In 2025, VanRamblings makes our 44th annual foray to the Vancouver International Film Festival, where the regulars we’ve attended the festival with all these years once again find themselves in attendance to enjoy the best in world cinema.

As you might well imagine, like VanRamblings, a few of us are getting on in age, despite looking young, vital and, as long has been the case, committed to VIFF: Eileen broke both her knees three months ago, requiring emergency restorative surgery; Ed’s wife (who worked for the festival for many years) passed on, as did former volunteer David who chose MAID as a way to leave this life; Lorne is here once again, as is VIFF  VanCentre programmer Tom Charity, looking all hail and hearty (both Lorne and Tom are on the younger side of the regular attendee contingent); in his 80s, former CBC producer and film critic Volkmar has made his way to VIFF once again, as have Barbara and Len (who told us The Ivy, which screens on Tuesday for a second time, is his favourite film of all the films he’s attended at VIFF this year).

Unlike VanRamblings, each member of the group above has attended five screening each and every day since the commencement of VIFF 2025 this past Thursday.

Although seniors make up about 20% of those in attendance at the 44th annual VIFF, the majority of audience members at each screening that we’ve attended would seem to range in age from approximately 25 to 45 years of age, some younger than that (university students in the main), some a wee bit older.

VanRamblings experiences this new, vibrant and younger VIFF audience as a hopeful sign that culture and love of international cinema still exists in this city, which means that even in these meanest of post-pandemic times would seem to mean that it is entirely likely VIFF will persevere through the troubling social and economic times many of us are experiencing, long, long into VIFF’s illustrious future.

Clicking on the underlined title links below will take you to the VIFF webpage for the film, and will allow you to order tickets, if you are a mind to do so.

Orphan. B+. Set in Budapest in 1957, one year after the failure of the Hungarian Revolution at the hands of a brutal Soviet regime, a young Jewish boy, Andor, whose mother has raised him to believe that his father will return from the death camps, where Andor’s father was taken near the end of the Holocaust, as  locals hid Andor and his mother — has his hopes shattered when a brutish stranger appears on the doorstep claiming to be his father. The film’s powerful earth-toned, sepia-drenched visual style, including its desaturated colour palette and dynamic camerawork recalls director László Nemes earlier work on the Oscar-winning Son of Saul. Hungary’s nominee for a Best International Feature Film Oscar.

John Candy: I Like Me. A-. A major audience pleaser, this moving-picture, sentimental love letter to one of Canada’s greatest comedians, as directed by Colin Hanks offers an unabashed celebration of John Candy’s life and work in a tale told by friends, reinforcing Candy’s reputation as a prodigious talent and kind-hearted soul, who, in spite of a deep insecurity, was still ultimately a great and loving man. Make no mistake, this is not a hagiography. While the assessment of Candy’s life and legacy provides ample cause for laughter, it also provokes plenty of tears. Residing just beneath that easygoing, eager-to-please, every man exterior was a chronic anxiety that reached a crippling peak during his final years. John Candy passed much too early at age 43. Set to screen a final time at VIFF, at the Cineplex International Village, on Wednesday, October 8th, at 12:45pm in Cinema 10. Arrive early to guarantee yourself a seat.

Sentimental Value. A. Here’s what VanRamblings wrote on social media after the screening of Sentimental Value …

Not hard to see why people are going gaga over Joachim Trier’s latest film, this Grand Prix winner at Cannes in every way a triumph, both Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård’s performances each a revelation, although the whole cast is simply beautiful and humanely perfect. Sentimental Value — about an estranged father and daughter really resonated with us — opens wide on November 14th, on its way to a raft of well-deserved Oscar nominations. It’ll be so good to see Mr. Trier, Ms. Reinsve and Mr. Skarsgård as fixtures on the upcoming Oscar campaign trail. If you don’t know much about them now, you soon will.

A guaranteed lock for the following Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best International film, for which Norway, in respect of the latter, has submitted the film for a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination. Set to screen one last time at the Vancouver Playhouse, on Wednesday, October 8th at 5:30pm. At this point, standby only.

