRamblings identifies 7 films screening at both NYFF57 and VIFF 2019 that, according to the film critics at IndieWire — who write expansively about each film — are must-see, can’t miss gems!
In the meantime, please feel free to click on the purdy lookin’ graphic below to access all of VanRamblings’ coverage to date of the splendiforous and must attend 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.
The 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is about to fall upon us, taking over cinemas across Vancouver with some 300+ films representing 70 countries. Running from this Thursday, September 26th through Friday, October 11th, our beloved film festival is best approached like a multi-country overseas vacation: with pre-planning, and lots of it.
While the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival will screen 300 films — 156 features, 60 documentaries and 90 shorts — and while that seems like a lot to the casual filmgoer, it’s a tiny fraction of the films that were considered for the festival this year. Those final 300+ films were chosen through an elaborate process that began at the outset of the year and involved thousands of films, dozens of people (VIFF has 35 people working in some capacity in programming, and an additional 45 who work as prescreeners), and probably not quite enough fresh air and sunshine.
Films chosen for VIFF come to the festival in many ways. One is by blind submission — films that are sent to VIFF for consideration in response to a general invitation. Associate Programming Director Curtis Woloschuk estimates that several thousand films were submitted for the 2019 festival; all were viewed by festival programmers, and less than 10% were chosen.
The primary question in the mind of most of those planning on attending VIFF 2019 is “What movies to choose?” Please find below a few informed tips to guide you (you’re going to want to read the expansive coverage of VIFF 2019 provided by VanRamblings this month for further insight into the film we write today, by clicking on the mighty purdy graphic above). Award Winning Films Arriving on Our Shores from Global Festivals
Festival programming staff spend the year traveling to film festivals spanning the globe, and programme the best into the VIFF film schedule.
In total today, we’ll briefly present 24 films set to screen at VIFF 2019 that we believe are worthy of your time and consideration. First up …
Here’s an up-to-date list of Best International Film Oscar contenders that are set to screen at the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival: The Invisible Life Of Eurídice Gusmão | Brazil | Karim Aînouz Spider | Chile | Andrés Wood The Painted Bird | Czech Republic | Václav Marhoul Les Misérables | France | Ladj Ly Those Who Remained | Hungary | Barnabas Toth Adam | Morocco | Maryam Touzani It Must Be Heaven | Palestine | Elia Suleiman The Whistlers | Romania | Corneliu Porumboiu Parasite | South Korea | Bong Joon-ho Pain and Glory | Spain | Pedro Almodóvar And Then We Danced | Sweden | Levan Akin
Each of the film titles above link to their VIFF online web page, allowing you to purchase your tickets online. In addition, VanRamblings has written, at some length, about all of the above nominated films in our VIFF coverage of the Best International Feature Film Oscar contenders, which may be accessed here (it’d be well worth your while to click on the preceding link).
There are four more films on the VIFF 2019 schedule that won acclaim and awards both at Cannes this year, and in their home countries:
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by Celina Sciamma, arrives from France.
Plus, Iceland’s A White, White Day, directed by Hlynur Pálmason. Scarborough, our favourite advance screened film.
And, finally, Synonyms, the acclaimed Israeli film. Acclaimed Oscar Contenders set to screen at VIFF 2019 Ford v Ferrari will screen as a Special Presentation on the final day of VIFF 2019, on Friday, October 11th at 6pm at The Playhouse. Harriet screens once, at 3pm at The Centre, on Saturday, October 5th. A Hidden Life screens at The Centre, 8:45pm, Sunday, September 29th. Jojo Rabbit will screen at VIFF 2019 just once, as a Special VIFF 2019 Presentation, at 6:15pm, on Wednesday, October 2nd, at The Centre. Just Mercy screens at The Centre at 9pm on Saturday, September 28th. The Laundromat screens at 3pm at The Centre on Sunday, October 6th. The Lighthouse screens at The Centre at 6pm, on day three of the festival, Saturday, September 28th Marriage Story will screen at The Centre, 8:45pm, Thursday, October 10th. Motherless Brooklyn screens at The Centre, 8:45pm, Monday, Sept. 30th. Waves will screen once, at noon, at The Centre, on Sunday, October 5th.
