Now Playing
The Baltimorons
An early Xmas present and the rom-com of the year: a dental emergency on Christmas Eve brings together flailing comedian Chris and cynical divorcee Didi for a series of low-key urban misadventures.
Cover-Up
Oscar-winner Laura Poitras and Emmy-winner Mark Obenhaus turn their lens on legendary journalist Seymour Hersh in a riveting film that unpacks how one reporter exposed the truths behind My Lai and Abu Ghraib — and what it takes to hold power to account.
Image: © The New York Times
The Muppet Christmas Carol
VIFF Kids Club is our monthly family series with films, crafts and more! Doors at 10 am for activities, film at 11 am. Sir Michael Caine shines as Ebenezer Scrooge in this downright irresistible musical Muppet version of the Dickens yuletide favourite!
You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine
A remarkable line up of artists come together to share their love for the great American singer-songwriter John Prine, including Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Kurt Vile and Kasey Musgraves.
Vancouver Romanian Film Festival 2025
Dec 1 – 4
Free screenings showcasing seven of the best Romanian films from the last couple of years.
Nasty
Dec 4
1972. Ilie Năstase wins his first US Open, while reaching both the Wimbledon and Davis Cup finals, and enters tennis history. Nasty explores his highs and lows, the controversies that surrounded the 1973 world number one ranked player.
Comatogen
Dec 4
Single mother and nurse Alina is confronted with an ethical problem when she tries to find a huge sum of money to prevent her 22-year-old son Radu from going to jail.
Pantheon: The Greatest Films of All Time
Pantheon is a monthly series showcasing a selection of the “greatest movies of all time,” inspired by the mother of all film lists, the critics’ poll that has run once a decade in the UK’s Sight & Sound magazine since 1952.
Individual tickets $23
Fantasia
Dec 14
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It’s playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940
Talking Pictures
Created for film lovers 55+, the Talking Pictures series offers films, refreshments and an open invitation to chat about our shared experience of the movie.
Maudie
Dec 16
The life of legendary Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis is painted in exquisite detail in this impeccably acted, incredibly affecting biopic starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke. It won the Audience Award at VIFF, 2016.
Holiday Programming at VIFF Centre
The Baltimorons
An early Xmas present and the rom-com of the year: a dental emergency on Christmas Eve brings together flailing comedian Chris and cynical divorcee Didi for a series of low-key urban misadventures.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
VIFF Kids Club is our monthly family series with films, crafts and more! Doors at 10 am for activities, film at 11 am. Sir Michael Caine shines as Ebenezer Scrooge in this downright irresistible musical Muppet version of the Dickens yuletide favourite!
The Leading Ladies Perform Duke Ellington's The Nutcracker Suite
Join us for a unique Nutcracker experience: a live jazz rendition of Duke Ellington's take on Tchaikovsky's music, followed by the premiere of an inspiring doc about how even Covid 19 couldn't stop New York ballet's finest from staging the Xmas favourite.
The Nutcracker at Wethersfield
Back in the long, dark Covid winter of 2020, there was no way the New York City Ballet could mount their traditional Christmas production of Tchaikovsky's fairytale. But choreographer Troy Schumacher had a dream to save the show -- reimagining a classic.
It's a Wonderful Life
Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. This Christmas classic is whimsical, sure, but it has the depth to stand up to multiple watches, and it really should be a communal experience, because that is what it's about.
Hundreds of Beavers: A Northwoods Christmas
The funniest, and certainly the furriest movie you will see this year, Hundreds of Beavers channels the zany slapstick shtick of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Bugs Bunny through a videogame quest narrative to retell the eternal saga of Man v Nature.
Tokyo Godfathers
Shinjuku, Tokyo, Christmas Eve. Middle-aged has-been Gin, aging transvestite Hana, and teenage runaway Miyuki are three homeless friends who stumble across an abandoned baby and do their best to care for the infant over the course of a long and perilous night.
Festival Encores
Whether you missed a movie at VIFF, or want to give a title a second look, here’s your chance. Catch these audience favourites as they return to the big screen.
Orwell: 2+2=5
Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck reimagines 1984 in this urgent essay on power, language, and control. With narration by Damian Lewis, it’s a chilling portrait of how Orwell’s warnings became our reality.
Cover-Up
Oscar-winner Laura Poitras and Emmy-winner Mark Obenhaus turn their lens on legendary journalist Seymour Hersh in a riveting film that unpacks how one reporter exposed the truths behind My Lai and Abu Ghraib — and what it takes to hold power to account.
Image: © The New York Times
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
Cutting Through Rocks
Winner of Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, Cutting Through Rocks follows Sara Shahverdi — motorcyclist, midwife, and first-ever councilwoman elected in her Iranian village. A vérité triumph by Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni.
Nouvelle Vague
Linklater's love letter to Paris, 1959, and the difficult birth of Jean-Luc Godard's first feature, Breathless, channels the auteur's blithe self confidence and an era of all-encompassing cinephilia. It's the next best thing to being there.
Sentimental Value
A once-revered director crashes back into his family’s lives, eager to recruit his daughter for a film role. When she declines, he finds a new muse in an eager but unpolished Hollywood star, sending his botched reconciliation spiraling into chaos.
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