The films in this shorts program are all about connections. People connecting with one another, dealing with change, or rediscovering a part of themselves and their past.
Q&A Oct 2 & Oct 4
This short film program includes the following films:
Bye Bye
Amélie Bonnin, France (25 min)
A man who left his native Normandy to build a bigger life for himself in Paris returns to his hometown, where he runs into an old flame.
A Different Place
Sophie Black, UK (14 min)
On a clandestine date, a 40-something woman battling with her identity embarks on a journey of rediscovery that she cannot ignore nor fully encompass.
Island of Freedom
Petr Januschka, Czech Republic (27 min)
It’s 1981 in Czechoslovakia, and a young man surprisingly reunites with his teen love on board a charter flight to Cuba.
The Ceremony
Lisle Turner, UK (10 min)
Written by Iman Qureshi, The Ceremony is a searingly honest take on non-binary marriage, with a twist.
The Cormorant
Lubna Playoust, France (23 min)
A mother and son live in a secluded house on an isolated island, where memory merges with the present, intertwining two moments of their lives—youth and maturity.
Magnified City
Isaku Kaneko, Japan (12 min)
In a ruined city, a wandering Magnifying Glass Human encounters a secret society of Projector Humans with grand plans to reconnect to the past in a surviving mountaintop theatre.
Community Partner
Various
Various
2021-2022
Various with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al
House of Hope
"House of Hope" is the name of a Waldorf elementary school near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, founded by Manar and her husband Milad. This documentary follows their efforts to go about their lives before, during, and after the events of October 7.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Alex Gibney's doc relates the near-lethal attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, the writer's painful rehab and recovery, and his reflections on life before, during and after the publication of The Satanic Verses.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.