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The 45th edition of Canada’s Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) opens Oct. 1 with “The Debut,” Jesse Eisenberg’s offbeat comedy about community theater starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.
VIFF closing
night film is Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” a black comedy set in the run-up to the 1973 Chilean coup and following CIA operatives played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell.
One of Canada’s key film events now in the process of vigorous growth, VIFF has also unveiled its full slate of 162 features, including 12 world premieres, six international debuts, 15 North American bows and 49 Canada first screenings — alongside 91 short films and two episodic series, representing titles in all from 76 countries.
Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Fjord,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” Kore-eda Hirokazu’s “Look Back” and Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” feature Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” and Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s “Wicker” will receive their Canadian premieres, alongside Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose.”
Other notable titles include Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas,” Peter Farrelly’s underdog story “I Play Rocky,” and Jordan Firstman’s Cannes breakout “Club Kid,” about an underground party promoter who discovers he has a kid—a role Firstman also plays.
This year’s selections, according to VIFF Director of Programming Curtis Woloschuk, lean into the anxiety of the moment. “In a lot of cases you see works talking about a humanist response to that,” he tells Variety. “Our duties of care within a family, within a community, within a city, and what forms that can take. That reverberates in both the narratives and the documentaries in the program.”
The theme, he says, arose organically while combing through submissions. He points to a cluster of films dealing with housing and economic uncertainty as well as gentrification: Clio Barnard’s “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning,” John Wilson’s “The History of Concrete,” Noah Segan’s “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,” and the Austrian entry “The Loneliest Man in Town.”
Several films are told from the perspective of the labor class, such as Radu Jude’s “Diary of a Chambermaid” and Xu Zao’s “Light Pillar,” a Chinese animated film about a custodian at a largely abandoned movie studio who escapes into (live action) VR. Meanwhile, “I Understand Your Displeasure,” part of the festival’s New German Cinema section, follows immigrants working as janitors in Berlin.
That undercurrent is also felt, explains Woloschuk, when it comes to a trio of documentaries he refers to as the ‘unofficial triptych of Canadian icons’: “Run Terry Run,” on Terry Fox’s legacy, Adrian Buitenhuis’s “Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story,” and Matthew Rankin’s “Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney.” Woloschuk points to present-day tariff disputes and debates over Canadian identity: “Sometimes another wrinkle in the headlines can suddenly take on greater significance.”
With more than 50 nonfiction features, including world premieres from B.C. filmmakers Joella Cabalu (“First Comes Love: Nakabingwit”) and David Ehrenreich (“Relax, Open Your Eyes”), VIFF is positioning itself as Canada’s second-largest documentary festival.
Woloschuk links the documentary push to the broader media landscape. “We live in a time where we are watching ongoing attacks on journalism and on documentary funding in the States,” he says, citing cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. “[There’s] a lot of assault on the truth, making it a slippery concept. I do think nonfiction films have this urgency embedded in them… they speak to the world that we inhabit, but also speak with a great sense of purpose.”
The festival’s Institute for the Moving Image, established earlier this year, will run its VIFF Industry and Amp Music in Media Summit programs Oct. 3-8 under the theme “Uncertainty as a Creative Force” – a title its director Ana Belén Asfura says was chosen to capture not just political uncertainty but “profound” technological upheaval across the industry. “We wanted to explore uncertainty not only as a challenge, but as a catalyst for creativity,” Asfura notes. “It is often in moments when the path forward is unclear that the most original ideas emerge.”
For Asfura, the Institute’s core mission has been to address the gap in the local screen ecosystem by “ensuring that local creators, particularly those from equity-deserving communities, are not only participating in the industry as service providers, but are also supported as artists with stories of their own to tell.”
To that end, the Institute has launched three new artist development programs: Animation, Documentary and Creative Business. “We’ve begun building a year-round community of creators, industry professionals and partners that extends beyond the festival itself,” she says.
This year, Asfura adds, the goal is deepening those international ties: “We’re creating a space where local talent can develop their craft while becoming part of a global network of artists, industry leaders and opportunities, ensuring that VIFF is not only celebrating cinema, but also helping shape its future.”
Woloschuk sees the idea of community as an answer to uncertainty as something that runs through the festival at large. “What we’ve tried to do as an organization is create a Venn diagram of community and industry that almost completely overlaps, and understand that these things aren’t separate at all,” he says.
“As people further their own professional aims, they can do it by galvanizing themselves as a community as well,” he adds. “By creating these spaces for dialogue, it allows everyone to share where they’re at, share their own findings, and hopefully plot a path forward that can help move the greater sector as well.”
For all of its premieres, the festival, critically, remains a place of gathering. That ethos extends especially well to VIFF Live, the festival’s growing live performance strand. Curator Jarrett Martineau, who also heads programming at the Chan Centre, builds each show around “the intersection of the moving image and live music,” explains Woloschuk. This year’s edition includes the North American premiere of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Cinematic Suites, performed with a full orchestra at the Chan Centre and drawing on his scores for Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”, “Sicario” and “Arrival,” a reimagining David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” by experimental rock act Xiu Xiu, and An Evening with Mark Mothersbaugh, in which the DEVO frontman and prolific film composer performs selections from his scores, including work from “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Rushmore,” “The LEGO Movie,” and “Thor: Ragnarok,” backed by a 16-piece ensemble.
Indigenous storytelling also features throughout this year’s program, anchored by Northern Lights, VIFF’s dedicated showcase for emerging Canadian and Indigenous filmmakers, with films by Nyla Innuksuk (“In the Heart of the South”), Alexandara Lzarowich (“Turtle Island Rap”), Cody Lightning’s “Smudge the Blades,” and Métis/Dene director Marie Clements, who brings both “How We Stand” and the world premiere of her Knowledge Network series “Reclaim My Skin.” Other films include “In the Heart of the South.”
The presence is felt at VIFF Live as well, with “Takkuk,” a film co-created with Indigenous artists across Greenland and Sápmi, preceded by live performances from Inuit throat-singing duo Silla and Greenlandic rapper Tarrak.
