Canada
2022
In English and Spanish with English subtitles
Violence
Featured in:
VIFF Short Forum: Program 1
What kind of alchemy occurs to transform hardship into fortune? Here, the extraordinary burn brightly.
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
Sarah Shamash, Sonia Medel
Screenwriter
Sarah Shamash, Sonia Medel
Cinematography
Angie Rico
Editor
Sarah Shamash
Directors
Sonia Medel
Sonia Medel is currently a PhD Candidate in Education at the University of British Columbia and working as a lead on diverse curatorial and publishing projects. She has been promoting decolonial and intersectional feminist engagement with arts, culture, and education across the Americas for over a decade. A visibly racialized Indigenous-Afro-European descendant, Chilean-Peruvian Latina, Medel is grateful to the Coast Salish peoples and lands on which she was born and primarily develops her practices.
Sarah Shamash
Sarah Shamash is an artist, educator, and media scholar living and raising her son on unsurrendered Indigenous lands in Vancouver. Her works have been shown in curated exhibitions and film festivals internationally. She currently teaches film studies and studio-based practices at the University of British Columbia and Emily Carr University of Art + Design.



