Now Playing
Misericordia
Edgy, eccentric, and unapologetically queer, this film goes from drama to comedy without putting a foot wrong. Sex and murder are the subjects, and writer-director Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) mines them for suspense and outrageous laughs.
The Stand
This rousing doc explores a 1985 dispute over logging in the Haida Gwaii. Taking us from canny retrospective commentary to the thick of the action, director Chris Auchter employs animation and a wealth of archival footage to riveting effect.
The Celebration
Our Premium Pick series affords VIFF+ Premium members the chance to share a movie of their choice. This month Edward Pascal gives us one of the key films of the late 90s, a lacerating black comedy, the most influential of the Danish Dogme 95 movement.
Resident Orca
Captured in Puget Sound in 1970, killer whale Lolita spent the next half century in a cramped tank in Seaquarium, Miami. The film follows a coalition of Lummi elders, animal lovers and philanthropists on a rescue mission to return her to the ocean.
No Other Land
Deemed by many critics one of the essential films of 2024, a multiple festival award winner and Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, No Other Land is a reminder that mass expulsion is by no means a new reality for Palestinians.
Film Studies: Hollywood Babylon
Monday Afternoons Apr 7 – May 12
SIN! SEX! SHOCK! SCANDAL! Welcome to the sordid cinema of Pre-Code Hollywood! Classic film scholar Michael van den Bos is your tour guide on a 5-part trek through the seamier, steamier and sinister side of Hollywood movies from the early 1930s.
Baby Face
In the first of our new five-week Film Studies course exploring the notorious pre-censorship era of American cinema, Michael van den Bos introduces the 1933 shocker Baby Face, with Barbara Stanwyck sleeping her way up the corporate ladder.
Red-Headed Woman
The second stop on our tour of Hollywood's pre-Code naughty neighbourhood is a racy rendezvous with Jean Harlow as the lustfully liberated "Red" who turns on her titillating allure for advancement in upper society. Introduced by Michael van den Bos.
Freaks
Beautiful circus trapeze artiste Cleopatra likes to flirt with one of the sideshow attractions, Hans, a dwarf. When she learns that Hans is a wealthy man she decides to marry him. It's a choice she will live to regret... An unforgettable 1932 shocker.
Trouble in Paradise
Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play lovers and thieves attempting to fleece the chic owner of a French perfume company, played by Kay Francis. What ensues is a modern ménage à trois in the most elegant, innuendo filled film comedy of all time.
Canadian Film Week
Apr 11 – Apr 17
Canadian Film Week spotlights 18 features, including six Vancouver premieres and four brand new films from BC filmmakers, plus returning classics, new favourites, and free screenings on National Canadian Film Day.
Sweet Summer Pow Wow
After the local hit The Great Salish Heist, writer-director Darrell Dennis proves his versatility with this charming love story about two young people who meet cute on BC's Pow Wow circuit. Her mom wants her to become a lawyer, but Jinny loves to dance...
The Decline of the American Empire
Friends from the History Department at the University of Montreal come together for a dinner party. While the men prepare the meal, the women work out at the gym. In both groups, the conversation returns repeatedly to sex...
Village Keeper
In Karen Chapman’s sensitive debut feature, a widowed mother desperate to shelter her teenage daughter and son from a surge of gun violence in Toronto takes it upon herself to cleanse the blood from crime scenes in her Lawrence Heights neighbourhood.
The Barbarian Invasions
Arcand's belated sequel finds his erstwhile "sensual socialist" facing terminal cancer and trying to make peace with his financier son. This is one of the most acclaimed Canadian films ever made, garlanded all over the world.
Incandescence
Filmed across the Okanagan before, during and after several devastating fires by veteran non-fiction filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper (Metamorphosis; ScaredSacred), Incandescence is a mesmerizing cinematic contemplation of the power of wildfires.
Crocodile Eyes
Drawing on home movies and her immediate family relations, Ingrid Veninger sets out to make a film comprising 100 "real moments": birth, death, and the in-between. Minutes mundane and momentous, personal histories, memories shared.
VIFF Live
Live performances that push the boundaries of traditional film programming, intersecting cinema culture with music, comedy, podcasting, and performance in unique, cinema-infused live shows.
Biboye Onanuga Plays Monk
Returning to the VIFF stage, Biboye Onanuga, presents The Music of Monk. The Edmonton-based drummer is joined by an iconoclastic ensemble of Vancouver musicians prior to a screening of the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser.
Zappostrophe + Frank Zappa's 200 Motels
Enjoy an electrifying set of Frank Zappa tunes resurrected and reimagined by the eclectic 8-piece band Zappostrophe, followed by a rare screening of Zappa's cult movie 200 Motels, with Keith Moon and Ringo Starr.
Night Moves: Street Photography, Poetry and Music with Rodney DeCroo
To mark the publication of Night Moves, his first book of street photography (shot in and around Commercial Drive), singer-songwriter, poet and playwright Rodney DeCroo shares his images, stories and music, along with his band The Wise Blood.
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