Skip to main content
two people with their foreheads pressed together in front of a cherry blossom tree

Canadian Film Week

Apr 11 – Apr 17

Image: Sweet Summer Pow Wow

Celebrate Canadian and Indigenous Storytelling

VIFF is proud to champion and showcase Canadian and Indigenous filmmaking. The VIFF Centre is a vital hub for this storytelling, presenting over 60 Canadian features in 2024 alone. Today, this commitment is more important than ever. Only Canadian filmmakers illuminate the values, experiences, and stories that define the special character of this place we proudly call home.

3-Ticket Pack: $42

Buy Ticket Pack

Canadian Film Week spotlights 18 features, including six Vancouver premieres and four brand new films from BC filmmakers, most of whom will join us for Q&As. The lineup also features returning classics, new favourites, and free screenings on National Canadian Film Day.

 

National Canadian Film Day, April 16 | Free Screenings

Velcrow Ripper and Cari Green join VIFF for the 20th anniversary screening of their non-fiction film ScaredSacred, a special tribute screening to producer Tracey Friesen. And director Sandy Wilson will introduce her coming of age classic My American Cousin, which marks its 40th anniversary this year.

 

Help VIFF Share Local Stories

Did you know VIFF is a non-profit organization? We rely on donations to help bring powerful local cinema to the big screen in Vancouver. With your help, we can share more stories from Canadian and Indigenous creators, and nurture local artists through our development programs.

DONATE

The Barbarian Invasions

Dir. Denys Arcand
99 min

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.

This event has passed.

More info

The Players

Dir. Sarah Galea-Davis
101 min

In this intense semi-autobiographical debut feature, teenager Emily (the remarkable Stefani Kimber) joins an experimental theatre troupe led by the charismatic Reinhardt (Eric Johnson). It will be a rite of passage fraught with menace. Rated: PG

This event has passed.

More info

Who by Fire

Dir. Philippe Lesage
162 min

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.

This event has passed.

More info

Crocodile Eyes

Dir. Ingrid Veninger
75 min

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.

This event has passed.

More info

Village Keeper

Dir. Karen Chapman
83 min

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.

This event has passed.

More info

Young Werther

Dir. José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço
100 min

"Based on the smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance," as the opening text declares, this delightfully arcane Toronto rom-com is one of the most unexpected debut features of the past year, and a low-key triumph on top.

This event has passed.

More info

Matt and Mara

Dir. Kazik Radwanski
80 min

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.

This event has passed.

More info

Field Sketches

Dir. Carl Bessai
96 min

A Vancouver architect (Vincent Gale) goes into a midlife tailspin when his business fails and his younger girlfriend walks out. Trying to get back on track, he resolves to tough out a Saskatchewan winter on the farm where he and his brother grew up.

This event has passed.

More info

Seven Veils

Dir. Atom Egoyan
107 min

Haunted by disturbing memories Jeanine allows her repressed trauma to reshape the present as she re-enters the opera world in order to remount her former mentor's most famous work, Salome. Atom Egoyan's latest is a fractured mirror of abuse and catharsis.

This event has passed.

Image: © Amanda Matlovich

More info

The Decline of the American Empire

Dir. Denys Arcand
101 min

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...

This event has passed.

More info

Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story

Dir. Michael Mabbott & Lucah Rosenberg
99 min

An R&B star who eclipsed Etta James and Little Richard, trans soul singer Jackie Shane blazed an extraordinary trail with an unbreakable commitment to her truth. Forty years after vanishing from public view, this lost icon finally gets her second act.

This event has passed.

More info

Tea Creek

Dir. Ryan Dickie
74 min

Join food activist Jacob Beaton for this special screening of a documentary about his Indigenous food sovereignty and trades training initiative at Tea Creek, in northern BC.

This event has passed.

More info

ScaredSacred

Dir. Velcrow Ripper
104 min

In the wake of 9/11, BC filmmaker Velcrow Ripper (Incandescence) embarked on a global pilgrimage, visiting ground zero in Manhattan and other sites of disaster and devastation, seeking out seeds of hope and spiritual regeneration.

This event has passed.

More info

My American Cousin

Dir. Sandy Wilson
90 min

Sandy is 12 and bored. Enter Butch in a screaming red Cadillac. He's 16 going on James Dean and about the most exciting thing to hit Penticton since rock-n-roll. Sandy Wilson's first feature -- 40 years young -- is a Canadian coming-of-age classic.

This event has passed.

More info