More celebrated, award-winning films that will arrive on our shores in mere days, as part of the humanizing and humane and always tremendously enlightening Vancouver International Film Festival, which kicks off it’s much-looked-forward-to 36th annual edition on Thursday, September 28th.
Today, three more films for you to consider placing on your VIFF calendar.

As VanRamblings wrote last week in our introductory VIFF 2017 column, rising Chilean director Sebastián Lelio (Gloria) in his new, award-winning film A Fantastic Woman, celebrates the endurance of a woman under suspicion of murder in a film that could bring the first major acting award for a transgender performer to Daniela Vega.
Winner of Best Screenplay at February’s Berlinale, in her review in Screen Daily, film critic Wendy Ide writes …

Marina (Daniela Vega) and Orlando (Francisco Reyes) are in love. Despite a twenty-year age gap, they plan to spend their lives together. He left his wife and family for her. But after a birthday celebration in which he promises to take her on a trip to Iguazu Falls, Orlando is taken gravely ill. He dies in hospital. And Marina finds that, as a transgender woman, everything is called into question — their relationship, her role in his death, her right to grieve for the man she loved. Driven by a powerhouse performance by mesmerizing transgender actress Vega, the fifth feature from Lelio combines urgent naturalism with occasional flickers of fantasy to impressive, and wrenchingly emotional effect.

Benjamín Echazarreta’s cinematography makes expressive use of reflections — there is a beautifully composed shot of Marina’s anguished eyes staring through a window which also reflects Orlando in the emergency room. And later, a slyly positioned hand mirror teasingly refers to the crude questions of Orlando’s family about whether or not Marina has had gender reassignment surgery.

The picture is tied together by an orchestral score by Matthew Herbert which is as immediately striking as Alexander Desplat’s for Birth or Mica Levi’s for Jackie. Herbert, best known for his playful, experimental electronic music, crafts a fluttering heartbeat of a flute motif which is achingly lovely. The soundtrack also includes Aretha Franklin’s (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, a morale-boosting anthem which prepares Marina for her first encounter with Orlando’s ex-wife. And Marina’s own singing bookends the film, giving the picture its transcendent final scene.

Guy Lodge (one of VanRamblings’ favourite film critics), in his Variety review calls Sebastián Lelio’s new work “transcendent and luminous”, writing in the conclusion to his review …

Vega’s tough, expressive, subtly anguished performance deserves so much more than political praise. It’s a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting, nurtured with pitch-perfect sensitivity by her director, who maintains complete candor on Marina’s condition without pushing her anywhere she wouldn’t herself go. At one point in her mortifying police examination, a photographer demands that she drop the towel from her waist. She reluctantly complies, yet the camera respectfully feels no need to lower it gaze: A Fantastic Woman is no less assured than its heroine of her hard-won identity.

Meanwhile, David Rooney in his review in The Hollywood Reporter simply calls A Fantastic Woman “ravishing” and “a bracingly honest work of searing empathy, shocking and enraging, funny and surreal, rapturous and restorative, an emotionally penetrating film of startling intensity and sinuous mood shifts wrapped in a rock-solid coherence of vision”.

Kamel El Basha won the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival a week ago, and The Insult is Lebanon’s entry for the Foreign Language Oscar this year. Critics are somewhat divided on the film, Eric Kohn (another one of VanRamblings favourite film critics), in his B- review writes …

Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult, the Lebanese filmmaker’s followup to his masterful drama The Attack is a fascinating, parable-like exploration of the tension between two facets of Lebanon’s Arab community and the cross-cultural ramifications implied by their ridiculous feud. While it doesn’t quite justify the sprawling courtroom antics or the blunt metaphor they entail, the movie nevertheless provides a profound look at the effect of historical trauma on modern Lebanese society.

