Category Archives: Film Festivals

#VIFF2024 | The 62nd Annual New York Film Festival Comes to Town

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Each year, the prestigious, heavily-juried and world class New York Film Festival unspools the films in the festival’s Main Slate , at the same time as occurs each year at our homegrown and raucously dynamic Vancouver International Film Festival.

In 2024, VIFF43 shares 13 films on the NYFF62 Main Slate, which is what we will write about today on VanRamblings. Can’t afford the flight to the Big Apple? No problem. The Vancouver International Film Festival brings New York to you.

Here, then, are the 13 films Vancouver and New York share in 2024.
(Click/tap, on the underlined  titles to access the VIFF page for the film, to buy tickets if you wish)

As We Imagine as Light
  • Payal Kapadia
  • 2024
  • France/India/Netherlands/Luxembourg
  • 118 minutes
  • Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles

The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated with a vivid, humane richness by Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature début about three working-class women dealing with professional and romantic disruptions.

Showtimes

Saturday, September 28th
9:30 PM
Vancouver Playhouse

Tuesday, October 1st
3:00 PM
Vancouver Playhouse

Anora

  • Sean Baker
  • 2024
  • U.S
  • 138 minutes

Sean Baker’s screwball comedy about sex, love, and money stars Mikey Madison as an exotic dancer from Brighton Beach thrust into the lap of luxury when she’s whisked away on a whirlwind romance with a wealthy young customer. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film this year.

 

Showtimes

Friday, September 27
8:45 PM
Vancouver Playhouse

Tuesday, October 1st
9:15 PM
Vancouver Playhouse

Caught by the Tides

  • Jia Zhangke
  • 2024
  • China
  • 111 minutes
  • Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles

The pre-eminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with Caught by the Tides, assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years. The always captivating Zhao Tao carries this marvelous film about cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change.

Showtimes

Saturday, September 28th
1:00 PM
International Village, Cinema 10

Sunday, September 29th
8:45 PM
Fifth Avenue, Cinema 3

Thursday, October 3rd
2:30 PM
Vancouver Playhouse

Saturday, September 29th
8:45 PM
SFU Woodwards

Saturday, October 5th
3:45 PM
Vancouver Playhouse

Saturday, October 5th
8:30 PM
International Village 10

Sunday, October 6th
1:00 PM
Fifth Avenue, Cinema 3

Here are the 8 other NYFF62 films that will screen at VIFF43 …

  • Grand Tour | Monday, September 30th | 2:45 PM | Vancouver Playhouse

  • On Becoming a Guinea Fowl | October 1sts | 9:15 PM | Int. Village, Cin 9 | |
         October 6th | 6:30 PM | Vancity Theatre, VIFF Centre

  • Happyend | September 28 | 3 PM | Vancouver Playhouse | |
    October 3rd | 9 PM | Fifth Avenue, Cinema 3

  • Misericordia | September 27th | 8:45 PM | International Village, Cin 9 | |
     September  30th | 3:30 PM | SFU Woodwards

  • No Other Land | September 28th | 3:30 PM | SFU Woodwards | |
    October 1st | 6:30  PM | Fifth Avenue, Cinema 3

  • Pepe | September 28th | 4 PM | Vancity Theatre, VIFF Centre | |
     October 2nd | 6:15 PM | The Cinematheque

  • The Seed of the Secret Fig | October 3rd | 8:45 PM | Vancouver Playhouse | |
     October 5th | 6:30 PM | SFU Woodwards | |
    October 6th | 12:00 PM | SFU Woodwards

  • A Traveler’s Needs | October 5th | 6:15 PM | SFU Woodwards | |
     October 6th | 2:30 PM | Vancouver Playhouse

#VIFF2024 | A Celebration of Global Cinema

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The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is set to return for its 43rd edition in 2024 — September 26 thru October 6 — promising once again to bring together film enthusiasts, industry professionals, and storytellers from around the world.

Since its inception in 1981, VIFF has established itself as one of the most prestigious film festivals in North America, known for showcasing an eclectic mix of international cinema, Canadian talent, and innovative documentaries.

Held annually in one of Canada’s most cosmopolitan cities, VIFF is not just a film festival — it’s a cultural celebration that embraces global perspectives, storytelling, and cinematic innovation. With its innovative programming and commitment to discovering fresh voices, the always scintillating Vancouver International Film Festival remains a key destination for cinephiles seeking thought-provoking films.

Each year, VIFF brings a curated selection of films that have already made waves at some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Telluride, Venice, and Toronto. These films arrive in Vancouver having received critical acclaim, awards, and audience recognition when they made their début earlier this year, making VIFF a key destination on the awards circuit, on the road to greater international exposure, and broader recognition, often concluding with Academy Award nominations and wins.

