Canadian Premiere
Using tinted archival footage and shot in lush, saturated colours, Scarlet is a romantic coming-of-age period tale about a young woman who is ostracized by her small French village. Juliette, raised by her war-scarred father, grows up to be a dreamy young woman imbued with an ardent love for poetry and a natural talent for music. Italian director Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden), in his first French-language film, crafts an enchanting, lyrical world of dreams infused with a large dose of post-World War I realism and a touch of magic. Inexpressibly affective and captivating, the film also features original songs: lovely, wistful, and filled with longing. Newcomer Juliette Jouan mesmerizes in her very first role. Based on Alexander Grin’s Russian novella Scarlet Sails and featured in 2022 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
Marcello has a talent for making such material come alive through his inventive direction, whisking us away to a time and place that we experience as if we were actually there.”—Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
Presented by
Juliette Jouan, Louis Garrel, Noémie Lvovsky, Raphaël Thierry, Yolande Moreau
France/Italy/Germany
2022
In French with English subtitles
Sexual Violence
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Breaking the Waves
Kicking off our 2026 Pantheon series of the greatest films ever made, Lars von Trier's 1996 masterpiece is a devastating melodrama featuring an indelible performance from Emily Watson as the woman whose love for her husband knows no bounds.
The Track
In the middle of a mountain forest above Sarajevo, three boys train for the Olympics in a bullet-ridden luge track abandoned since the 1984 Winter Games. An ambitious, hopeful look at the next generation striving to overcome the sins of their fathers.
Yunan
In this haunting mood piece, Munir is a middle-aged Syrian writer in exile in Germany. In crisis, he takes himself up to one of the Halligan islands in the North Sea, a suitable place to end it all...
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
Credits
Screenwriter
Pietro Marcello, Maurizio Braucci, Maud Ameline
Cinematography
Marco Graziaplena
Editor
Carole Le Page, Andrea Maguolo
Original Music
Gabriel Yared
Director
Pietro Marcello
Pietro Marcello studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. His documentary Il Passaggio della linea (2007) won a Special Mention award at the Venice Film Festival. In 2009, his documentary La bocca del lupo won the Caligari Film Award and the Teddy Bear at the Berlinale, as well as the FIPRESCI Prize at the Torino Film Festival. His first narrative feature, Martin Eden, won numerous awards including Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival, and the Platform Prize at TIFF. His 2021 film Futura was presented at Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight.
Filmography: Bella e Perduta (2015); Martin Eden (2019); Per Lucio (2021); Futura (2021)
