An urgent and fascinating documentary. Even if you belong to the choir it’s preaching to, it has the rare distinction of being a film you can agree and argue with at the same time. I.F. Stone, a trend-setting investigative journalist, was highly influential through his self-published newsletter, I.F. Stone’s Weekly. He tweaked and railed against […]

Also showing: THURSDAY | OCT 26 | 4:15 PM | FH A seeming trifle of a comedy that manages to be subversive, feminist, utterly amoral, and completely delightful, Francois Ozon’s The Crime Is Mine embraces, in the words of its director, “the triumph of sorority.” In 1935 Paris, debt-ridden actress Madeline (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) rebuffs a […]

Also showing: WEDNESDAY, OCT 25 | 7:15 PM | BB In Christian Petzold’s (Phoenix; Transit) newest romance, fires ravage the countryside while passions amongst a group of young people smolder at a vacation hideaway. Over a hot, dry summer, two friends decamp to the seaside: one to finish his novel, and the other to complete […]

This modest B&W film packs quite a punch. Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) is a 20-something Afghan immigrant living in the “Little Kabul” of Fremont, California. She’s having trouble sleeping and her solitary existence finds her working at a fortune-cookie company and watching soap operas as she dines alone at a local restaurant. Director Babak Jalali […]

Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre; The Other Side of Hope) presents a playful working-class love story where companionship is the only respite from the grimness of life. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) both have their troubles keeping down a job. Holappa takes to the bottle on and off work; Ansa relaxes at home as […]

*TUESDAY, OCT 24 SOLD OUT, Join the waiting list at the VTIFF Box Office, 6:15pm,  one hour before screening.* Also showing: FRIDAY, OCT 27 | 4:15 PM | FH How do you find meaning and purpose when you’re serving life without parole? For a group of lifers in San Quentin Prison, you just keep running. […]

Winner, Best Documentary, Tribeca Festival 2023 Winner, Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature, Tribeca Festival 2023 Documenting the Turkana-Ngaremara community as they contend with prolonged drought, this visually stunning coming-of-age story follows a young, orphaned man’s journey to adapt to radically changing climate conditions in Northern Kenya. Kolei, the film’s primary subject, must grapple with […]

Also showing: SATURDAY, OCT 28 | 7:15 PM | BB Even if you’re a fan of Joan Baez and have been following her career for decades, there are plenty of surprises in the new doc from directors Miri Navasky, Karen O’Connor and Maeve O’Boyle.  An unusually intimate entry into the popular-song-biopic sweepstakes, I Am a […]

The French director Claire Simon was making a film about a Paris hospital when she found out she had cancer. So she became a character in her own film. “I had to film a lot of naked women,” Simon says in a recent interview. “Then I was naked, too, and I was just like them. […]

Also showing: SUNDAY, OCT 29 | 3:15 PM | FH In this gritty, downbeat, Outback noir, detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker of The Mentalist, unrecognizable) arrives in the town of Limbo to investigate the cold-case murder of a local Indigenous girl 20 years earlier. The murder investigation moves slowly, since director Ivan Sen is focusing […]

Cultural anthropologist and proud lesbian Esther Newton was years ahead of her time when she studied Midwestern drag shows in the 1960’s. A pathbreaking cultural anthropologist, dog-agility enthusiast, and iconic butch lesbian, Esther Newton is now entering her eighth decade writing about queer communities. Inspired by Margaret Mead and Gertrude Stein, Newton forged a path […]

Also showing: TUESDAY, OCT 24 | 4:15 PM | BB In Christian Petzold’s (Phoenix; Transit) newest romance, fires ravage the countryside while passions amongst a group of young people smolder at a vacation hideaway. Over a hot, dry summer, two friends decamp to the seaside: one to finish his novel, and the other to complete […]

There’s unrest In the oceanside village of Iyi, where the people are losing faith in the revered Mama Efe (Rita Edochie), who acts as an intermediary for the all-powerful water deity Mami Wata. When a mysterious rebel deserter arrives, conflict brews, and then erupts, leaving Efe’s daughter Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and cynical protégé Prisca (Evelyne […]

This stimulating documentary presents the biography of a man, the books he inhabited, and the books that inhabited him. Author, semiologist, lover of language, literature, and lying, Umberto Eco was a bibliophile in the truest sense of the word, and David Ferrario’s film does justice to those dangerously dated passions. The camera pores over yellowed […]

The world-renowned Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam allowed a camera behind the scenes of a process that raises uncomfortable and awkward questions. Can a painting still be entitled “The Prostitutes”? When you appraise art, should you also take the skin color or gender of the artist into account? And how is one to engage with visitors […]

Also showing: TUESDAY | OCT 24 | 2:00 PM | FH A seeming trifle of a comedy that manages to be subversive, feminist, utterly amoral, and completely delightful, Francois Ozon’s The Crime Is Mine embraces, in the words of its director, “the triumph of sorority.” In 1935 Paris, debt-ridden actress Madeline (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) rebuffs a […]

Also showing: SUNDAY, OCT 29 | 1 PM | BB Writer-Director Hajiha’s taut family drama of parents grappling with the sudden mutism of their young son is of such authenticity that it’s almost as if one was watching an observational documentary. The immaculate script, superb acting by a cast of three non-professionals, the cinematography – […]

ATTENTION: THIS FILM HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO TECHNICAL ISSUES ANIMALIA will play instead. SLEEP ticket purchasers can see ANIMALIA without exchanging their tickets.  Jason Yu’s Sleep takes the familiar somnambulism motif from multiple horror movies and slowly builds something wholly original from it. Starting as a comedy, morphing into a marital drama, then going […]

Before there was Midsommar or Nicholas Cage screaming about bees, there was 1973’s folk horror classic The Wicker Man. Now in a stunning 50th anniversary 4k restoration, this seminal British folk horror film welcomes viewers to the remote Scottish enclave of Summerisle. Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) has received an anonymous report that a girl has […]