Canadian Premiere
Juan Pablo González’s first narrative feature tackles the desolate effects of globalization on culture, tradition, and a generations-led tequila industry. Teresa Sánchez delivers a powerfully restrained performance about a steely and determined factory owner in Mexico fighting an uphill battle against nature, chance, and the impending global takeover of the local economy. Knowledgeable, magnanimous, and full of pride in both her craft and societal status, María Garcia (Sánchez) slowly reveals her loneliness, longing, and leashed passion while single-mindedly focused on saving her family’s legacy. Shot with the immediacy of a documentary but beautifully framed and elegantly composed in its cinematography, Dos estaciones is steeped in the specificity of Jalisco and the hypnotic rhythms of tequila-making. Winner of a Special Jury Award for acting at Sundance and the True Vision Award at the True/False Film Festival.
It’s rare when a debut feature strikes the perfect balance of ingredients, and especially rare when it does so in a distinctive and memorable way.”—Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award: Acting (Teresa Sánchez), Sundance 2022; True Vision Award, True/False 2022
Teresa Sánchez, Rafaela Fuentes, Manuel García-Rulfo, José Galindo
Mexico/France/USA
2022
In Spanish with English subtitles
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 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.
Standby tickets will be available at the door for this event.
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
Executive Producer
Matthew Perniciaro
Producer
Jamie Gonçalves, Ilana Coleman, Bruna Haddad, Makena Buchanan
Screenwriter
Juan Pablo González, Ana Isabel Fernández, Ilana Coleman
Cinematography
Gerardo Guerra
Editor
Lívia Serpa, Juan Pablo González
Director
Juan Pablo González
Juan Pablo González is a Mexican director whose work spans fiction and nonfiction. His debut short film, The Solitude of Memory (2014), received the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Short at the 2015 Slamdance Film Festival. Dos estaciones is his feature-length debut and it had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. He was a fellow of the Fund for Culture and Arts in Mexico (FONCA) and was awarded the 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise. González is the co-director of the Film Directing program at the California Institute of the Arts.