For the 2024 edition, several high-profile, award-winning films will make their way to Vancouver, having already garnered significant attention at earlier festivals.

Award Winning Films To Screen at VIFF 2024 | Part 3

Here are six more of the most anticipated films that will screen at VIFF 2024 (note: each highlighted film title, should you click on it, will take you to the VIFF page providing more detail on the film, allowing  you to purchase tickets for the film, too).

  • A Different Man. Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. Berlin 2024. Aaron Schimberg, USA, 2024. By refracting Brian De Palma’s self-reflexiveness and the Coen brothers’ mordant fatalism through the prism of his most personal obsessions, Schimberg creates a house of mirrors so brilliant and complex that it becomes impossible to match any of his characters to their own reflections, and absolutely useless to reduce the movie around them to the stuff of moral instruction.

  • A Traveler’s Needs. Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, Berlin 2024. Yeohaengjaui pilyo / 여행자의 필요. Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2024.  A Traveler’s Needs is just the tonic: a film that passes through you like a breath of fresh air. With an endearingly scatty, offhand performance from Isabelle Huppert that lends the proceedings a veil of comfy familiarity,  A Traveler’s Needs nonetheless finds the indefatigable Korean auteur at his most puckishly cryptic.

  • Black Dog. Un Certain Regard Prize, Cannes 2024. Gou Zhen / 狗阵. Guan Hu, China. Written by Hu and longtime collaborator Rui Ge, Black Dog embraces the same premise of countless a noir before it: a lone drifter comes home to start afresh, only to face the ghosts of his troubled past. What’s sensational about Hu’s latest is the way it undercuts that dread to land on an engrossing note that rings wholly, convincingly earned.

  • Dahomey. Golden Bear for Best Film, Berlin 2024. Mati Diop’s captivating, fabulistic documentary Dahomey confronts the reality of how modernity has been shaped by the West’s theft of cultural heritage. An invigorating, agile, cerebral, strange and enlivening film, an all at once captivating and rigorously intellectual film that will leave you with a mighty impression well beyond the film’s compact length.

  • Gloria!. Grand Jury Prize: Official Competition, Seattle 2024. With the possible exception of Tora! Tora! Tora!, any film with an exclamation point in the title should by rights be a spangly, full-scale musical. A frothy tale of warring classical music sensibilities in a Venetian girls’ refuge, Gloria! stops short of complete commitment to that rule — but it’s when it fully suspends reality for all-singing, all-stamping choral ecstasy that Margherita Vicario’s début is most exciting.

  • Holy Cow. Youth Award: Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2024. North American Première. The début feature of Louise Courvoisier, who also grew up on a farm in the Jura, Holy Cow is a small but likeable coming-of-age tale that reeks of dung, grilled sausages, sweat and diesel oil. Lovingly shot in warm natural light, and accompanied by a gentle, lilting soundtrack, Holy Cow is shot through with compassion for its rascally yet vulnerable protagonist, 18-year-old Totone (Clement Faveau), a mop-haired lad who just wants to have fun with his mates, get drunk and get laid. But then his father dies and he is left with a failing farm and a little sister to look after.

VIFF Award Winning Films | Part 1 (just click on the preceding link to access page)

VIFF Award Winning Films | Part 2 (just click on the preceding link to access page)

#VIFF24 | VanRamblings’ Vancouver International Film Festival Column

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The 43rd Annual Vancouver International Film Festival

Since opening in 1981, with a handful of films in just one theatre — the lost and lamented Ridge Theatre, at 16th and Arbutus — the Vancouver International Film Festival has taken on a vital role for local filmmakers and film lovers.

As it celebrates its 43rd anniversary this year, today VanRamblings will provide insight into the award-winning films that will screen at VIFF this year, as well as provide information on this year’s venues, ticket acquisition, and more.

With 150 feature films running over 11 days, although VIFF 2024 isn’t as complex as once was the case — as it runs from September 26th thru October 6th, it’s now shorter than the 16 day length it maintained for many years — navigating the sprawling festival can still be a little daunting.

VIFF is best approached like a multi-country overseas vacation: with pre-planning, and lots of it.

What movies to choose?

On viff.org , you’ll find films organized by programme (Showcase, Panorama, Vanguard, Northern Lights, Insights, Spectrum, Portrait and Altered States) by country of origin, by genre, and  by director. See what intrigues you!

Also, check to see which films have a guest attending (noted on each film’s individual page), which might mean an interesting Q&A.

You can also peruse the hard copy VIFF guide, which will soon be available at your favourite local bookstore, at regional and neighbourhood libraries and the nine venues where films will be screened, as well as at coffee shops across the Metro Vancouver region. Note should be made that the most accurate and up-to-date  information about guests is available online only.