Click on the graphic below for more expansive coverage of the films above.
Note. Pick up a free, glossy Festival guide. They’re available all over town, at libraries, coffee shops, and bookstores, as well as your favourite haunts. Film Programmes Remain at the Heart of the 38th annual VIFF
You’ll also want to make sure to catch VIFF films captured in the various film programmes, Sea to Sky (BC Spotlight), True North (Canadian), Gateway + Dragons & Tigers (Asia), as well as the “alternative” programmes: M/A/D, ALT, NEXT and Impact each of which pushes both boundaries, showcasing the best new work from across the globe.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t forget about VIFF 2019’s expansive Documentary programme, the always tremendous Shorts programme (about which we’ll be writing this upcoming weekend), and the always impressive Youth programme. How and where do I buy tickets?
You can buy tickets online at viff.org when clicking on the title of a film, and print your tickets at home, or call the VIFF Infoline from noon to 6pm, daily, or use the VIFF app. During the Festival you can buy tickets at the various festival venues. Tickets for special screenings are $17, while most screenings cost $15, less if you’re a student or a senior. As always, the best deal comes should you purchase a festival pass: weekday matinee passes at $175 are the best deal. Full festival passes range in price from $125 (students), $345 (seniors), $435 (full pass) to $1,000 (the platinum pass). You may wish to consider a discount 6 or 10 ticket pack ($50 – $135). What about all those lines outside the theatres?
Arrive early at the VIFF venue where your film is screening, the venues mostly the same this year as last: The Centre, the Vancity, Cineplex International, the Playhouse, SFU Goldcorp, the Cinematheque, the Vogue, the Rio, and new this year, The Annex at 823 Seymour Street.
Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line (for those with passes hanging around their necks; you know who you are), a ticket-holders line (for those with tickets in hand) and a rush line. Standby tickets, for screenings that are sold out, go on sale 10 minutes before showtime. What about bus routes and parking?
Translink / Coast Mountain buses are the best way to get around, although most of the venues are within walking distance of one another. Skytrain will whisk you to The Rio in no time flat. There’s parking at Cineplex International Village, but you’re going to want to check in with Festival staff (they’ll be wearing bright yellow VIFF t-shirts) to register your vehicle. What about crowds?
There will be crowds, particularly at the better-known films; not a lot you can do about that. Maybe you’ll meet somebody nice in line; it happens often. Weekday screenings generally have shorter lines, particularly for the less well-known films.
Here we are with less than one week to go before the commencement of the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, and you can almost feel the palpable excitement in the air as the many thousands of VIFF patrons anticipate what may become the best local film festival in years.
Clicking on the graphic above will take you to all of the VIFF 2019 columns VanRamblings has published to date, where we’ve written about the most anticipated films set to screen at this year’s festival.
Today’s post will be our second to last pre-festival VIFF 2019 column — we’ve got an extensive, barn burnin’ column ready to go early next week. You’ll want to return to read that VanRamblings post next Tuesday. Note: Anytime you see a link on the line where VanRamblings publishes the date, time and place that a VIFF screening is set to take place, if you click on the link in that line, you’ll be taken to the VIFF 2019 page for detail on the film, and an opportunity to purchase tickets for that particular film.
Who’s that good lookin’ fella on the right (decidedly not his politics, for they don’t come any more progressive, left and activist than Tom) in the graphic above? Yep, that would be Tom Charity, a celebrated VIFF programmer and the genius (is there any other word that might be used? we think not!) involved year-round in programming VIFF’s home cinema venue, the comfortable, welcoming and humanely programmed Vancity Theatre.
Each year for the past decade, working on behalf of VIFF, Tom has traveled to Toronto to attend the Toronto International Film Festival with the mandate to add a film or two from TIFF not already programmed into that year’s VIFF festival. On that count, Tom has more than succeeded this year in bringing Trey Edward Shults’ Waves as a late addition to the programme for VIFF 2019. As it happens, and as you might well imagine, Waves is one of Tom’s three favourite TIFF films (out of 10) that will screen at VIFF 2019.
