Canada
2022
English
Featured in:
VIFF Short Forum: Program 2
Fear, doubt, and loneliness give way to pleasure, empowerment, and reclamation—or, is it the other way around?
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Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
In January 1961, seven months after Congolese independence, Patrice Lumumba is assassinated. In excavating the history of this political murder, this essay-film traces the complex and unlikely intersections of American jazz and Cold War geopolitics.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
A tense mystery and an act of radical protest, this film tells the story of an Iranian lawyer who’s lost his handgun and knows someone in his family took it. With every moment, his wife and daughters grow more afraid of him–yet none of them will confess…
To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan's beloved film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel is the tale of a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, defending an innocent black man accused of rape in a small southern town in the 1930s. As selected by VIFF Premium member Margot Pratt.
Every Little Thing
If you thought Flow was an emotional rollercoaster, wait til you meet Cactus and Wasabi, baby hummingbirds fighting for their lives under the loving care of hummingbird-whisperer Terry Masear, an Angelino who makes it her mission to nurse injured birds.
Universal Language
In a wintery, Farsi-speaking city that’s equal measures Winnipeg and Tehran, storylines entangle and the concepts of space, time, and identity grow increasingly opaque. Inventive and absurd, Rankin's poetic fable reminds us that Winnipeg is a wonderland. Rated: G
Credits
Producer
Kate Fraser, Chris Strikes, Maya Annik Bedward
Screenwriter
Chris Strikes
Cinematography
Ashley Iris Gill
Editor
Maria Todorov-Topouzov
Production Design
Melissa Dawn Bessey
Original Music
Solitair
Director
Chris Strikes
Chris Strikes is an award-winning director and alumnus of both the HotDocs Accelerator Fellowship and the Reelworld E20 program. In 2021, Strikes’ first feature documentary Becoming a Queen screened in five festivals worldwide, winning Best Feature Film at the 2021 CaribbeanTales International Film Festival, the Audience Choice Award for Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Baltimore International Black Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Picture Editing for Documentary at the 2021 Directors Guild of Canada Awards.
Filmography: Becoming a Queen (2021)