Films

In Andrea Arnold's latest, 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) lives in a squat near the English seaside. Neglected by her chaotic father (Barry Keoghan), she pursues an adventure with a magnetic stranger named Bird (Franz Rogowski).

This poignant, thought-provoking film is set in the future, when we’ve solved the environmental crisis--at a significant cost. It follows a mother and daughter on their different life journeys; the two storylines converge for a powerful conclusion.

Sean Baker's Palme d'Or winning Cinderella story has a New York stripper bedding and wedding the son of a Russian oligarch--to the fury of his parents. Fast, funny, and thrillingly unpredictable, this is one you won't want to miss.

Ari Kinarthy, a composer with spinal muscular atrophy, embarks on an ambitious goal: to create music that will memorialize his life. Intimate, honest and inspiring, Ari eloquently narrates his story and shares his artistic process in this captivating doc.

In celebration of The Tragically Hip’s 40th anniversary, the quintessential Canadian band is profiled in a docuseries helmed by Mike Downie, brother of the late Gord Downie. VIFF is honoured to have Mike and The Hip join us for this special evening.

The lives of three women nurses are front and centre in Payal Kapadia’s luminous Mumbai-set drama. A moving portrait of resistance and camaraderie, this is a film that finds beauty and solace in the unlikeliest of places.

When the Pope dies, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) must marshall the Church’s most influential figures and orchestrate the election of a successor. A deeply satisfying, immaculately crafted, psychologically complex morality tale from Edward Berger.

A young seamstress finds herself abandoned and pregnant in post-WWI Copenhagen. With few options, she turns to a candy shop owner who offers special services to women in need, but who is not quite what she seems. True crime with an expressionist touch.

August Wilson's rich, riveting, resonant play about exorcizing the ghosts of slavery comes to the screen in a polished, fulsome production with stellar performances from John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, and Samuel L Jackson.

Guy Maddin and the Johnson brothers are back with an audacious and fantastical political satire about a G7 meeting descending into supernatural chaos and disaster. Luckily Canada's PM (Roy Dupuis) is on hand to save the day...

Seventy-year-old widow Mahin has been living alone in Tehran for some time—until one day, she breaks her daily routine with the intention of meeting a man. In this sweet meditation on love, loss and loneliness, the decision leads to an unforgettable encounter.

Walter Salles (Central Station; Motorcycle Dairies) adapts the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, an account of a family torn apart by the "disappearance" of a former congressman at the hands of the military dictatorship in Brazil, 1971.

A tense mystery and an act of radical protest, this film tells the story of an Iranian lawyer who’s lost his handgun and knows someone in his family took it. With every moment, his wife and daughters grow more afraid of him–yet none of them will confess…

The first dramatic feature from Act of Killing director Joshua Oppenheimer is a post-apocalyptic musical starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, and George MacKay. The cult starts here.

The true story of what happened behind the scenes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words...

When a defence attorney (Zoe Saldana) is enlisted to tend to the affairs of a notorious drug lord (Karla Sofía Gascón) completing gender affirmation surgery, there will be blood, ballads, and dance numbers. A maximalist musical from Jacques Audiard.

Amy Adams gives a fearlessly feral performance as the exhausted mother to a demanding toddler who begins to suspect she's turning into... a dog? Rachel Yoder's bracingly strange novel has been adapted by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?).

In January 1961, seven months after Congolese independence, Patrice Lumumba is assassinated. In excavating the history of this political murder, this essay-film traces the complex and unlikely intersections of American jazz and Cold War geopolitics.

The stranger-than-fiction true story of a group of artists who built and furnished a hidden apartment inside a mall, remaining undetected for years. This is an absurdly fun and surprisingly profound film about gentrification and art.

This haunting, unclassifiable film tells the story of a facially disfigured man who is cured by a new drug therapy and given a new lease on life. Director Aaron Schimberg fuses elements of horror, melodrama, and comedy into a work of true originality.