In his review in Variety, Jay Weissberg writes, “The Insult is well-made but obvious and too often manipulative dissection of Lebanese political and religious divides that culminates in a standard courtroom drama”
Boyd van Hoeij is somewhat more generous in his review in The Hollywood Reporter, referring to the film as Law and Border, writing of The Insult, “This gripping genre yarn also looks very good. Doueiri, who worked on the early films of Tarantino as a camera assistant, here once more collaborated with The Attack’s cinematographer, Tommaso Fiorilli. Their style is again fluid and sinuous, at once direct and subtly poetic. Subtle isn’t a word that could be applied to Eric Neveux’s driving score, however, with the music accompanying practically all the scenes outside the courtroom.”

Ah yes, Petra Volpe’s rousing Tribeca Best Actress Award winner for Marie Leuenberger, The Divine Order traces the political awakening of young wife and mother taking the fight for women’s suffrage in Switzerland — which ended with victory in … 1971. Sure to be a crowd-pleaser at VIFF, when you consider that the Vancouver International Film Festival is most often synonymous with what is most commonly referred as the cinema of despair ought to mean that The Divine Order will not only prove an antidote to the more dour VIFF offerings, but emerge as the ‘feel good’ film of VIFF 2017.
In his review in Variety, Nick Schager writes …

Thanks to its director Petra Volpe’s sturdy guidance and Leuenberger’s fine lead performance as Nora, whose resolve is coloured by doubt and trepidation, The Divine Order never feels stilted or preachy; rather, it radiates an infectious admiration for the courage shown by its heroines in the face of immense obstacles.

Giorgia del Don, in her review in Cineuropa, seems quite swept away by The Divine Order …

Perhaps (very probably more likely) not everyone knows that calm Switzerland, tucked away in the heart of Europe, was one of the last countries in the world to introduce female suffrage. And indeed it is only since 1971 that women have had the right to vote and the possibility of being elected at federal level. So it is this long-kept “secret” that Petra Volpe decided to bring to the big screen in The Divine Order, continuing the interest in women that she has shown since the beginning of her career.

The Divine Order brings us back to the tragic nature of those opposing the right to vote for Swiss women. Nora (played by the magnificent Marie Leuenberger) embodies a very Swiss sense of discretion that hides an inner volcano just waiting to erupt and let loose a river of slow-moving but relentless lava.

A refreshing cocktail and essential cocktail that brings to light an underhand and sadly still very real discriminatory mechanism (in lots of countries) based on supposed and dangerous “divine” rules. Without ever falling into rhetoric but actually succeeding in making the whole film glide along on an unexpected freshness, Petra Volpe speaks to us about courage, a sentiment that women, and not only Swiss women, have too long ignored the meaning of but actually have plenty of. A jubilant and timeless film with no borders.

Well, that’s it for today’s VanRamblings’ post. Full VanRamblings coverage of VIFF 2017 is available by clicking here.

In 2017, the Vancouver International Film Festival will screen 26 award-winning films — Grand Prix, Jury, Audience, Critics and Best Film Awards, along with films boasting Best Director, Actress, Actor and Best Screenplay accolades — arriving on our shores from the Berlin, Tokyo, Melbourne, Seattle, Cannes, Shanghai, Venice, Dubai, Tribeca, Locarno, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, Taipei and Sundance Film Festivals.
If you’re compiling a list of 2017 VIFF must-sees, the award-winning films VanRamblings will write about over the course of the next 12 days must be given your due consideration. We’ll tell you about what awards these films won (and where), present trailers where available, and excerpt reviews from a variety of reliable critics’ sources, ranging from Screen Daily, IndieWire, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety to The Playlist, The Guardian and The Telegraph, among other trusted review sources.

Winner of the prestigious Palme D’or at Cannes 2017, and having just taken TIFF 2017 by storm, according to British film critic Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian, Swedish director Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) presents a “sprawling and daringly surreal satire that turns a contemporary art museum into a city-state of bizarre and Ballardian strangeness. High wire cinema that sets out to make your jaw drop, The Square succeeds.”
Here are excerpts from reviews of The Square coming out Cannes …

