Canadian Premiere
Some forms we can only know by their shadow. Laika is an homage to the spirits of space test dogs, or any being we use in the name of progress.
USA
2022
No Dialogue
Featured in:
MODES 2
Looking closer at archival images and stories from the past, these artists re-examine and re-create to establish history anew. A daring mix of approaches that excavate new ways of seeing old perspectives.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Richest Woman in the World
Isabelle Huppert plays cosmetics CEO Marianne in this teasingly ambivalent satire inspired by the Bettancourt Affair, when L'Oreal heir Francoise Bettancourt scandalized France by frittering away her fortune on a notorious celebrity photographer.
The Python Hunt
Strange but true: the Florida Everglades are overrun with unwanted visitors. Not tourists, but invasive Burmese pythons decimating the local critters. The state's solution: an annual contest: $10 000 to whomever bags the most snakes in ten days.
Departures
Two lads meet at an airport gate and begin monthly trips to Amsterdam together. Their chemistry is off the charts, but it's Jake who's calls the shots while Benji is the one who's emotionally invested. Comparisons to Pillion and Trainspotting are on mark.
Mistura
This foodie film from Peru tells the story of a newly single socialite reinventing herself — and the local cuisine — after her husband has left her for a younger woman. Along the way, she finds support from unexpected places...
Time and Water
Sara Dosa (Fire of Love) turns her attentions from volcanoes to glaciers in this singular, personal collaboration with the Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason, who ruminates on the loss of ties to family and to landscape.
Credits
Cinematography
Deborah Stratman
Editor
Deborah Stratman
Original Music
Olivia Block
Director
Deborah Stratman
Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes films and artworks that investigate power, control, and belief by considering how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. Recent projects have addressed freedom, exodus, augury, surveillance, comets, raptors, orthoptera, sinkholes, levitation, sisterhood, and faith. She teaches at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Filmography: The BLVD (1999); O’er the Land (2009); The Illinois Parables (2016)