A prizewinner at Cannes, the latest from the director of Tabu is a playful Asian travelogue, set in 1918 and now, in black and white and colour, a critique of colonialism, and a journey into the history of cinema itself.

This cheeky, inventive film brings contemporary pop music to 17th century Italy. It’s the story of a Catholic orphanage where the girls have been taught to play orchestral music. Little does the priest know they’re composing their own tunes in secret…

Set in a city on the verge of demolition, the award-winning Black Dog tells the story of a discontented ex-con and the stray dog he comes to love. Graced with panoramic imagery and the music of Pink Floyd, it’s a soulful, triumphant film.

This superb psychological thriller stars Ben Foster as Josh, a man who comes unmoored from the safety of middle-class life. The problems start with a car accident in front of his new house, and soon our protagonist is on the verge of losing everything…

Over two decades, across China’s rapidly changing landscape, two lovers meet and part and meet again. In this magisterial film, Jia Zhangke refracts the twenty-first century through a reflexive, retrospective look at his era-defining filmography.

Neo Sora (Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus) fuses teen high school comedy and political protest to winning effect in this raucous, creative, and poignant "story of the near future." It features earthquakes, digital surveillance, thumping techno music, and more...

For Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist from the southern West Bank, the fight against the mass expulsion of his community has been a lifelong struggle. Filmed vérité-style over five years, this is a sobering look at the realities of Israeli occupation.

In a wintery, Farsi-speaking city that’s equal measures Winnipeg and Tehran, storylines entangle and the concepts of space, time, and identity grow increasingly opaque. Inventive and absurd, Rankin's poetic fable reminds us that Winnipeg is a wonderland.

Featuring terrific performances from Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson, this is a film that buzzes with vitality. In exploring the fraught, ambiguous relationship between two writers, director Kazik Radwanski produces indelible, deeply relatable moments.

In this wordless and gorgeously atmospheric animated feature, a solitary black cat survives a tsunami and must confront his fear of water whilst sailing through a flooded world with a group of misfit animals. An enchanting adventure film for all ages.

The return of stolen cultural artifacts to the Republic of Benin is the inspiration for Mati Diop's Berlin Golden Bear prize winner, which fuses dreamy metaphysics and incendiary political commentary on issues of restitution and self-determination.

Sook-Yin Lee adapts a graphic novel by her ex-boyfriend Chester Brown about the end of their relationship and Brown’s decision to start paying for sex. Brave, bracing, and funny, this is a film unafraid to explore sexuality in all its complexity.

Mathyas abruptly quits his marketing job in Montreal and goes to France with the romantic notion of becoming a shepherd. He's in for a rude awakening... Sophie Deraspe’s film is an elemental epic of personal growth.

In the heart of Flushing, New York’s largest Chinatown, three working-class immigrants eke out a meager living. When together, there's an easy intimacy—until tragedy strikes, leaving a painful absence in its wake.

With death looming for both elders of the Lunies clan, their estranged children are forced to meet once more, while dealing with their own tumultuous personal lives. Age-old enmities resurface in this raw and invigorating family saga.

Isabelle Huppert and VIFF mainstay Hong Sangsoo reunite for a whimsical, winning tale of culture-clash. She plays a French tutor at large in a South Korean city; he deploys his usual mixture of suggestive repetition, oddball humour, and humble profundity.

Distinguished by its complexity, its fine ensemble cast, and the beauty of its exteriors, this is a rich, relatable family drama. Making his feature debut, Oh Jung-min uses the seasons to create visual splendour and deep metaphorical power.

Despite growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the civil war, Samia Yusuf Omar persists in her dream of becoming an Olympic athlete and competes in Beijing, 2008 -- with London, 2012 next on her agenda. Based on a true story.

Gripping, poetic, and darkly beautiful, Lin Jianjie’s domestic thriller tells of a high school slacker whose mysterious new friend slowly captures the hearts of his parents. This is a terrific debut from a director with a very bright future in cinema.

