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The Delinquents film image

Showcase

Trailer

Image: The Delinquents, VIFF 2023

Exceptional films by revered directors, major award winners, and work that’s very much of the moment

The roll call for this year’s Showcase series is a testament to the 2023’s abundance of cinematic riches. Leading filmmakers Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Agnieszka Holland, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, and Deepa Mehta all have new features that evidence these established artists’ desire to continue challenging both themselves and the form. Running the gamut from absurdist comedies to close quarters dramas, historical biopics to inventive documentaries, Showcase houses a wealth of gems.

Kidnapped

Veteran director Marco Bellocchio (The Traitor) returns with a passionate historical drama about a Jewish child abducted by Pope Pius IX in 1865 on the grounds that he had been secretly baptized. This is a rich, operatic film that resonates strongly.

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4:00 pm
Thu Sep 28
Park Theatre
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6:15 pm
Tue Oct 03
Park Theatre
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12:30 pm
Fri Oct 06
Vancouver Playhouse
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Creature

Art, Music & Photography Drama

In an Arctic research facility, a mysterious creature is found and captured, finding unexpected love with a woman working under the organization. Portrayed through polished ballet, Creature tells the story of unfettered emotion through kinetic movement.

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6:30 pm
Thu Sep 28
SFU Woodwards
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4:00 pm
Tue Oct 03
International Village 9
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The Royal Hotel

Drama Women Directors

In Kitty Green's harrowing follow up to The Assistant, Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are backpacking across Australia. Running low on funds, they decide tending bar in an Outback mining town could be a lark. This proves a mistake.

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9:15 pm
Thu Sep 28
Park Theatre
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6:00 pm
Thu Oct 05
The Rio Theatre
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Green Border

Drama Human Rights & Social Justice Women Directors

In her seventies Agnieszka Holland has made a ferocious, emotionally charged film about the brutal treatment of refugees arriving over the Polish land border from Belarus. This is a vehement denunciation of resurgent fascism and utterly compelling cinema.

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3:00 pm
Fri Sep 29
Park Theatre
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5:00 pm
Sun Oct 01
Park Theatre
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They Shot the Piano Player

Animation Art, Music & Photography Documentary Human Rights & Social Justice

The fate of a prodigious Brazilian samba pianist murdered in Argentina in 1976 fuels this animated docu-fiction from the team who gave us the Academy Award-nominee Chico & Rita. Jeff Goldblum voices the writer who digs into Francisco Tenório Jr's story.

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3:15 pm
Fri Sep 29
Vancouver Playhouse
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9:15 pm
Mon Oct 02
Park Theatre
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3:15 pm
Wed Oct 04
Vancouver Playhouse
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I Am Sirat

Documentary Human Rights & Social Justice LGBTQIA2S+

I Am Sirat is a personal documentary about Sirat, a transwoman in India, who lives a dual life. While supported by a queer network of friends in Delhi, Sirat reverts to the closet at home as she’s forced to maintain a son’s familial and cultural responsibilities.

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6:15 pm
Fri Sep 29
Vancity Theatre
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9:00 pm
Sat Oct 07
SFU Woodwards
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The Teachers' Lounge

Action & Suspense Drama Women Directors

When a grade 6 student is accused of theft, idealistic young math teacher Ms Nowak decides to set up a sting to find the true culprit... with disastrous results. This buzzy Berlin film festival title is an ethics master class.

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6:30 pm
Fri Sep 29
Park Theatre
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12:30 pm
Sun Oct 01
Vancouver Playhouse
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3:30 pm
Thu Oct 05
SFU Woodwards
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Evil Does Not Exist

Drama

After the international success of Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi quietly made this small-scale independent film, a work of simplicity and grace about a rural community and the developers who want to built a "glamping" retreat in the woods.

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9:00 pm
Fri Sep 29
Park Theatre
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9:15 pm
Tue Oct 03
Park Theatre
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The Delinquents

Action & Suspense Comedy Drama

In the heart of Buenos Aires, two bank clerks live a gray, mind-numbingly routine existence—that is, until one of them commits a crime that upends both their lives. Invigorating, precisely composed, and endlessly inventive.

