Skip to main content
Lay Down Your Heart film image, director Marie Clements

Lay Down Your Heart

This event has passed

Directed by renowned theatre artist and film director Marie Clements, Lay Down Your Heart is a touching tribute to Niall McNeil, a multi-talented artist in theatre and various other mediums, who happens to be a person living with Down Syndrome. From having grown up in Caravan Farm Theatre, and co-writing plays like King Arthur’s Night, McNeil has established himself as an integral part of the Vancouver theatre scene. We are introduced to the artist’s rich inner world and meet his ‘family members’—who may not be blood relations, but are surely heart relations. Very much a labour of love, this documentary features well-known figures and collaborators from the theatre and artistic community, all voicing praise and affection for McNeil. Shot mostly in front of an all-white backdrop with McNeil’s drawings animated on-screen, the film has a distinctly playful visual style. Colourful, full of joy, and possessing an imaginative spirit, Lay Down Your Heart is a heartwarming celebration of a local artist who has succeeded on his own terms.

 

Q&A Oct 6 & Oct 9

 

Media Partner

Stir Logo

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2022

Language

English

18+
70 min
Women Directors

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Palestine '36

Dir. Annemarie Jacir
118 min

An epic historical drama from director Annemarie Jacir that follows an ensemble of rural villagers who face off against British colonial forces during the 1936 Palestinian revolt.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Calle Málaga

Dir. Maryam Touzani
116 min

Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
More info

Sold Out

Sansho the Bailiff

Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
124 min

The third of the great Japanese masters (with Ozu and Kurosawa), Mizoguchi is a poet of suffering. There's plenty of that here in his exquisite telling of an ancient folktale about the enslavement of a woman and her two children.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Agatha's Almanac

Dir. Amalie Atkins
86 min

Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Kensington Market: Heart of the City

Dir. Stuart Clarfield
104 min

Stuart Clarfield's DIY doc is both an oral history of the character-full working class Toronto neighbourhood and a sobering story about the economic forces that spell its likely demise.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Fucktoys Advance Screening + Annapurna Sriram Q&A

Dir. Annapurna Sriram
106 min

Bold, irreverent, and fiercely queer, Fucktoys plunges into a world where pleasure, performance, and identity collide. This special advance screening comes with a Q&A with filmmaker Annapurna Sriram.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Credits

Executive Producer

Shirley Vercruysse

Producer

Shirley Vercruysse

Screenwriter

Marie Clements, Niall McNeill

Cinematography

Mike McKinlay

Editor

Sarah Hedar

Production Design

James Boatman

Original Music

Wayne Lavallee

Director

Marie Clements headshot

Marie Clements

A writer, director, and producer whose career has spanned film, TV, radio, and live performance, Marie Clements is a Dene/Métis filmmaker and the founder of Marie Clements Media, a production company specializing in the creation and production of media works that ignite an Indigenous and intercultural reality. Her dramatic feature debut Red Snow (2019) received numerous awards including Most Popular Canadian Feature at VIFF and Best Director at the American Indian Film Festival. Clements’ 2017 documentary The Road Forward opened the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, received multiple awards, and has screened at more than 300 venues in North America.

Filmography: The Road Forward (2017); Red Snow (2019)