While on holiday in the Canary Islands, a young Ukrainian family learns that war has broken out in their homeland. In the midst of familial tensions, they grapple with the reality of their newfound status as refugees.

The discovery of ancient treasure will prove life changing for Hakki, a poor man beloved by family and friends in this acute psychological fable set in the Aegean town of Bergama, a World Heritage site.

This stirring drama traces the upbringing of Dai, a "Child of Deaf Adults" from rural Japan. Blaming his mother for his social differences, he leaves for Tokyo and becomes a magazine writer. New friendships help him see his mother in a poignant new light.

An intricate web of lies unravels in Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño’s riveting biographical thriller about Enric Marco, a high-profile activist in Spain who claimed to be a Holocaust survivor, only to be exposed in 2005 as an impostor.

In this crisp, psychological thriller, a Syrian refugee in Strasbourg zeroes in on the man he suspects tortured him and countless others in prison during the civil war. Proof remains elusive, but Hamad (Adam Bessa) will see justice served...

Sandra Ng gives a radiant performance as a woman who thinks she’s in love with a dashing Frenchman but is actually the victim of a catfish scam in this cynical but vivacious rom-com from writer-director Ho Miu-ki.

Two chimney sweeps living in heterosexual marriages find their views on sexuality and gender challenged by a series of unexpected events. In a set of sharply scripted conversations, both men confront heretofore unexplored aspects of their identity.

After the Netherlands loses the FIFA World Cup to West Germany in the summer of 1974, the cautious Jonas and impulsive Daan make their way through their sleepy Dutch town and learn about the complexities of human nature the hard way.

Bogdan Mureşanu’s polyphonic tragi-comedy tracks six interconnected stories to capture the mood in Romania on the brink of revolution in 1989.

In a spacious home, preparations are afoot for an extravagant party—which quickly becomes a pressure cooker of longstanding familial strife. An entropic symphony of domestic existence, this is a film whose luminous surfaces yield only deeper enigmas.

This breezy, poetic film mounts a sharp political critique even as it portrays romance with exquisite gentleness. Set in the beaches, cafes, and galleries of southern Thailand, it focuses on two women united in love but divided by culture.

After turning down her unfaithful groom at the altar, Aya leaves the Ivory Coast for a dreamy new life at a tea shop in Guangzhou, China. As her alluring boss, Cai teaches her the ancient art of the tea ceremony, a sensual and melancholic romance brews.

In this outstanding crime drama, two Palestinian cousins are exiled in Athens and in dire need of funds for fake passports to move their family to Germany. A slippery slope of moral compromise awaits as they resort to human smuggling and hostage-taking.

Early 1990s Lima, Perú. Charming absentee father Carlos “El Loco” Molina tries to earn his way back into his daughters’ lives before their mother moves them to Minnesota. A tender family drama, Reinas won the Generation Kplus Grand Prix at Berlinale 2024.

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.

In this unconventional biopic, the Austrian painter Maria Lassnig asserts herself as a female artist in the male-dominated art world of postwar Austria. Radically mixing documentary and fiction, the film captures the enduring enigma of Lassnig’s art.

Spanning three decades, this powerful drama tells the story of a Hong Kong family of immigrants from the Mainland. Working as writer, director, and star, Sasha Chuk maintains an intimate focus as she takes us through 30 years of love and struggle.

Irrepressible Touda dreams of being a Sheikha, a respected traditional Moroccan performer empowered by the lyrics of the fierce female poets who came before her. Inspired by their songs of resistance and emancipation, she sets her sights on Casablanca.

When her coach falls under investigation after the suicide of a former trainee, a young tennis ace is thrown into turmoil. Finding herself under acute pressure to speak out, but reluctant to do so, she faces a struggle that she alone can resolve.

Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.

When a young academic discovers a personal link to Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow, she is compelled to dig deeper. Her investigations lead her on the trail of an elusive concerto, lost for over a century, but which she is determined to bring to light.