• Jessica Kiang, The Playlist. The Square’s scathing sensibility remains a constant, dark delight, a schadenfreude boomerang set in the rarefied reaches of Sweden’s art world that snip by snip, in scenarios dripping with acidly observed discomfort, clips precisely through the barbed-wire barrier fences of culture, sophistication and socialization that refined middle-class modern humans erect between our public selves and our private, animal natures;
• Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter. A potent, disturbing work that explores the boundaries of political correctness, artistic liberty and free speech in provocative ways. Östlund digs into the matter, a virtuoso chef driven to try increasingly wild combinations of spices and ingredients, in a tale told through the perspective of a sophisticated, highly educated and instinctively liberal art museum curator, the story unfolding with humour, vivid light, social commentary and nuance, with Swedish dialogue spiked with a good bit of English;
• Rory O’Connor, The Film Stage. An acerbic, sphincter-tightening dark comedy that works as a sort of drawn-out spiritual castration for its über chic Stockholm art curator protagonist, Östlund’s film is about our relationship with art, but it’s also about class, masculinity, and the psychological consequences of inaction (perhaps the key Östlund theme). More specifically it’s about the way we project in modern society and that awful fear we all share that the person we present to the world might not be who we really are.

Perhaps not everyone’s cup o’ tea (but one doesn’t attend VIFF to screen Disneyfied cinema), The Square is Sweden’s Best Foreign Film nominee.

Watch the trailer for Summer 1993, above. See. The Vancouver International Film Festival isn’t always about challenging avant-garde cinema. Winner of Best First Feature at Berlin 17 for tyro Spanish director Carla Simón, Summer 1993 relates the efforts of a six year-old trying to cope with grief, but it is with maturity, empathy and heartfelt emotion that the film conveys the uncertain reality that follows. Screen Daily’s Sarah Ward writes …

• Simón’s début is both tender and determined as it relates the tale of a young orphan trying to fit in with a new family, the film full of affectionate but yearning sentiment, the wise-beyond-her-years protagonist Frida knowing she wants something other than a struggling existence in the shadow of grief, as she tackles her situation with a practical and resilient outlook, peering at everything in sight with a clear but questioning gaze that constantly holds the viewer’s attention. Disarmingly engaging and utterly authentic, Simón’s début feature is loving in appearance as it handles even the most painful of emotions.

Here are two more reviews of Summer 1993 …

• Jay Weissberg, Variety. Cinematographer Santiago Racaj treats his camera as a living, breathing observer, often viewing the world at Frida’s level. More people share the little girl’s frame as the film progresses, though she often still remains a solitary figure, looking out at her new, disorienting rural surroundings with uncertainty. For the viewer though, summer’s verdant abundance and long daylight hours are comforting rather than oppressive, and while the film is set in 1993, paralleling Simón’s own experience, the production design avoids making the period feel too distant.
• Jonathan Holland. The Hollywood Reporter. A delicately crafted and moving filmic memoir by Carla Simón, Summer 1993 draws deeply on personal recollection, every frame of this story about a 6-year old girl sent to live with her uncle and aunt following the death of her parents, the film imparts events with a directness and detail that is underpinned throughout by its performances, particularly those of the children. Childhood memoirs always are under threat from self-indulgence and sentimentality, but 1993 successfully sidesteps both, establishing Summer 1993’s performers as future talents to watch. Palpable with emotion, and filmed with a fly-on-the-wall spontaneity Summer 1993 offers honest, authentic and captivating cinema from beginning to end, in a terrific, soulful feature début for Catalan director Simón.

This sleeper hit at Berlin is unlikely to return to our shores. Either you see it at VIFF 2017, or you risk missing Summer 1993 altogether.

Winner of Best Fiction Feature at the Dubai Film Festival, Kurdish director Hussein Hassan’s Reşeba: The Dark Wind also closed out the 21st Busan Film Festival with his ambitious film about the 2014 Yazidi genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan. Elizabeth Kerr in The Hollywood Reporter writes …

The Yazidi, an ethnically Kurdish religious community with roots dating back to Mesopotamia, are one of Iraq’s most culturally distinct communities. As such, they are also considered devil worshippers by ISIS, which commenced a brutal campaign to eliminate them in 2014. The story starts in the Shingal region, with the happy engagement of Yazidi soldier Reko (director-actor Rekesh Shabaz) and Pero (Diman Zandi, luminous), a union blessed by both families.