Award-Winning Must-See Films

(Underlined titles of films link to the VIFF page for the film, which will provide you with more information on the film, as well as allow you the opportunity to buy tickets for the film, if you’re of a mind to do so).

Anora. Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, in the director’s most searing and shattering film yet, with a breakout performance from Mikey Madison. Not to mention, a thoroughly fun and provocative time at the movies.

All We Imagine as Light. Grand Prix winner, Cannes 2024. IndieWire’s Anne Thompson says this film is her favourite this year, as she exclaims: “All We Imagine is an exquisite, spellbindingly hypnotic, a poignantly lyrical film that transcends form and style, full of enriching humanity and gentleness, joy and sadness and languorous eroticism, with a captivating beauty rarely seen on film.”

The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s Special Jury and FIPRESCI Prize winner at Cannes offers a mesmerizingly gripping parable in which paranoia, misogyny and rage of the Iranian state are mapped seamlessly onto an ordinary family unit.

Conclave. Oscar nominees Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci lead a brilliant ensemble cast in All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger’s adaption of Robert Harris’ high-stakes drama, in which Cardinals gather at the Vatican to elect a new Pope, the film emerging as a psychologically complex morality tale.

The End. Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon sing for their lives in Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical, with the director offering a staggering meditation on how we live with ourselves at the end of the world.

No Other Land. Best Documentary Award, Berlin 2024. A vital and wrenching documentary about Israel’s often barbaric efforts to expel a Palestinian community, co-directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, No Other Land offers a ground-level view of an occupation in action.

How and where do I buy tickets?

The easiest way to purchase tickets is to go online to viff.org, put the name of the film you’re interested in in the search engine, and click on Buy — from there it’s easy, allowing you to print your tickets at home. Or, you can call the Festival Infoline at 604-683-3456 from noon til 6 p.m. daily through October 6th. (Online is quicker.) Note that there is a service charge for online and phone orders: $1 per single ticket, up to $8 per order.

Required by the provincial government (because VIFF films screen unrated) you’ll need to purchase a one-time $2 VIFF membership.

Tickets can be purchased at the venues, as well, during operating hours. As of September 26th, all festival venues (VIFF Centre, The Chan Centre for Performing Arts, The Cinematheque, Fifth Avenue Cinemas, Cineplex International Village, The Orpheum, The Rio Theatre, SFU Goldcorp, and The Vancouver Playhouse) will have a box office open daily, one hour before the day’s first screening.

How early do I have to show up?

If you’re picky about where you sit, the earlier the better: An hour isn’t too early for a film that’s popular. But even if you don’t mind being in the back (or front) row, show up at least 15 minutes before showtime: At the 10-minute mark, unoccupied seats are counted and sold to those in the standby line.

What line do I stand in?

Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line (for those with passes hanging around their necks), 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, at full price.

Stand in the wrong line at your peril. (There will be signage, and helpful VIFF volunteers in VIFF T-shirts, if you’re confused.)

Can I bring my lunch?

Technically, no; VIFF venues do not allow outside food. Theoretically, yes, if you’re discreet about it. (Or just eat while waiting in line.)

Can I save a seat for a friend?

If you’re saving a seat at a sold-out screening, you might be asked to relinquish it if your friend is late, so tell them not to be.

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 less well-known films.

#VIFF2024 | Four More Films to Be Celebrated at This Year’s Film Festival

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The 43rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival, running from September 26th thru October 6th

In this second of a series on the upcoming Vancouver International Film Festival, as we did last Friday, once again today we will present four more films for you to put on your VIFF 2024 film schedule, films to take in and appreciate, films you will love, and films that will change your life immeasurably for the better.

All We Imagine As Light
Saturday September 28th
9:30pm, Vancouver Playhouse

Tuesday October 1st
3pm, Vancouver Playhouse

Tickets available online for the Saturday screening. Just click on this link.

Tickets available online for the Tuesday screening. Just click on this link.

Grand Prix winner, Cannes 2024

In last week’s edition of the IndieWire Screen Talk podcast, co-host Anne Thompson — for 40 years a luminary in the film business, the beloved editor of what was once upon a time the recognized standard in journalistic film coverage,  Premiere magazine, and long Hollywood’s most accurate Oscar prognosticator — Anne Thompson enthusiastically expressed that All We Imagine As Light is her favourite film this year, the film she enthused: “an exquisite, spellbindlingly hypnotic, and poignantly lyrical symphonic film that transcends form and style, and a film of enriching humanity and gentleness, languorous eroticism, joy and sadness, presented throughout with an epiphanic, captivating beauty rarely seen on film.”