After finding her uncle's dead body on the roadside by a brothel, Shula grapples with her Zambian family's sanctification of a monstrous man. This darkly comedic absurdist drama was a prize winner at Cannes for director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch).

In this mortifying comedy of embarrassment, chubby, gay, Jewish David (played by director Iair Said) returns to his native Buenos Aires. There he confronts the looming death of his comatose father, whom his mother has decided to pull the plug on.

Attempting to escape the illegal gambling business owned by his uncle, Valerio, and Regina are swept into the violent undertow of Rio de Janeiro’s crime world, leaving behind a bloody wake of bodies and betrayal in this bleakly comic tragedy.

When a socialite visits her nanny’s remote reserve, she discovers her Cree ancestry and delves into her new-found spiritual traditions to save herself and her newborn baby from her husband’s psychotic, and purity-obsessed racism.

This hypnotic drama features two brothers separated by an awful uncertainty: one of them may or may not be a murderer. Using the sport of fencing as its central metaphor, Pierce has a thrilling atmosphere of danger and two superb lead performances.

Exhausted by the grueling grind of the Parisian gig economy and hopping between homeless shelters, Guinean immigrant Souleymane races against time to prepare for his asylum interview. An angry, tender film which is as gripping as any thriller.

When Salih loses his job, his middle-class life with his wife and son is thrown into jeopardy. After a string of job rejections, he joins an app-based motorcycle taxi driving service—until his bike, Rosinante, goes mysteriously missing.

Jeff, a 17-year-old aspiring filmmaker, goes on vacation with his friend Max and his family to an isolated lodge. Philippe Lesage’s film is a tense, mesmerizing tour de force that is both agonizing and cathartic. A Berlinale award winner.

Compelled to look after his kid sister after their father dies, 18-year-old Totone resolves to try his hand at cheese-making, no matter that he has no budget and no experience. This earthy coming of age movie finds good reasons to think he'll succeed.

This haunting film depicts a man’s return to the town where he met his now-deceased wife. Shot in long takes, graced with enigmatic motifs, and structured around a lengthy flashback, this is a disturbing but ultimately relatable exploration of love.

Academy Award-winner Danis Tanović (No Man’s Land, 2002) charms with this summer romance about a woman arriving on a small Croatian island to claim her piece of inheritance from the estranged side of the family.

A small town New England recreational baseball league gathers to play the final game on their local diamond before its impending demolition. Carson Lund’s lovely, unassuming debut is an ode to amateur baseball and a meditation on the passage of time.

When six-year-old Armand is accused of abusing another boy, his mother is called in for a school meeting. With the boys themselves never seen or heard from, it becomes clear that this sordid situation is about much more than just the children.

There’s no place like home for the holidays and the extended Balsano family gathers to celebrate Christmas Eve together for perhaps the last time. A warmly humorous yuletide rhapsody, this captures the Christmas spirit and puts a bow on it.

Set on a remote volcanic island in Cape Verde, this mesmerizing, lyrical feature debut traces a young woman’s journey into adulthood, guided by the community of women that surround her in the absence of her mother.

Eager to fit in and impress her new best friend, 13-year-old Marija reluctantly joins a shady modeling school that drives girls to dangerous extremes as they try to fit an unattainable mold and pursue the promise of a glamorous life overseas.

In this quietly profound drama, a wise old shaman embarks on a final journey into the Colombian jungle to settle a spiritual debt and reconnect with his late son. A cinematic love letter to ancient traditions, steeped in the lush, immersive rainforest.

Inspired by recent terrorist atrocities in the Mghila Mountains of Northwest Tunisia, this chilling drama centers on Achraf, a 13-year-old boy who witnesses the brutal killing of his cousin and is forced to relay the message to the victim’s family.

When a woman decides to rent her home for a film shoot, she’s not prepared for the intrusion she’ll experience by having the film crew in her space. But as the production ramps up and she finds herself immersed in the work, lines begin to blur...

At once a love story, a tale of empowerment and an ethnographic record, this captivating drama follows pregnant Pema on a strenuous journey across the Himalayas to clear her name when her child’s paternity is questioned.