Emerging at the top of Tom’s TIFF favourites list, as the indefatigable Mr. Charity writes in the online VIFF programme guide …
The third feature from Trey Edward Shults (Krisha; It Comes at Night) catapults him into the front ranks of new filmmakers. This tremendously cinematic movie puts us in the head of Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr), a high school athlete who seems to be on the fast track to success — but whose drive (instilled by a dedicated but overbearing father) is his undoing. When things go awry, bad decisions pile up like wrecked cars, and there will be an accounting, not only for Tyler but for everyone who loves him.
Shults vividly conveys the intense pressures on young men and women on the cusp of adulthood, and how precarious sporting promise really is. But Waves goes much deeper and further than that, exploring the destructive properties of the male ego, and the damage that reverberates across families and generations. Audacious and passionate, this is one of the most soulful and artistically daring movies since Moonlight.
Waves will screen once, at noon, at The Centre, on Sunday, October 5th.
Sitting at #2 on Tom’s TIFF favourites list, perhaps the most controversial film set to screen at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, The Painted Bird, Václav Marhoul’s “stunning adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s controversial 1965 novel/memoir” caused mass walkouts when it screened at the Venice Film Festival, and more than a few walkouts at TIFF, for this blistering, bracingly defiant and emotionally plangent film that is rife with uncompromising, unvarnished brutality (murder, rape, torture, bestiality) that, as Sheri Linden writes in her THRreview of the film, “doesn’t begin to convey the emotional scope of this tender, bruising, exuberant film.”
The Czech Republic’s entry this year in the Oscar Best International Film Festival category, The Painted Bird screens twice at VIFF 2019, both times at The Playhouse, at 9pm on Saturday, September 28th, and again on Monday, September 30th, at 2:15pm. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!
And the third of Tom Charity’s TIFF favourites set to screen at VIFF 2019 …
Noah Baumbach’s new film, Marriage Story, wowed ’em at both the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, and at this point is the odds on favourite to win Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay, among other probable Oscar wins, tracks the rapid tangling and gradual untangling of impetuosity, resentment, and abiding love between a married couple — played by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson — negotiating their divorce and the custody of their son. It’s as harrowing as it is hilarious as it is deeply moving. Marriage Story will screen at The Centre, 8:45pm, Thursday, October 10th.
Scarborough (Grade: A-). Featuring parallel, cross-cutting stories of illicit teacher-student affairs drive this spare, dangerously charged British drama adapted from Fiona Evans’ award-winning play. At the same seaside hotel in Scarborough, two couples spend a weekend away from their regular lives and prying eyes, where both couples laugh, quarrel and lustily make love.
Fifteen year old Beth (Jessica Barden) is a student so young that she packs a teddy bear backpack for her trip with her art teacher, Aiden (Edward Hogg). Similarly, 30-something Liz (Jodhi May), in a decidedly darker and much more forboding story, has snuck away with teenage Daz (Jordan Bolger). As the weekend progresses, each couple discovers that it isn’t just the rules of the outside world that could end their relationships.
As written, produced & directed by auteur filmmaker Barnaby Southcombe, Scarborough refuses to judge its characters, but makes his stance clear with the overt sensuality and raucous fidelity of the sex scenes. Gorgeously well-wrought (Ian Liggett’s lambent cinematography, Daniel Pemberton’s low-key score, and the director’s revelatory, slow burn atmospheric pacing contribute to making this a VIFF 2019 must-see), Scarborough may prove tough viewing for some given its transgressive approach to the film’s subject material, but as Screen Daily records, Scarborough is “intriguing, and at times unsettling film fare … an intelligently slippery study which positions the audience in the grey area between empathy and complicity.” Scarborough screens twice at VIFF 2019, both times in Cinema 9 at the International Village, at 6:45pm on the evening of Tuesday, October 1st, and for a final time at 1:30pm in the afternoon, on Thursday, October 3rd.
