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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.

The End

Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer
148 min

Set in a deluxe bunker two decades after environmental collapse, the first dramatic feature from Joshua Oppenheimer (Act of Killing) is an unironic musical starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, and George MacKay. The cult starts here.

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12:00 pm
Sat Dec 21
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance
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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.

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7:00 pm
Sun Dec 22
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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7:00 pm
Mon Dec 23
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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1:00 pm
Sun Dec 29
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
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Flow

Dir. Gints Zilbalodis
84 min

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. Rated: G

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4:00 pm
Sun Dec 22
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance Relaxed Screening U18 May Attend
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3:00 pm
Tue Dec 24
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance U18 May Attend
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7:30 pm
Thu Dec 26
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance U18 May Attend
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So Surreal: Behind the Masks

Dir. Neil Diamond & Joanne Robertson
88 min

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...

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2:00 pm
Fri Dec 27
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Guests/Q&As Hearing Assistance
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5:20 pm
Sat Dec 28
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Guests/Q&As Hearing Assistance
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8:15 pm
Sun Dec 29
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance
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All We Imagine as Light

Dir. Payal Kapadia
115 min

What Wong Kar-wai did for Hong Kong, Payal Kapadia does for Mumbai: the Cannes Grand Prix winner is a romantic heartbreaker about three nurses at different stages of life. It's a future classic.

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3:00 pm
Sat Jan 04
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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2:00 pm
Sun Jan 05
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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7:45 pm
Tue Jan 07
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
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Emilia Pérez

Dir. Jacques Audiard
132 min

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.

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8:30 pm
Sun Jan 05
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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3:30 pm
Tue Jan 07
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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3:20 pm
Thu Jan 09
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat

Dir. Johan Grimonprez
150 min

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.

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1:30 pm
Fri Jan 24
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
First Look Fridays Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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7:00 pm
Sun Jan 26
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
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1:00 pm
Mon Jan 27
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
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Universal Language

Dir. Matthew Rankin
89 min

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. Rated: G

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1:30 pm
Fri Jan 31
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles U18 May Attend
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6:00 pm
Fri Jan 31
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
Hearing Assistance Subtitles U18 May Attend
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4:30 pm
Sat Feb 01
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
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Rumours

Dir. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson
103 min

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...

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Bird

Dir. Andrea Arnold
119 min

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).

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The Chef & the Daruma

Dir. Mads K. Baekkevold
90 min

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.

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Physician, Heal Thyself

Dir. Asher Penn
78 min

One of the world's foremost experts on addiction and trauma, Dr Gabor Maté shares not only his theories, but also his own story: his difficult childhood in Hungary and his long years of therapeutic practice in and around Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

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Inay (Mama)

Dir. Thea Loo
74 min

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.

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Queens (Reinas)

Dir. Klaudia Reynicke
104 min

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.

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The Girl With the Needle

Dir. Magnus von Horn
115 min

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. Nightmarish expressionist cinema.

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