Set in the late 90s war-afflicted Serbian countryside, this vibrant dramedy follows three sisters coming of age while their father has been sent to the front line. Recording videos for their dad, the girls nevertheless get up to all kinds of mischief.

Sarah Friedland makes an elegant debut with this restrained drama about an elderly woman’s transition to a care home. Kathleen Chalfant commands the screen with absolute poise in her thoughtful portrait of a woman trying to hold on to her dignity.

Liz Cairns makes a mesmerizing feature debut that sees a young woman suffering from mysterious food allergies join a remote island community practicing alternative healing methods. She soon realizes that not everything is as it seems.

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.

A struggling filmmaker and his girlfriend (real-life couple Ben Petrie and Grace Glowicki) adopt a traumatized rescue dog during the COVID lockdown. Petrie’s hilarious debut is a perfect mix of quarantine comedy, dog movie, and boldly meta autofiction.

With the utmost grace and aplomb, debut director Durga Chew-Bose adapts Françoise Sagan’s classic French novel. Our heroine is teenager Cécile (Lily McInerney), and the film conveys her coming of age in terms of sexual awakening and spiritual corruption.

Jerome Yoo’s gorgeous, brilliantly structured first feature is a lyrical and gut-wrenching portrait of a grieving Korean immigrant family adjusting to a new life in a small Canadian town in the 1990s.

An elderly Nova Scotian woman struggling with dementia and her lonely, pregnant caretaker leave an indelible impression on each other in Heather Young’s sophomore feature drama, an endearing and bittersweet portrait of two women overlooked by society.

In this wild home invasion comedy thriller, Ziggy is a young Mohawk social media influencer who runs into danger when she returns to her family’s place on the rez and comes under attack by a mysterious stranger trying to steal her family’s heirloom seeds.

This moving, relatable film follows MFA grad Ash (a charismatic Sameer Usmani) through a tough, transitional period in his life, offering a loving depiction of Scarborough, Ontario and the pleasures of drama without sentimentality.

Halima Elkhatabi’s delightful debut documentary feature takes us to 15 apartments in Montreal, where a diverse assortment of potential roommates interview each other as they search for compatibility, authentic connections, and a place to call home.

A deeply touching family drama about a grandfather fighting for the custody of his newborn granddaughter, who is rejected by her mother after she learns that the child has a rare genetic disorder known as Cat’s Cry syndrome.

While attempting a world record freedive in 2018, Jessea Lu lost consciousness and stopped breathing for four minutes. Years later, Jessea returns to the site of her near-death experience, ready to dive again and become reborn.

Bold and deeply personal, Inay investigates the emotional and psychological repercussions of Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, which attracted Filipino women migrant workers who left their children to care for strangers out of economic necessity.

Harvey is a lonely, overweight man who discovers new self-esteem when he submits a photo to Cherub, a gay magazine “For big men and their admirers.” A gentle, ambient character study about the healing power of being admired.

Former gambler Lucky has settled down with a mortgage, a wife and daughters. After falling for a tax scam, he goes all in at the card table. Gillian McKercher helms a tense and gripping narrative about Asian-Canadian familial bonds, deceit and sacrifice.

This short experimental feature applies minimalist dramatic techniques to a fraying millennial relationship with rich, fulsome cinematography and a sophisticated sound mix to explore the destabilising dichotomy between our interior and external selves.

This rousing doc explores a 1985 dispute over clearcut logging on 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.

When their kids start going blind, Edith and Sébastien Pelletier take their family on a globe-trotting adventure to see the world before they lose their sight. An inspirational journey of reflection, self-discovery, and heartwarming family connection.

In the labyrinthine underworld of São Paulo, Sissell Morell Dargis spent a decade documenting the story of illegal baloeiros, hot air balloonists, and guerilla artists, who risk their lives crafting and releasing huge, lavishly decorated paper balloons.