Wrapping up today’s VIFF 2019 VanRamblings column …
Well, it took awhile, but the good folks at VIFF are finally able to say that director James Mangold’s propulsive new film, Ford v Ferrari — tracking the surly, testosterone-fueled glory of two of auto racing’s most celebrated progenitors, Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles’ (Christian Bale), both of whom for years raced cars at Daytona and Le Mans — will screen as a Special Presentation on the final day of VIFF 2019, on Friday, October 11th at 6pm at The Playhouse.
Also take note, TIFF Audience Award winner, Jojo Rabbit will screen at VIFF 2019 just once, as a Special VIFF 2019 Presentation, at 6:15pm, on Wednesday, October 2nd, at The Centre.
Tickets, ticket packs and festival passes are on sale and available at the Vancity Theatre box office on Seymour Street from noon til 7pm Monday thru Saturday, and 2pm til 7pm on Sundays. Consult your programme guide (available free of charge all over town) or call the Festival Infoline, noon til 6pm daily, at 604-683-3456, for more information.
There are many reasons the 160,000 or so patrons attend the Vancouver International Film Festival each year.
First and foremost, there are the diehard festival attendees who, each year, live to see cinema from across the globe, obscure but heart-rending films of immense humanity from Niger, Lebanon, Malawi, Georgia, Ecuador, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Cape Verdi or Nigeria — all of which countries will have films screening at this year’s 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. Sometimes these films are sparsely attended, but they nonetheless represent not only the raison d’être of the festival, but its beating heart.
The second group of patrons represent the financial heart of the festival. These patrons are most interested in gaining early insight and entrée into the Oscar awards season, purchasing tickets for films VanRamblings is writing about this weekend (our first ‘Oscar Derby’ column was published yesterday). These patrons not only want to screen the Oscar worthy films months before they’ll be released to multiplexes, but also want to be acknowledged as having engaged in the cultural cachet that comes with being able to say to their friends, “Oh yes, we attended the film festival this year, as we do every year, and were blown away by (name of film).”
Patrons attending screenings of the Oscar worthy films do so at the 1800 seat Centre for the Performing Arts on Homer Street, just across the street from the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Twenty films times 1800 patrons times $15 equals a substantial amount of money contributing to the success and bottom line of the Vancouver International Film Festival. Needless to say, the VIFF administration is more than grateful to these patrons for their interest in the film festival, as are all festival devotees.
Today, VanRamblings will present five more Oscar worthy films that will screen at VIFF 2019 that are guaranteed both critical acclaim and the Oscar nominations they are so richly due, come 5am, Monday, January 13, 2020.
Representing the first film in a knockout, must-see double bill at The Centre on Saturday, September 28th, as part of the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse took Cannes by storm (pun intended) at the Cannes Film Festival this past spring, winning the prestigious FIPRESCI International Film Critics Prize, and going on to win the Grand Special Prize at the French Deauville Film Festival. The Guardian’s chief film critic, Peter Bradshaw, raves about The Lighthouse in his five-star review …
Robert Eggers’ gripping nightmare shows two lighthouse-keepers in 19th-century Maine going melancholy mad together: a toxic marriage, a dance of death. It is explosively scary and captivatingly beautiful in cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s fierce monochrome, like a daguerreotype of fear. And the performances from Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson have a sledgehammer punch — Pattinson, in particular, just gets better and better.
What is so exhilarating and refreshing about The Lighthouse is that it declines to reveal whether or not it is a horror film as such, though an early reference to Salem, Massachusetts gives us a flashback to Eggers’ previous film, The Witch (2015).
It is not a question of a normal-realist set-up pivoting to supernatural scariness with reliably positioned jump-scares etc. The ostensible normality persists; perhaps something ghostly is going on, or perhaps this is a psychological thriller about delusion. But generic ambiguity is not the point: The Lighthouse keeps hold of us with the sheer muscular intelligence and even theatricality of the performances and the first-class writing. Even Sir Donald Wolfit or Robert Newton could not have got more out of the role of Tom than Willem Dafoe does and Pattinson is mesmeric in his bewilderment and uncertainty.