The relative tranquility of the village is shattered when ISIS troops swoop in one day, razing the town to the ground, shooting resistant men, burning symbols of culture and raising an Islamic State flag in place of the Kurdish one. During the firefight, Pero hides with several other women, but they are found by ISIS and promptly taken from their home and trafficked. Shabaz infuses Reko with a determined gait and thousand-yard stare that masks inner conflict, but it’s Zandi — in her quietest moments — that makes the horrors of war most vivid. Filled with agony and dread, Reşeba: The Dark Wind is harrowing yet redemptive filmmaking.

Fionnuala Halligan, Chief Film Critic for Screen Daily concludes her review, writing …

Pero is lost in the mayhem, captured and sold in a street market; Reko, who escapes to the camp, pursues her with a quiet determination. The rescue of the traumatized Pero, movingly played by Zandi, is not the end of her problems, however, and although the Yazidis have “forgiven” the 5,000-odd captured women of their tribe, not all of the community elders fall into line. “They abuse and rape our women and sell them back to us,” comments one tribesman. “They are more dead than alive.”

Hassan and cinematographer Touraj Aslani favour wide shots of the Iraqi landscape and the camps which the Yazidis now call home, and begin to look more permanent throughout the film. This is a rare opportunity to see this part of the world framed in a dramatic scenario, and Reşeba: The Dark Wind is quietly authentic throughout, with Hassan restricting even the music to let his sad love story express the emotions of this desolated community.

Full VanRamblings coverage of VIFF 2017 is available by clicking here.

It’s that very special time of year again, when the premi&egravere arts event of the year — in this case the 36th annual edition of the entirely spectacular and humane Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) — is set to get underway, replete with 365+ films from more than 70 countries, commencing two weeks from today, on Thursday, September 28th, the festival set to run for the next 15 days through until Friday, October 13th.
VIFF is best approached like a planned climb of a massive mountain: with preplanning galore, for which eventuality VIFF provides some cursory advice, explained and explicated by VanRamblings in more detail below.

What movies to choose?
On viff.org, you’ll find films organized by the following major programmes:
Panorama: Comprised of galas and special presentations, contemporary world cinema, and the Spotlight on France and documentary programmes;
Sea to Sky: A showcase of the inspired works emerging from creative film artists residing and/or filming in our home province of British Columbia;
True North: A celebration of the extraordinary creativity and craft by Canadian storytellers from coast to coast to coast;
Gateway: Providing a journey into the compelling cinematic worlds envisioned by East Asia’s most adventurous artists.
In addition, the smaller and more acutely focused film series include M/A/D (music, art & design), the Impact series (social activism), ALT (the international ‘altered states’ genre programme), and Youth (a programme catering to high school students, meant to foster imaginations, inspire, educate and entertain).

As always, a number of VIFF films will be returning to theatres for regular runs post-festival. When you look at the programme (free and widely available across Metro Vancouver), if there’s a Canadian distributor in place for the film, you can bet the film will return sooner rather than later.
There’ll also be a number of guests (actors, directors, producers) who’ll attend VIFF this year to present their films. It can be both fun and enlightening to see these films during VIFF for added cinematic insight.
Apart from the Galas and Special Presentations, the vast majority of films in VIFF’s 2017 programme are meant to appeal to smaller audiences, comprising independent world cinema which won’t find its way back to our shores. See these films at VIFF in 2017, or miss them for all time.
How and where do I buy tickets?
You can buy tickets or passes online at viff.org and print your tickets at home. Note that there is a service charge for online and phone orders: $1 per single ticket, up to $4 per order. Before the festival opens, tickets can be bought in person at the Vancity Theatre on Seymour (at Davie) from noon until 7pm. Once the festival is underway, all festival venues (The Centre for the Performing Arts, The Cinematheque, Cineplex Odeon International Village, the Rio Theatre, SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Performing Arts, the Vancity Theatre and the Vancouver Playhouse) will act as festival box offices.
Ticket packages and passes are a great cost-saving idea. More information may be found at viff.org.
The real steal for those on a budget (think seniors) who love film, and want to bliss out at VIFF 2017? Consideration should be given to purchasing the Weekday Matinee Pass, for only $160, which if you were to plan your filmgoing properly would enable you to see all films up until 5:50pm Monday through Friday, translating into 48 (or more) screenings during the festival period, at just a bit more than $3 per film!
Throughout the Festival, VIFF offers a customer service line, open daily 9am to 7pm, staffed by friendly and informed volunteers, who can answer any of your questions. Simply call 604-683-FILM (3456) for assistance.

