VIFF Executive Director Kyle Fostner, and VIFF’s Chief Programmer, Curtis Woloschuk, attended the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival this past May, and were able to secure — for the first time ever — commitments to bring every Cannes’ awarding winning film, in the Main Selection, Un Certain Regard, and Directors Fortnight to the 44th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, placing those films in this year’s Galas & Special Presentations programme.

In Day 2 of VanRamblings’ peek at VIFF #44’s Galas & Special Presentations programme, we’ll begin with the 2025 Cannes’ Palme d’or winner. Clicking on the underlined title will take you to the VIFF web page, which will enable you, if you are of a mind, to purchase tickets to the films listed below.

It Was Just An Accident. In his latest film, a 24-hour narrative, Iranian film director Jafar Panani welds scorching social critique to a masterful command of form: a devastating cry for justice, the film also emerging as as a superb thriller. Film Comment calls the film, “A towering achievement.”

For Panahi, It Was Just an Accident marks a return to a more classic style of filmmaking, the film about anger, violence, revenge and empathy, felt as deeply by the characters whose lives unspool in front of the camera as by the filmmaker who sits behind it.  Organically taking shape when Vahid encounters him who he believes tortured him in prison years earlier — Eghbal a former Iranian intelligence officer — Vahid tracks Eghbal to a repair shop, and abducts Eghbal, driving him out to the desert, where he digs a hole with the intent of burying him alive.

A certain Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film in next year’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, here’s your opportunity to get an early peek at one of the best films of the year, brought to you by the good folks at VIFF.

Young Mothers. The Dardennes brothers are back again with their latest multiple Cannes award winning film, Young Mothers. Says Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Deeply moving but never manipulative, Young Mothers amounts to the brothers’ best film in more than a decade.” Immersive, observational, Dardennes’ engaging ensemble drama dedicates quality time to a quartet of young women — girls, really — under the care of a maternal assistance home in Liège.

Pregnancy is the common thread between these four teens, who otherwise represent very different instances of children bringing children into the world. Jessica (Babette Verbeek) anxiously waits beside a bus stop, hoping to recognize the birth mother who put her up for adoption. It’s not until the camera steps away that we see this young girl is pregnant herself. She’s already picked out the name for her baby, Alba, and swears she’ll never abandon her — a commitment to breaking the cycle by someone who desperately craves her own mother’s embrace.

Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) has practically the opposite problem: Her welfare-dependent single parent Nathalie (Christelle Cornil) pressures her to deliver, promising to help raise the child, but Ariane wants a better life for her baby.

A tender look at women at a crossroads, with stripped-down aesthetic principles, compassionate humanism and naturalistic purity, the Dardennes return to their roots as documentary filmmakers, in Young Mothers expanding the scope of their work while create gorgeous moments of empathy in the lives of the four teens, whose bare-bones existences on the fringes of society deserve our recognition.

Tomorrow on VanRamblings, we’ll complete our look at VIFF 44’s Galas and Special Presentations programme. See you here then.

In Part One of a three part series, today on VanRamblings we take a look at this year’s VIFF’s Galas & Special Presentations on offer at the 44th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, set to run from Thursday, October 2nd thru 12th.

If you click on the underlined link of the titles below, you will be taken to the VIFF page that will both provide you with more insight into the films, and allow you the opportunity to purchase tickets for the screening of your choice.

Sentimental Value. Winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value — a ravishing, uncommonly rich, contemplative, poignant and humane look at existence — took Cannes by storm, emerging as a favourite among critics, even if Jafar Panahi’s film, It Was Just an Accident (which will also screen at VIFF this year), won the Palme d’Or.

Sentimental Value will feature prominently in this year’s Oscar race, with guaranteed nods for Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Actress for Renate Reinsve (Worst Person in the World), Best Actor for Stellan Skarsgård, and Best Director for Joachim Trier. Here’s your opportunity to get an early look at one of the best films of the year, a piercing reflection on family and memory, and a film that mines the inner truths of the characters we see on screen. Not to be missed.

After the Hunt. Opening to mixed reviews at the Venice film festival this past weekend, Luca Guadagnino’s “bizarrely retrograde” (IndieWire), “weirdly muddled” (Variety), “frustratingly cryptic” (The Hollywood Reporter) #MeToo era film follows the havoc caused by an accusation of sexual assault on a U.S. university campus.

Ever the contrarian, Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells has an entirely different take, as he writes …

I immediately fell in love with the opening frames of Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt, or more precisely the amplified sound of a slowly ticking clock — an aural statement that says “ominous stuff is brewing, you bet”. Though I was fully familiar with the basic story bones, having read an early draft of Nora Garrett‘s original screenplay, a #MeToo rape accusation drama mostly set on the Yale campus, I was pulled in all over again.

Assured, unforced and deliberate, Guadagnino‘s interpretation of Garrett’s screenplay fascinates by not pushing too hard, advancing the campus mystery in a gradual, sharply observed manner. I was actually kind of startled — pleasantly — by his decision to keep things on the subdued side. No raised voices or glaring expressions or slamming doors or anyone throwing things around.

Except, that is, for a tantrum thrown by Andrew Garfield’s Hank Gibson, who’s also up for tenure — a reaction to his having been accused of sexually assaulting Ayo Edibiri‘s Maggie Price, an allegedly mediocre philosophy student, the daughter of super-wealthy parents, and a lesbian.

Maggie is a key story figure, not just because of this alleged assault but also because of her protégé relationship with Julia Roberts‘ Alma Imhoff, a whipsmart, well-liked, seriously admired Yale professor who’s in line for tenure. But as things develop and social pressure increases, Alma and Maggie’s relationship becomes less and less trusting, and then tips over into hostility.

But I was mostly taken by a tone of ambiguity that manifests in the third act. A haunting ambiguity mixed with stabs of suspicion. And, not incidentally, by a somewhat instructive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

So, there you have it. Two outstanding films set to screen at VIFF 2025, where you can get an early look at two Oscar bound films, sequestered within the always comfortable and welcoming Vancouver Playhouse.

C’mon back tomorrow for two (or more) VIFF #44 Gala & Special Presentation films.