Highly anticipated films screening in our marquee venue
The marquee attractions at this year’s festival run the gamut from social realist dramas to dizzying spectacles. As always, this section boasts some of the most celebrated films from Cannes, including the Palme d’Or winner and the first-ever Grand Prix winner from India. Meanwhile, two compelling Iranian dramas serve as impassioned testaments to resilience. We go behind the music of Canada’s quintessential band and attune ourselves to the wavelengths of a post-apocalyptic musical. Be it through unflinching drama or surreal satire, each of these offerings will leave you moved.
Ari's Theme
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.
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The Seed of the Sacred Fig
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…
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Emilia Pérez
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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Nightbitch
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?).
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The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal
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.
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The Piano Lesson
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.
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Can I Get a Witness?
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.
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The Girl With the Needle
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.
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Conclave
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.
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Rumours
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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All We Imagine as Light
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.
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My Favourite Cake
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.
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Saturday Night
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...
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I’m Still Here
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.
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