What about all those lines outside the theatres?
Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line, a ticket-holders line and a rush or standby line. Standby tickets, for screenings that are sold out, go on sale 10 minutes before showtime, at full price (cash preferred). No matter which line you’re in, arrive at least 30 minutes early, particularly if you’re picky about where you sit.
What about food and drink?
Though most VIFF venues serve the usual popcorn/candy/soft drinks fare, some have a few extras (there’s wine at the Vancity, and beer and wine at The Rio), while Cineplex International Village sports a wealth of restaurants.
Outside food & drink is officially not allowed in the theatrse, but VIFF-goers have been known to get away with it; be discreet, considerate and tidy.

What about parking and bus routes?
VIFF is pretty much a no-car zone — transit is definitely the way to go. Still, there’s free parking available at Cineplex International Village for VIFF patrons, with a fair bit of parking in the area around The Rio. Otherwise, you’re best taking advantage of Vancouver’s transit system, or walking.

What movies should I choose? Part Deux
The can’t miss films at VIFF this year include …
Call Me by Your Name: Sundance’s smash summer idyll tracks a young man’s sexual awakening in the Italian Riviera of 1983;
The Florida Project: Director Sean Baker’s Cannes favourite tells the compassionate underclass story of six-year-old Moonee who spends her days both dodging and creating trouble;
The Square: Ruben Östlund’s Cannes 2017 funny and utterly humane Palme d’Or winner takes aim at the pomposity and hypocrisy of artists;
A Fantastic Woman: Rising Chilean director Sebastián Lelio celebrates the endurance of a woman under suspicion of murder in a film that could bring the first major acting award for a transgender performer to Daniela Vega;
BPM (Beats Per Minute): The Grand Prix at Cannes this year went to director Robin Campillo’s wrenching, deeply humanistic look at the early-’90s war on AIDS;

Loveless: Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s ice-cold masterpiece delivers a desolate image of Russia’s middle class, ruled by selfishness, envy, anger & anxiety, in a story told with riveting sincerity and nuance;
Meditation Park: Vancouver’s Mina Shum’s textured, tender, reflective and charismatic portrait of first and second generation immigrant life.

Also keep your eye out for director Michael Haneke’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning film Amour in a return to form (read: sinister grand tragedy) with Happy End, which is taking TIFF by storm; plus Best Foreign Film entries, Germany’s In The Fade starring Diane Kruger who won Best Actress at Cannes this year and Switzerland’s The Divine Order, an Audience Award winner at Tribeca about the Swiss suffragette movement.
In the coming days, VanRamblings will present a detailed preview analysis of three films — most days — that are scheduled to play at VIFF, beginning this Saturday concluding just before the Festival proper gets underway on Thursday, September 28th. The previews and excerpted capsule reviews we’ll have on offer have been gleaned from superlative critic raves coming out of Telluride / Cannes / Locarno / Berlin / Toronto / Seattle / Los Angeles / New York / London / Venice / Sundance / Tribeca / SXSW.
VanRamblings will publish trailers where available, and as above include excerpts of reviews from The Guardian and The Telegraph, Screen Daily, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, The Playlist, The Film Stage, New York Magazine (The Vulture), CineVue, Paste Magazine, Consequence of Sound, The Village Voice, and other trusted review sources.