All We Imagine As Light relates the story of the lives of three women nurses who are front and centre in director Payal Kapadia’s luminous Mumbai-set drama. Prabha works long hours to avoid thinking about her husband, who left for Germany long ago and eventually stopped calling, while two of her colleagues are struggling with troubles of their own. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes this year (an historic first for an Indian film), the film offers a moving portrait of resistance and camaraderie, and a VIFF 2024 film that finds beauty and solace in the unlikeliest of places.

No Other Land
Saturday, September 28th
3:30pm, SFU Woodwards

Tuesday, October 1st
6:30pm, Fifth Avenue Cinema
Auditorium 3

Tickets available online for the Saturday screening. Just click on this link.

Tickets available online for the Tuesday screening. Just click on this link.

Best Documentary Award, Berlin 2024

A vital and wrenching documentary about Israel’s often barbaric efforts to expel a Palestinian community, co-directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, No Other Land offers a ground-level view of an occupation in action in this must-see, award-winning documentary.

A painfully human story, the film tracks Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta on the southern West Bank, and the mass expulsion of his community that has been his lifelong reality. Faced with the systematic demolition of homes and schools, carried out to make room for an Israeli military training ground, residents confront a painful choice: either move away and relinquish their land or endure and try to rebuild.

With the help of Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, Adra documents the evictions and organizes protests against them, even as the pair’s unequal personal situations hang over their work together. No Other Land is a vérité project and a witness testimony. It operates within the logic that visual evidence will galvanize the public to acknowledge the brutality faced by Palestinians.

Given the conditions of its production, No Other Land would be vital even in a more ragged form. But the filmmaking here is tight and considered, with nimble editing that captures the sense of time at once passing and looping back on itself. The intense, jolting impact of the film’s intense sequences of Palestinian-Israeli confrontation — often shot on phone cameras, to the consternation of army officials, and violent enough to shock many complacent fence-sitters on the issue into angry awareness — is balanced with more composed, observational scenes of Adra, his family and his neighbours trying to live an everyday life on ground that keeps getting pulled out from under them.

Hope is fading that the next generation might retain their ancestral land; if they do, they’ll likely inherit Adra’s activism with it.


John David Washington and Skylar Smith in Malcolm Washington’s Telluride hit, The Piano Lesson.

The Piano Lesson
Monday September 30
6pm, Vancouver Playhouse

Tickets available online. Just click on this link.

Denzel Washington executive produces an adaptation of a major American play by August Wilson, directed by one son (Malcolm) and starring another (John David).

A world première at the just wrapped 2024 Telluride Film Festival, where the film débuted to an appreciative reception, Wilson’s tome centres around a unique piano currently under the watch of Bernice (Danielle Deadwyler), a single mother who lives in a Pittsburgh home she shares with her Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson reprising his Tony Award-nominated performance). Her relative peace is disturbed by the arrival of her brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his slightly naive friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) from Mississippi. She soon discovers that Boy Willie’s intentions do not align with her own.

At its core, The Piano Lesson is about a family attempting to come to terms with the long repercussions of slavery. Like almost all of Wilson’s work, it is a quintessentially American story peppered with characters that should resonate and spark conversation for decades to come. And, like many of Wilson’s literary contributions, translating it into the medium of cinema was no easy task. That Washington’s adaptation is the most successful so far, and in the context of his first film, no less, should be duly celebrated.

The End
Friday, October 4th
9pm, Vancouver Playhouse

Sunday, October 6th
9pm, Vancouver Playhouse

Tickets available online for the Friday screening. Just click on this link.

Tickets available online for the Sunday screening. Just click on this link.

Another hit at the Telluride Film Festival arriving on our shores at VIFF 2024 in early October, Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon sing for their lives in Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical, as the director of the acclaimed and memorably bizarre nonfiction film, 2012’s The Act of Killing — an account of the genocide in Indonesia, in which he famously persuaded the killers to re-enact their crimes on camera in gaudy cinematic vignettes — leaps into fiction with this staggering meditation on how we live with ourselves at the end of the world.

For a film whose slow-accumulating power doesn’t fully sink in until its final moments (a sweet refrain that’s all the more arresting for its anticlimactic conviction), The End doesn’t waste any time to put its cards on the table. The world as we know it is over. Something — or a chain reaction of somethings, most of them presumably climate-related — has spread across the surface of the Earth, destabilizing human civilization and making our planet unlivable. Hey, maybe British Columbia’s climate change denying leader of our province’s Conservative Party, John Rustad, oughta take in a screening of this film — you never know … it could open his eyes, and save us from four interminable years of “There’s no climate emergency. It’s all a hoax” rhetoric, and maybe save our planet, and our children’s lives.