North American Premiere
Fausto and Ivan finally meet before getting settled at Fausto’s vacant family house, where they will have the necessary privacy to execute their plan. Everything has been thoroughly discussed, arranged, and agreed upon, and the day is looming. But they keep finding excuses to push the event back. In the process, they inadvertently get to know more about each other, boundaries start to blur, and suddenly, moving forward with the plan is no longer as straightforward as it once seemed.
Brilliantly scripted and meticulously structured, Other Cannibals leans cheekily into cultural stereotyping and fetishization to craft an existentialist subversion that draws from the Italian culture of food and family. The black and white film adopts a languid, measured approach, taking time to reveal its hand, each bizarre development and interaction increasingly more insightful. Newcomer Francesco Sossai delivers a deliciously dark comedic curve ball grounded in wonderfully calibrated lead performances, ultimately finding deep humanity amidst the cannibalistic fantasies.
Q&A Oct 3 & Oct 5
Presented by
Supported by
Diego Pagotto, Walter Giroldini, Luisa Mondin, Barbara Turrin, Giovanni Tomassetti, Diego de Francesco
Germany
2021
In Italian with English subtitles
Animal Cruelty
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
La Belle at the Movies + Apostles of Cinema
Cecilia Zoppelletto's lyrical documentary examines the fate of cinephilia in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital city, currently without a single operating cinema. + Apostles of Cinema (Tanzania, 17 min)
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Credits
Producer
Cecilia Trautvetter
Screenwriter
Francesco Sossai, Adriano Candiago
Cinematography
Giulia Schelhas
Editor
Ginevra Giacon
Original Music
Unpluriverso
Art Director
Tatiana Bastos
Director
Photo by Guido Lettieri
Francesco Sossai
Francesco Sossai was born in the Italian Dolomites area. He started filming short films at an early age. He moved to Rome, where he graduated in English and German Literatures. He was then admitted into the German Television Film Academy (DFFB) in Berlin. Other Cannibals is his first feature film. He lives in Veneto, Italy.