It’s that time again — Vancouver’s yearly 16-day immersion in films from across the globe.
The 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is as always a daunting prospect. This year’s edition of VIFF, which begins today and runs through until Friday October 14th, will screen 365+ films, including 219 full-length features, from 70 different countries.
Here are some tips on navigating it.
Programme, tickets and venues
As you get ready for a cinematic onslaught, you’ll want to pick up a copy of the glossy 2016 VIFF programme, available at no charge all across Metro Vancouver, at the Vancity Theatre, as well as at libraries, bookstores and coffee shops.

You can skip the box office lines and buy your tickets online at viff.org, or simply by pressing on the buy option when choosing of a film of interest to you, and then simply print the ticket at home. Note that there is a service charge for online orders: $1 per single ticket, up to $4 per order. Patrons can save by purchasing ticket packs or all-access screening passes.
Tickets or passes can be bought in person at the Vancity Theatre, or at any of the Festival venues: The Centre for the Performing Arts, The Cinematheque, the Rio Theatre, SFU’s Goldcorp Centre, the Vancouver Playhouse or Cineplex International Village. The box offices will be open daily, one half-hour before the day’s first screening.
Throughout the Festival, VIFF offers a helpful customer service line, open daily 9am to 7pm, staffed by friendly and informed volunteers, who can answer any of your questions. Simply call 604-683-FILM (3456) for assistance.
What about all those lines?
Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line (for those with passes hanging around their necks; you’ll know them when you see them), a ticket-holders line (for those who’ve purchased tickets in advance, and have the tickets in hand) and a rush line. Standby tickets, for screenings that are sold out, go on sale 10 minutes before showtime, at full price (cash preferred). No matter which line you’re in, arriving at least 30 minutes early — or for popular screenings (the VIFF website will let you know which screenings are popular and almost sold-out) is a good idea, particularly if you’re picky about where you sit.
Food and drink, parking, bus routes
Though most VIFF venues serve the usual popcorn/candy/soft drinks fare, some have a few extras (there’s wine at the Vancity, and beer and wine at The Rio, for example). Most venues have a wealth of restaurants just steps from the door.
Outside food and drink is officially not allowed in the theatres, but VIFF-goers have been known to get away with it; be discreet, considerate and tidy (and, please, please, do not eat during the course of a film screening).
VIFF is pretty much a no-car zone — transit is definitely the way to go. Still, there’s free parking available at Cineplex International Village for VIFF patrons, with a fair bit of parking in the area around The Rio. Otherwise, you’re best taking advantage of Vancouver’s transit system. Typing m.translink.ca into your smartphone browser will give you all the information you need to navigate between venues.
What movies should I choose?
There is always something new to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Many of the 365+ films have already screened elsewhere, though, either in their home countries or at other festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Telluride, Locarno and Venice, among other far flung places across the globe.
As a service to readers, for the past nine days, VanRamblings has published previews of award-winning and lauded films that have been scheduled as a part of VIFF 2016. Just click here to read 36+ previews of celebrated VIFF feature films (most with trailers, all with reviews from erudite critics).

Several of these titles — among them Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea; Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson; Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake; Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman; Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper; Jean and Luc Dardennes’ The Unknown Girl; Paul Verhoeven’s Elle; and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight will look to build on their enthusiastic early acclaim. All of these films have been previewed by VanRamblings.

Another one, Nate Parker’s Sundance prizewinner The Birth of a Nation, although it has become a lightning rod for controversy given director Nate Parker’s 1999 sexual assault charge, promises an unflinching look at slavery, and emerges as a must-see at VIFF 2016.
And those are just the movies everyone recognizes and talks about. That the Festival programme contains still more multitudes – that it counts short masterworks, below-the-radar genre items and avant-garde mind-blowers among its essential offerings each year is a fact that can sometimes be lost amidst the deafening reams of Oscar hype that can issue forth throughout the fall season.
A massive annual confluence of art and industry, as well as a cinematic buffet of tremendous cultural and aesthetic diversity, is invariably reduced to just a handful of heat-seeking titles.
As much as we may look forward to the more lauded VIFF entries, many of which will reach our local multiplex in the weeks and months to come, there are many more VIFF films worth seeking out than the films VanRamblings has highlighted in our nine-day preview. But when a Festival boasts nearly 365+ films to choose from, a critic must start somewhere.