This fascinating and beautiful doc explores wolf life in the lower Alps, as well as the contentious politics surrounding the animals. As an exploration of ecology, it’s illuminating; as a gander at the great outdoors, it’s delightful.

What does it take to unite right-wing billionaire Charles Koch with hip hop legend Snoop Dogg? This urgent and uplifting film documents an extraordinary response to an appalling injustice: a young man sentenced to 55 years for three marijuana sales.

The inventor of the California Roll, chef Hidekazu Tojo helped bring sushi to mainstream popularity through his renowned Vancouver restaurant, Tojo's. The Chef & the Daruma is a mouthwatering film touching on immigration, identity, and reinvention.

As Viktor Orbán dismantles Hungary’s democratic institutions, three women--a journalist, a politician, and a nurse--work tirelessly to fight for their country’s soul. A chilling exposé of far-right nationalism and an inspirational beacon of resistance.

Averroès and Rosa Parks are psychiatric units in Paris supporting patients with mental illness. A powerful, thought-provoking follow-up to 2023 Golden Bear winner On the Adamant by veteran documentarian Nicolas Philibert.

This deep dive into the contentious history of fishing rights in Washington State proves richly rewarding. It's a genuinely compelling film about the transformative Boldt decree of 1974, which granted PNW bands equal status in fish management.

This uplifting documentary follows a curling team from Maple Ridge as they navigate the uncertainties of their teenage years and strive to become Canadian Junior Curling Champions with coaching from three of their moms, who are former Olympians.

Years after his father's murder while working in Kenya’s largest private wildlife sanctuary, 13-year-old Simon Ali searches for the killers. An unflinching chronicle of postcolonial upheaval and one family’s choice to search for peace.

Through in-depth interviews, cutting-edge technological demonstrations, and the unrelenting ambition of Demis Hassabis, The Thinking Game follows innovative AI research company, DeepMind, as it works towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

Shot over six years, this groundbreaking documentary brings us the moving stories of three groups of youth from three different Indigenous nations. With no adult voices included in the film, we meet a new generation with a burning desire to be heard.

Mark Levinson explores the synergy of art and science, mapping out revolutions in technology through a dazzling array of artwork and experimental films, celebrating the transcendent power of the imagination on a breathtaking journey through the universe.

A lonely man builds himself a girlfriend by pairing a life-size love doll with an AI chatbot. Bryan Carberry’s documentary is a haunting, romantic sci-fi parable that asks if AI can replace real human connection.

In 2009, a hippopotamus named Pepe, formerly a part of Pablo Escobar’s private zoo, became the first—and so far only—such animal to be killed in the Americas. In this unclassifiable, formally audacious feature, Pepe tells us his side of the story.

This experiential documentary contrasts macabre rituals with the mundane domestic lives of high-ranking members of The Church of Satan. A series of wordless vignettes that paint a non-judgmental portrait of the modern Satanist.

Adele Tulli’s documentary explores our relationship with reality in an increasingly virtual world. Exploiting the modern ubiquity of the camera, Real embraces the uncanny beauty of virtual reality and examines technology’s place in human connection.

A machinima documentary about two out-of-work actors who mount a full production of Hamlet within the world of Grand Theft Auto V online. Something is rotten in the city of Los Santos; the perfect backdrop for Shakespeare’s bloodsoaked tragedy.

A powerful docudrama following a teenage boy spending the summer at his grandmother’s house in French Guiana, where he learns about his roots and connects with a community of people still reeling from the tragic loss of his uncle several years earlier.

After the death of her brother, filmmaker Robie Flores is drawn back to USA/Mexico border town of Eagle Pass, and, while processing her grief, finds echoes and reverberations of her own memories in the hopes, dreams, and daily lives of the youth there.

Upon finding a rare Antarctic mineral in a kidney stone, a former nature documentary narrator guides us on a meditative trip– from volcanic Fogo Island to the granite quarries of Palestine, and beyond– to explore the often overlooked world of stones.

