Skip to main content
Hardly Working film image, co-directors Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf)

Hardly Working

North American Premiere

Total Refusal returns to MODES with new work following 2020’s dazzling live performance of Operation Jane Walk, and their anti-war masterpiece, How to Disappear. In the moments when the algorithm of their existence shows inconsistencies, the Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) of the popular action-adventure game, Red Dead Redemption, break out of their routines momentarily to display their faultiness and present something touchingly human.

Director
Cast

Jacob Banigan

Credits
Country of Origin

Austria

Year

2022

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
21 min

Featured in:

Perforated Realities film image, director Gustaf Broms

MODES 3

Whimsical, questioning and utterly absorbing, a collection of animated work delving into worlds of wonder, subversion, and Marxist mystery. These works are fun and some re-construct ideas of animation, paying homage to experimentalists who came before.

 

MORE INFO

Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre

NAZA
Naza film image; two people sitting in a foggy night with skyscrapers in the background

NAZA

Dir. Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
80 min

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.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile

Dir. Julia Loktev
355 min

Julia Loktev's follow up to last year's film about dissident journalists in Moscow tracks the reporters as they are forced into exile across a four year period, but still striving to counterbalance state propaganda as Putin pursues the war in Ukraine.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

Dir. William Greaves, David Greaves
100 min

Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie

Dir. Alex Gibney
107 min

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.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Possible Love
Possible Love film image; four people standing in a road looking at something

Possible Love

Dir. Lee Chang-dong
164 min

Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

You Had to Be There

Dir. Nick Davis
98 min

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

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Credits

Screenwriter

Total Refusal

Cinematography

Total Refusal

Editor

Total Refusal

Original Music

Adrian Haim

Director

Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf) group shot, Hardly Working co-directors

Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf)

The pseudo-marxist media guerilla collective Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. They work with tools of appropriation and rededication of game resources. Their films and performances were presented among others at the Berlinale and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They received the award for Best Short Documentary Film at the 2020 Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film.