“If you had the chance to talk to a loved one who died, would you take it?” That’s the pitch of Eternal You, the thought-provoking documentary about AI technology from German filmmakers Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck. But that question doesn’t quite get to the heart of the matter. What the technology on display here […]

This double feature of shorter films brings together two filmmakers living in Vermont who made films about Vermonters in Vermont.  Angelos Madsen Minax’s lovely One Night at Babes is certainly a left-turn from Madsen’s more experimental work, but it’s a fabulous cinematic snapshot of a town feeling its way towards positive change. At a small-town […]

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is one of the most compelling characters you’ll meet in a theater this year, a lifelong seeker who is intelligent, compassionate, courageous, and rebellious. His journey to self-actualization across many years and many diverse life chapters is truly remarkable and affecting to witness, and is a testament to being open-minded and compassionate […]

SOLD OUT. WAIT LIST STARTS 1 HOUR IN PERSON AT THE BOX OFFICE Amidst the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, hummingbirds fit right in. Zippy and sequined, they are gorgeous, vibrant creatures that are gone in a flash. A heartwarming film of joy and wonder, Every Little Thing tells the deceptively simple story of a […]

All films in The Screening Room @ VTIFF go on sale the day they occur, at 9 AM. Filmed in Burlington—you will absolutely recognize some of the settings if you’re a local—Pomp & Circumstance is a freewheeling, episodic lo-fi comedy, following three soon-to-be college graduates getting involved in an absurd plot involving their adjunct professor […]

Tommaso Santambrogio’s debut feature is a stunningly photographed black-and-white portrait of Cuba. A tryptic of gently intersecting stories, set in San Antonio de los Baños, the film follows the romance of a young artistic couple as their creative passions pull them in different directions, an elderly woman reliving her past through letters from a long […]

It’s no secret that the world’s colonial powers frequently looted the artistic treasures of other countries, and that those treasures often wound up in very reputable museums. So…what to do with them? Mati Diop’s Dahomey, winner of the Golden Bear (top prize) at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, has a few things to say about […]

All films in The Screening Room @ VTIFF go on sale the day they occur, at 9 AM. Filmed in Burlington—you will absolutely recognize some of the settings if you’re a local—Pomp & Circumstance is a freewheeling, episodic lo-fi comedy, following three soon-to-be college graduates getting involved in an absurd plot involving their adjunct professor […]

SOLD OUT. WAIT LIST STARTS 1 HOUR BEFORE THE SCREENING, IN PERSON AT THE BOX OFFICE. Master filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has made many films (and VTIFF has shown a number of them), but none has caused quite the stir of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which earned him an eight-year prison sentence from Iranian […]

Blacula this is not. Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess is one of the best bad trips of the ’70s, a heady and sweaty vampire flick like no other. Duane Jones—who starred in just two films, both masterpieces, the other being Night of the Living Dead—plays wealthy anthropologist Dr. Hess Green who is stabbed by a […]

Proving that her startling debut, I Am Not a Witch, was no fluke, writer/director Rungano Nyoni’s offers us On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, a brilliant and provocative film that examines how community and tradition can clash with right and wrong. In the middle of the night, Shula, apparently driving home from a costume party where […]

SOLD OUT. WAIT LIST STARTS 1 HOUR IN PERSON AT THE BOX OFFICE. This swashbuckling tale of a cat who befriends a capybara, a lemur, a stork, and a golden retriever is not your average kids’ movie. For one thing, filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis lets these animals be animals. That is, they don’t speak to each […]

SOLD OUT. WAIT LIST STARTS 1 HOUR IN PERSON AT THE BOX OFFICE How do we quantify happiness? In Bhutan, the self-proclaimed happiest country in the world, they have a mathematical formula for it. In the lovely and fascinating Agent of Happiness, directors Arun Bhattari and Dorottya Zurbo follow two government Happiness Agents as they […]

Mysterious and elusive, Aliyar Rasti’s excellent two-hander conceals a great reservoir of emotional and spiritual turmoil under a patient, placid surface. Recruited for a cryptic treasure hunt, damaged young agnostic Shoja accompanies Beitollah on a journey to Northern Iran in search of a cave that may or may not exist with a cache of gold […]

Toronto librarian Miriam is reserved, almost to a fault. She seems to enjoy her job at the library—except for those weird letters she keeps finding, apparently addressed to the world at large, though somehow connecting with her personally—but she seems to be at a remove from life. That changes when she meets a cab driver […]

Let’s do the time warp again. We’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the banner movie year of 1999 with the eye-popping restoration of this sensational film with style for days. Underrated journeyman Tom Tykwer—soon after a close confidant of simpatico cyberpunk visionaries the Wachowskis—races through a triptych of chaos theory in this German-language stunner, one […]

Brian Eno has stuffed several careers into his own—band member, solo artist, studio innovator, producer to both oddballs and superstars—so it’s only fitting that a biopic bearing his name would be just a little…different. Compiling hundreds of hours of archival footage and new interviews, director Gary Hustwit uses an AI program to rearrange and re-edit […]