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11:30 am
Sat Sep 30
Park Theatre
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8:30 pm
Wed Oct 04
SFU Woodwards
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Four Little Adults

Comedy Drama Women Directors

Upon learning of her husband's year long affair, Juulia proposes an open marriage free of secrets. As a polyamory guide becomes their bible, Juulia falls in love with someone new, filling their journey in polyamory with love, compassion, and compromise.

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6:00 pm
Sat Sep 30
SFU Woodwards
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12:45 pm
Mon Oct 02
Park Theatre
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Just the Two of Us

Action & Suspense Drama Women Directors

Beginning as a sunny romance, this film slowly, subtly becomes a defiant feminist drama. When Blanche meets Greg at a seaside party, she’s quickly won over by his confidence and charm, but once they’re married, he reveals a much darker side.

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6:15 pm
Sat Sep 30
Park Theatre
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3:45 pm
Mon Oct 02
Park Theatre
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3:15 pm
Tue Oct 03
Vancouver Playhouse
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Close to You

Drama LGBTQIA2S+

In his first feature film role since 2017, Elliot Page delivers a deeply felt and nuanced performance as a young man reuniting with his family for the first time since his transition, four years earlier.

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9:15 pm
Sat Sep 30
Park Theatre
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8:45 pm
Mon Oct 02
The Rio Theatre
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Tótem

Drama Women Directors

During the chaotic preparations for the birthday of her terminally ill father, a seven-year-old girl finds herself caught amid a complex adult world interspersed with a sense of change. A Buñuelian class study keyed to the interior life of a child.

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2:30 pm
Sun Oct 01
Park Theatre
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6:00 pm
Wed Oct 04
SFU Woodwards
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About Dry Grasses

Award Winners Drama

In a remote village in eastern Turkey, an art teacher enters his fourth and final year at a state-mandated teaching post, but finds himself having to navigate two tricky relationships which force him into existential crisis.

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8:30 pm
Sun Oct 01
Park Theatre
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12:15 pm
Sun Oct 08
SFU Woodwards
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Four Daughters

Award Winners Documentary Experimental & Avant Garde Women Directors

A stimulating and cathartic docu-drama from Academy-Award nominee, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, about a mother who lost two teenage daughters when they fled to Libya to fight for ISIS.

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6:30 pm
Mon Oct 02
Park Theatre
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8:45 pm
Sun Oct 08
SFU Woodwards
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Il Boemo

Art, Music & Photography Drama

In the baroque courts of 18th Century Venice, the egos of patrons and artists clash in the rise and fall of one of history’s greatest unsung composers, Josef Mysliveček.

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3:00 pm
Tue Oct 03
Park Theatre
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6:00 pm
Sat Oct 07
SFU Woodwards
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How to Have Sex

Award Winners Drama LGBTQIA2S+ Women Directors

Sixteen-year-old Tara and her two best friends arrive to a Greek party town ready to let their hair down. But while Tara is indeed down for some summer fun, her boundaries keep getting trampled on by those closest to her.

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9:15 pm
Wed Oct 04
Park Theatre
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6:15 pm
Sun Oct 08
The Rio Theatre
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Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Award Winners Comedy Drama

Radu Jude takes two days in the life of a stressed Romanian p.a. and gives us an urgent, pissed off, sourly funny polemic on the state of late capitalism. Exploitation, discrimination and hypocrisy are his targets; dialectics are his dynamite.

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8:45 pm
Fri Oct 06
SFU Woodwards
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9:00 pm
Sun Oct 08
The Cinematheque
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The Monk and the Gun

Comedy Drama

On the eve of the Kingdom of Bhutan’s momentous transition to democracy in 2006, a monk sets off on a mysterious quest for his master, while an American collector arrives in a small town searching for a rare, valuable artefact.

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3:15 pm
Sat Oct 07
SFU Woodwards
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6:30 pm
Sun Oct 08
Vancouver Playhouse
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