The Lighthouse screens at The Centre at 6pm, on day three of the festival, Saturday, September 28th, followed by the must-see screening of …
On Friday, September 6th, the first full day of the 44th annual Toronto International Film Festival director Destin Daniel Cretton’s true life civil rights drama, Just Mercy, catapulted itself into Oscar contention, placing Michael B. Jordan firmly into the Best Actor sweeps, and both Jamie Foxx and Rob Morgan into Best Supporting Actor contention.
Here’s what the critics had to say about Just Mercy …
Full-blooded performances from Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx add weight to the powerful fact-based Just Mercy, a retelling of one of influential lawyer and social justice and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson’s most enraging cases, presented in a film that will shake you to your soul. It’s the late 1980s, and Stevenson (Jordan), a young Harvard-educated African-American lawyer in crisp gray suits and neckties, has come to stay in Monroe County, Alabama, to take on the cases of death-row inmates who are innocent.
Death row as a morbid extension of slavery is what Just Mercy is about. “You’re guilty from the moment you’re born,” says Walter McMillian (Foxx), clarifying the rage that percolates throughout the movie. “It’s just another excuse to lynch a black man,” one of his peers concludes.
A celebration of what it takes to eke out justice in a broken system, Just Mercy builds throughout to its gripping resolution, based on the certainty that hatred, in all its terrible power, will never be as powerful as justice.”
Just Mercy screens at The Centre at 9pm on Saturday, September 28th.
A searing exploration of the consequences of upholding one’s convictions in a time of terrifying upheaval, the latest work from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) mines the themes of spirituality and engagement with the natural world that have permeated so much of the American auteur’s late-period renaissance. Set in Austria during the rise of the Third Reich, A Hidden Life movingly relays this little-known true story of quiet heroism. A Hidden Life screens at The Centre, 8:45pm, Sunday, September 29th.
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-1800s, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada, reaching Canada by boat across Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, settling in Ontario and Nova Scotia, aided by abolitionists and others sympathetic to their cause.
Nova Scotia’s African American population was first settled by Black Loyalists during the American Revolution and then by Black Refugees in the War of 1812, with important black settlements developed across Canada, both in Québec and on Vancouver Island, where Governor James Douglas encouraged black immigration arising from his opposition to slavery.
Directed and co-written by Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou), Harriet relates the story of abolitionist icon Harriet Tubman (who, up until President Donald Trump intervened, was to bear her image on the $20 bill) who, following her escape from slavery in 1849, helped free hundreds of slaves from the American South, risking her life to lead others to freedom through the network of safehouses that came to be known as the Underground Railroad.
Lifting the heroic icon from the pages of history and into an epic, timeless tale, Harriet brings to the big screen the surge of faith, principle, and raw courage that drove diminutive Araminta Ross (who changed her name to Harriet Tubman) to greatness. The film’s star, Tony-winning Broadway actor Cynthia Erivo, was a discovery for many in Steve McQueen’s Widows. In Harriet, Erivo is riveting in every scene, giving her portrayal of Harriet Tubman the scale and depth appropriate to a legendary American leader. Harriet screens once, at 3pm at The Centre, on Saturday, October 5th.
Taika Waititi directs a riotous cast — including Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson, Thomasin McKenzie, and newcomer Roman Griffin Davis — in this daring, touching, and comedic satire about a young German boy who discovers a Jewish girl hiding in his home and consults with his imaginary best friend, Adolf Hitler (Waititi).
In a series of deft, groundbreaking comedies, Taika Waititi took sharp left turns into coming-of-age stories (Boy), vampire movies (What We Do in the Shadows), and sacred superheroes (Thor: Ragnarok). Now he brings his half-Maori, half-Jewish, fully skewed sensibilities to his most daring film yet. A dazzling takedown of fascist thinking and the violence it fuels, Jojo Rabbit begins in biting satire but delivers surprising emotional impact. Jojo Rabbit screens at 6:15pm at The Centre, on Wednesday, October 2nd.
Part 3 of VanRamblings’ Oscar Derby series will conclude on Sunday with an exploration of the potential and probable Best International Films Oscar nominees (it used to be called Best Foreign Film, but the Academy changed that designation to International earlier this year) that will screen this year at the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.
