Also screens on Saturday, October 25 | 4:15 PM | BB Filmmaker Livia Vonaesch spent seven years at sea with the ever-growing Swiss family Schwörers, but it’s hard to imagine how they made space for her on their crowded vessel. The parents, Dario and Sabine, set sail 25 years ago to conduct field research in […]
Who among us isn’t moved by a love letter to capital-C Cinema? Told in six wildly different chapters—from a silent-era monster movie to a shadowy atomic-age noir to a supernatural parable to a story about an unlikely pair of schemers to a punk-rock vampire story, plus a wraparound story with the great Shu Qi—the film […]
Also screens on Sunday, October 26 | 1:45 PM | BB Screenlife movies are typically the terrain of low-budget horror, but Sepideh Farsi’s heartbreaking documentary seizes on the style to do something entirely different and far more rewarding. Over the course of a year, she corresponded regularly with 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona, who lived […]
This screening is sold out. We will start an in-person waitlist one hour before the screening in case we are able to release last-minute tickets. Additional screenings: Saturday, October 19 | 4:45 PM | BB Saturday, October 25 | 2 PM | BB Aspiring YA author Edward, an avatar for people-pleasers everywhere, agrees to look […]
Ramatoulaye, headmistress of a primary school in Dakar and the mother of seven children, has been married to Modou for 30 years and is shocked when he decides to take a second wife, 20-year-old Binetou. A merciless battle between tradition and modernity ensues, contrasting very different views of women’s roles in contemporary African society, as […]
The film also screens on Saturday, October 25 | 7:15 PM | BB The Tuesday, October 21 screening is followed by a Q&A with co-director Ben Ayers via Zoom from Tibet. A story of nature and nurture set in the breathtaking Dolpo region of Nepal, Snow Leopard Sisters offers a touching feminist perspective on wildlife […]
The film also screens on Sunday, October 26 | 4 PM | BB Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature has some serious issues on its mind: impersonal corporations, opportunistic bureaucrats, indifferent urban developers, and atrocities swept under the rug. But he is having way too much fun indulging every flight of fancy to present any […]
Sometimes it’s best to go into a movie completely cold. So feel free to stop reading now. Suffice it to say that Sirāt is an experience. The elevator pitch could be “The Wages of Fear meets Burning Man,” but that hardly does justice to this heady journey into the heart of darkness. Stunningly photographed on […]
Filipino director Lav Diaz has made some of the longest-ever narrative films. In the world of slow cinema aficionados, he’s a god—a master minimalist-maximalist storyteller who uses extreme length to unravel complex social issues tracing back to his archipelago homeland. Between this year’s restoration of his first epic, the excellent Y2K Jersey City crime drama […]
Film also screens on Saturday, October 18 | 7:15 PM | BB In her elegant and thoughtful sophomore feature, Renoir, director Chie Hayakawa casts a glance backward to 1987 to tell the story of 11-year-old Fuki (fabulous newcomer Yui Suzuki). An introverted student with a vibrant internal life, Fuki has the usual stresses of a […]
Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Raoul Peck, the director behind the blockbuster James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro, takes on the life and philosophies of visionary author George Orwell in the expansive and alarming Orwell: 2+2=5. Peck does incredible work transporting Orwell’s words and ideas to our present moment, where the spread of […]
Also screens on Saturday, October 18 | 12:15 PM | BB Three women, three stories of flight from various corners of Africa. They find refuge in one building on the outskirts of Tunis, where they form a fragile alliance and a silent bond of solidarity. But when an abandoned migrant child who has survived a […]
This event is sold out. Please check back closer to the event date in case more tickets become available. The great John Waters is coming to VTIFF! We’re thrilled to present his outrageous trash-classic Female Trouble, which just happens to be the director’s favorite film starring his larger-than-life muse Divine. But this is no ordinary […]
Also screens on Sunday, October 19 | 12:15 PM | BB Originally planned as a slice-of-life documentary about the everyday joys and struggles of five very different citizens of Sudan’s largest city, Khartoum turned into a completely different film with the advent of civil war in 2023, which decimated the city. It became a story […]
Israeli enfant terrible Nadav Lapid mashes the world’s hottest button with his latest agitprop satire. He was already headed in a more defeatist direction with his last film, Cannes Jury Prize winner Ahed’s Knee, but Yes! takes his cynicism even further. Lapid was in Europe developing the latest exploits of his avatar Y. (now embodied […]
Also screens Saturday, October 18 | 2:45 PM | BB Sara Shahverdi is a badass. In her remote Iranian village, she sticks out like a sore thumb in her signature leather jacket and blue jeans. She lives on her own, which is enough to raise eyebrows in the deeply conservative community, and she loves riding […]
The film also screens on Sunday, October 19 | 2:15 PM | BB A wild, shape-shifting tale of how the quest for vengeance can fundamentally mar our humanity, Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill is a gritty, surprising, and thoroughly entertaining look at a man who traps himself in a cycle of violence. That man […]
Cannes darlings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes (two-time Palme d’Or winners for Rosetta and L’Enfant) picked up more accolades this year with Young Mothers, winning Best Screenplay at the festival. Their latest deftly threads the needle between social realism and melodrama, weaving together the stories of five girls living temporarily in a shelter for young and […]
The film also screens on Monday, October 20 | 1:15 PM | BB The war in Ukraine has been well documented as an ongoing atrocity in a number of brilliant recent films (the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol, Porcelain War, Viktor, The Invasion, etc.), but Kateryna Gornostai’s film is something different. Using no narration or […]
This screening is sold out. We will start an in-person waitlist one hour before the screening in case we are able to release last-minute tickets. It’s the triumphant opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, and in the bar next door, Richard Rodgers’ old partner Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) is talking and drinking (not in […]