A privileged housewife in 1968 Chicago finds herself at odds with the patriarchal medical establishment when she requires a life-saving termination of pregnancy. Joy (Elizabeth Banks, in a charming and nuanced performance) encounters an underground organization called Jane Collective that provides safe abortions to women, and eventually becomes an integral part in this necessary fight.
Directed by Phyllis Nagy, Call Jane deftly balances light and dark in exploring the stories of desperate women who require abortions and the women who risk their lives for them. A timely and relevant film about reproductive justice in the year that Roe v. Wade was overturned, the film is accessible, passionate, and hugely entertaining.
We know the achievements and victories of the era Nagy depicts, and yet, because she and her fine cast bring the story to such vivid, immediate life, the final moments of Call Jane are powerful with unanticipated joy. They sting too, because we know where we are now, and the trajectory of the intervening years.”—Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Mara, Chris Messina, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Michael Smith, Grace Edwards
USA
2022
English
At Vancouver Playhouse
At The Rio
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
All the Lovers in the Night
A lonely proofreader's isolated world begins to open through an unlikely friendship with a gentle physics teacher. Based on Mieko Kawakami's acclaimed novel, this luminous drama is a delicate meditation on loneliness, intimacy, and self-discovery.
Clarissa
Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa brings Mrs. Dalloway to present-day Lagos, with Sophie Okonedo playing the titular society hostess opposite David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri, and India Amarteifio in a Nigerian vision of class, privilege, and past lives.
Image: © Courtesy of Elevation Pictures
Opening Gala: The Debut
VIFF is honoured to open the festival with this special by-invitation screening of Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut. When meek Mona (Julianne Moore) lands a part in a musical, she fully inhabits her character, but grows increasingly untethered from reality.
Árru
Set against the mountains and fjords of northern Norway, Árru follows reindeer herder Maia as a proposed copper mine threatens her Sámi community, forcing her to fight to protect both her community and the land that sustains it.
The Beloved
When Esteban Martínez, an acclaimed director with violent tendences, invites his estranged daughter to star in his latest project, the stage is set for a familial reconnection. But as tensions flare, questions about his intentions rise to the surface.
MODES 1
Archive and the land reveal other ways of seeing, ensuring that what is meant to endure cannot be erased.
Credits
Producer
Robbie Brenner, David Wulf, Kevin McKeon
Screenwriter
Hayley Schore, Roshan Sethi
Cinematography
Greta Zozula
Editor
Peter McNulty
Production Design
Jona Tochet
Original Music
Isabella Summers
Director
Photo by K.L. Harrison
Phyllis Nagy
Phyllis Nagy earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations and won the NY Film Critics Circle award for her adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel, The Price of Salt, which was released as the feature film Carol (2015), starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Nagy garnered Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing for her work on the HBO film Mrs. Harris (2005), starring Annette Bening and Ben Kingsley, which also received SAG and Golden Globes nominations.
Filmography: Mrs. Harris (2005)