Sirât. A. Spain’s submission to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for a Best International Feature Film Oscar, and earlier this year, winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, about 15 minutes in, we thought we might leave the screening to go home and spend time with our dog. We’re glad we didn’t. As the film moves along, Sirât turns out to be outstanding cinema, unsettling, tragic, violent, humane, explosive, empathetic and completely unexpected at every moment, Óliver Laxe’s new film is a lightning bolt of a film. The film’s narrative summary: a father (Sergi López) and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They’re searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic dance music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading but they push through and follow and eventually join a group of ravers heading to one last party deep in the Moroccan desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey brings unexpected, heart-breaking tragedy. A kind of contemporary, grimly sublime Wages of Fear, Sirât is at all times visually transportive as it focuses on simple plots and conflicts that provide ample space for philosophical and existential contemplation. Laxe’s most fully realized film to date, Sirât folds in the visceral pleasures of contemporary genre and blockbuster cinema. Set to screen at The Rio Theatre on East Broadway at Commercial Drive, on the last day of VIFF, 8:45pm Thanksgiving Sunday evening, October 12th.

Young Mothers. A+. Winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes back in May, and Belgium’s submission for a Best International Film Feature Oscar, Young Mothers is yet another tour-de-force from multiple Cannes winners, the Dardennes’ brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, and our favourite film thus far that we’ve screened at the 44th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. Deeply moving from beginning to end, this is the brothers’ best film in more than a decade, captivating when it’s simply taking in the quotidian responsibilities of new parenthood — feeding, diaper changing, bathtime — or when it catches an expression of wonder or joy as a mother gazes into the tiny face of the child she has created. With dignity and intelligence on screen in every scene and every character portrayal, Young Mothers is  another fine addition to the Dardennes’ film canon, with a comfort in the familiarity of their methodology, and their ability to coax tremendous performances from even the youngest of actors — the cast of Young Mothers is uniformly excellent. Young Mothers screens twice more at VIFF, on Thursday, October 9th, 12:30pm at Fifth Avenue Cinema, and Sunday, October 12th at 8:30pm at Alliance Francaise.

Nouvelle Vague. B+. The opening night film at VIFF 2025, director Richard Linklater’s latest film is filmed in exquisite black and white, the dialogue almost entirely in French, clearly a labour of love and a product of considerable craft chronicling the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, the film a valentine to the French New Wave. There’s so much joy in this telling, so much sophistication of craft on display, and such a delightful ode to this exemplary era of creativity, Nouvelle Vague is nothing less than a bold, muscular act of caring, a shout of joy and a call to arms. As Owen Glieberman writes in Variety …

The film reminds you that the real salvation of cinema will always come from those who understand that making a movie should be a magic trick good enough to fool the magician himself into believing it.

A cinephile’s film through and through, Nouvelle Vague is also breezy and entertaining, never taking itself too seriously while highlighting an extremely serious moment in film history. A film that delights in its characters’ rule-breaking and playfulness and experimentation, for devoted film lovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see — a joyful homage to the art of cinema that should have you queuing up at the Vancouver Playhouse for the film’s final screening at VIFF, on Saturday, October 11th, at 11am. One final note: we thought Zooey Deutsch was a revelation as Jean Seberg, her performance reason enough to see Nouvelle Vague.  Arrive early.

No Other Choice. A-. South Korea’s Oscar submission this year, No Other Choice isn’t just director Park Chan-wook’s funniest film, but his most humane, too — and that’s quite something for a comedy as violent as this one, the film a masterful work of cinema, bleak, brilliant, and mordantly hilarious. The film’s summary: After being unemployed for several years, a man devises a unique plan to secure a new job: eliminate his competition.

As the VIFF guide says …

After giving the best years of his life to a paper mill, Man-soo (Squid Game star Lee Byung Hun) has been axed. Standing to lose everything and fearing too much competition in his niche sector, Man-soo hits on an ingenious scheme to guarantee the kind of position he so richly deserves: He will invent a fictitious paper company, invite his peers in for a meeting, and dispatch of his rivals, one by one.

Park’s filmmaking is as elegant as ever, in a wildly enjoyable picture that balances psychological tension against giddily hilarious comic set pieces, in this stunningly energetic and endlessly creative film that delights the mind and the eyes. One more VIFF screening: Thursday, October 9th, 8:45pm at the Vancouver Playhouse.