VIFF Labs is an intimate, invitation-only series that empowers emerging local filmmakers through meaningful, direct dialogues with global talent.
As the curator of VIFF Labs, it remains a privilege to extend invitations that bring global industry experts to participate in dialogues at VIFF. Our Labs cover a range of diverse and relevant topics, aimed to spark meaningful conversation and ideas between international talent and Vancouver’s local filmmaking community.
Ken Tsui, VIFF Labs Curator
Presented by
Supported by
VIFF 2024 Highlights
Reinventing the Slasher: The Slow Horror of In a Violent Nature
With Chris Nash, Director
With static camera, long, locked-off wide shots and slow pans replacing the standard hectic horror visuals, director Chris Nash’s bloody, breakout indie slasher, In a Violent Nature, has become one of the most unique horror films of the year. A sequel is already in the works with Shudder and IFC Films. In this session, Nash, will take us through the process of writing and directing his debut feature which has been heralded as reinventing the slasher film.
From Novel to Screen: Adapting The Sympathizer
With Don McKellar, Writer & Showrunner
From his work behind the camera on Last Night to The Red Violin, Don McKellar has been an essential voice in Canadian cinema for over 3 decades. His latest production adapts Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pullitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer, to screen with director Park Chan-Wook. McKellar joins us to discuss his role as showrunner and writer of this prestige HBO project and the art of bringing a celebrated book to screen.
The Anatomy of Challengers
With Marco Costa, Editor
Over the past several years, editor Marco Costa has become a constant collaborator of director Luca Guadagnino’s. His credits include We Are Who We Are, Bones and All, Challengers and Guadagnino’s upcoming film, Queer. In this session, Costa will power up his Avid timeline on Challengers and walk us through his process as an editor, detailing some of his favorite moments in the film.
Designing Dystopia: The Production Design of Civil War
With Caty Maxey, Production Designer
This summer, Civil War presented audiences with a disturbing look at a collapsing, war-torn America. Behind the chaos was Production Designer Caty Maxey. With a storied career as an art director and credits including Jurassic World and Jason Bourne, Maxey takes us through her production design process, the craft and inspirations behind creating the look and feel of her most recent project, Civil War.
Presented by
Featured Speakers
Caty Maxey
Production Designer
Caty Maxey was born and raised in Central Virginia. She worked in theatres in and around Richmond and earned her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Caty immediately moved to New York to work on and off Broadway, and received her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She began Art Directing and Production Designing under the auspices of USA local 829. In the late nineties Caty made a smooth transition to Los Angeles where she has worked as a proud member of ADG Local 800. Caty lives in paradise with her fabulous husband John of twenty four years and her stellar golden retriever Judy.
Chris Nash
Director
Chris Nash is a writer, director, and prosthetics effects artist from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. His journey into filmmaking was influenced by a steady diet of 7/7/7 video rentals (seven movies, seven days, seven dollars – excluding new releases) and incredibly curated and unedited late-night movies airing Monday to Saturday on CBC television at 1:00 am. His short films and music videos have screened internationally, and in 2014 his short Z is for Zygote was selected to close off the horror anthology, The ABCs of Death 2. In A Violent Nature is his first feature film.
Don McKellar
Writer & Showrunner
Don McKellar is a prolific writer, director and actor. Most recently, he wrote the pilot and was co-showrunner on the limited series The Sympathizer for HBO, A24 and Rhombus Media for which Robert Downey Jr. has received an Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmy nomination. Other screenwriting credits include: Roadkill, Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and The Red Violin. He received the Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes for his directorial debut, Last Night, which he wrote and starred in. His stage writing credits include the five plays he co-created with the Augusta Company, and the book for the musical The Drowsy Chaperone for which he won a Tony Award. Don also wrote and starred in the CBC television series Twitch City. He directed the Max Films feature The Grand Seduction, for which he won a DGC Award for Best Direction in 2014. Other recent work includes the Serendipity Point Films feature Through Black Spruce, which premiered at TIFF. He has also directed and executive produced the CSA nominated series Michael: Tuesday & Thursdays for CBC and Sensitive Skin, starring Kim Cattrall, for TMN.
Marco Costa
Editor
After attending the classical high school in Milan and earning a degree in Media Languages from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Marco Costa (class 1992) graduated in Editing from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. After a period of training as an assistant editor (Suspiria, 2017), he began his career as an editor, which led him to work on the international series We Are Who We Are (2020) by Luca Guadagnino and to edit his subsequent films Bones and All (2022), Challengers (2023), Queer (2024) and After The Hunt (2025).