“Where are you at, Leos Carax?” To this question, the French filmmaker assembles an unpredictable essay-film made in the spirit of the late Jean-Luc Godard—an endlessly inventive self-portrait of an artist reflecting on his place in cinema history.

Doaa el-Adl is one of the most prominent of the very few female cartoonists in the Arab world. Blending documentary, cartoons, and animation, this film brings her courageous art to life as she advocates for women’s rights and change in Egyptian society.

In May 1949, the modernist Scottish painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham ascended the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. The experience was transformative becoming a fount of creative inspiration which she would return to for the rest of her artistic life.

An insightful look into the heart and soul of modernism in postwar America through the artistic legacy of Eliot Noyes, trailblazing industrial designer, architect, and lifelong innovator who spent four decades introducing modern design to American life.

New York photographer James Hamilton has done it all in a remarkable career spanning six decades with The Village Voice, Harper's Bazaar etc. D.W. Young’s energetic doc tells the story of the halcyon days of alternative print media through the 70s and 80s.

From her exuberant outdoor Nana sculptures to her breathtaking masterwork, The Tarot Garden in Tuscany, the playfully vibrant oeuvre of feminist monumental sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle is the subject of Michiko Matsumoto’s delightful documentary.

The story of a boy and future dictator, and the woman who saved Khmer classical dance after the brutal Cambodian genocide, Enrique Sánchez Lansch’s documentary is a stunning achievement that sheds new light on one of the darkest moments of history.

Artist John Singer Sargent possessed the ability to capture the essence and soul of a person, producing some of the most memorable portraits ever created. Director David Bickerstaff pays fitting tribute to this master of portraiture and light.

In the early 20th century many traditional Indigenous masks ended up in Europe, in museums and art collections, and, as this entertaining doc reveals, in the hands of surrealist artists like Max Ernst, André Breton, and Joan Miró...

Still on stage in her 70s, Iranian pop icon Googoosh has lived through decades of political persecution, 20 years of house arrest, exile, and a comeback. A fascinating portrait of a troubled and turbulent Iran through the life of an extraordinary woman.

David Rumsey has dedicated himself to assembling a vast collection of historical maps. Looking back on his life and pondering his legacy, he reflects on how we trace our place in the world, on maps, memory, and mortality.

The ups and downs of singer-songwriter Luther Vandross are put on frank display in this moving biographical documentary. It’s a look at an artistic legacy that we’re only now able to fully reckon with, and a reintroduction to music we can’t get enough of.

This loving, vivacious doc chronicles disco’s trajectory, from its origins in the early 70s to its repudiation in the early 80s to its triumphant rebirth as house music. The directors capture not only the facts about the genre but the feel of it as well.

Inspired by old Hollywood’s grand romantic epics and paying homage to costume dramas, speculative fantasies, swashbuckling adventures, and 80s music videos, Timestalker is both a giddy genre confection and a heartfelt tale of hard-won empowerment.

Two Interpol agents investigate mysterious deaths caused by poisonous gas-emitting coral in this campy homage to 90s basic cable. It unfolds as a bleary-eyed binge of a six-episode season, complete with ever-changing title sequences.

When a family moves into a new home, tensions simmer, melancholy takes a stranglehold, and things go bump in the night... Steven Soderbergh re-imagines the haunted house film by shooting every eerie scene from a spectre's viewpoint.

Inspired by the musician Robert Wyatt and the recording of his 1974 classic of the same name, Rock Bottom is a psychedelic, animated musical odyssey about a drummer reinventing himself after an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down.

Anx and Cass are forced into lockdown together in Anx’s apartment to avoid a mysterious virus which causes people’s bodies to painfully fuse with whatever they are touching. Else is a grotesque, apocalyptic body horror that's bound to get under your skin.

Years after a viral zombie outbreak, three young brothers are forced to fend for themselves in a remote cabin in the woods. Isaac Ezban (The Similars) presents a gory, coming-of-age fable with a warm heart and a dark twist, destined to be a cult classic.

A band of bloodthirsty cannibals threatens a family of farmers living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland in rural Canada. R.T. Thorne’s feature debut is a thrilling, crowd-pleasing genre gem with a standout cast of Black and Indigenous actors.

A Dublin nurse is sent to a remote Irish village to care for a reclusive woman. Haunted by a dark past, her night terrors invade her reality. Aislinn Clarke delivers a chilling, feminist folk horror that favours atmosphere over jump scares.

Three brothers unleash cosmic horror when they build a time machine out of their mother's wardrobe to bring her back from the dead. Veslemes’ surreal body horror is a hallucinatory freak show with a pitch-black sense of humour and skin-crawling visuals.

Based on a real tragedy, this magical realist fantasy from the acclaimed director of La Llorona follows Rita, a thirteen-year-old Guatemalan runaway determined to escape from her abusive home life and the inhumane conditions of a children’s shelter.

Satyajit Ray’s first portrayal of contemporary life in his native Kolkata, The Big City follows the personal triumphs and frustrations of Arati, who decides, despite the protests of her bank-clerk husband, to take a job to help support their family.

A police chief murders his mistress, in an effort to prove that his position in society makes it impossible for him to be caught. Petri’s Cannes and Oscar-winning 1970 film is part pitch-black satire, part police-procedural, part psychological thriller.

Mambéty’s follow-up to Touki-Bouki is a mocking satire on post-colonial Senegal: a now-rich woman returns to her poor desert hometown to propose a deal: her fortune, in exchange for the death of the man who abandoned her and left her with his child.

In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, a young widow is raped and robbed. In defending herself, Marlina kills several of the attacking gang, then sets out to find justice. Surya's spectacular revenge movie coopts western tropes to feminist ends.

In this documentary we meet a group of young women training to become mechanics in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It's a male-dominated profession, but they are determined to prove they can handle it.

In this genial, satiric comedy from Senegal, Idrissa loses his job in the civil service due to austerity measures dictated by the IMF. Humiliated but too proud for his own good, he eventually goes to a shaman to exact his revenge...

In Nigeria's oldest university, a student film club presents work by Med Hondo, John Akomfrah, Mahamet-Saleh Haroun and others, which spark passionate criticial conversations around ethnicity, gender, colonialism and housing.

The acclaimed 2020 debut feature from brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri, Eyimofe traces the journeys of two distantly connected strangers as they each pursue their dream of quitting Lagos for a new life in Europe.

When her 14-year-old son is seriously injured in a motorbike accident, bar singer Félicité (real life singer Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu--a force of nature) races through the streets desperate to save his life.

Bursting with the colorful style & music of Nairobi’s vibrant youth culture, this exuberant and audacious movie is a tender love story between two young women in a country that still criminalizes homosexuality.

The Short Forum kicks off with an all-Canadian program.

Shorts from Canada, Finland, Japan, and the Netherlands.

Shorts from Canada, Hungary, Iran, Japan, Macau, Taiwan, and USA.

Shorts from Brazil, Kenya, Martinique, Mexico, Taiwan, and USA.

Shorts from Belgium, Canada, France, South Korea, Taiwan, and USA.

Shorts from Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Lebanon, Palestine, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

Shorts from Armenia, Canada, Tibet, Colombia, Japan, and Turkey.

Shorts from Canada, Hong Kong, Estonia, India, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.

Shorts from Australia, Canada, France, and South Korea.

A unique collection of Canadian and International shorts: charming, funny, even a bit scary. These filmmakers bring unique stories to screen, showcasing animated imaginary and natural worlds, Indigenous futurist tales, and experiences from the everyday.

The veracity of history is made visible, audible, and tangible. Embodying the principle of “Art as modes of truth production,” strap in for a sensory examination of the varying forms of aggression enacted by those with power as a means of dominance.

Freedom and control, or chaos and systematization. With indelible nuance and care, these works defy categorization, break binaries, and tempt us to adopt a gaze of love, or resistance; defiantly, also an act of love.