Cinematic form is given to life’s big mysteries: luck and fate, love and loss, and the spiritual supernatural.
Q&A Oct 6 & Oct 9
This short film program includes the following films:
The Flying Sailor
Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby, AB (8 min)
Based on the true events of the Halifax Explosion in 1917, a sailor soars above the blast towards the great unknown.
Meeting With Robert Dole
François Harvey, QC (16 min)
Dialectical in form and content, this documentary explores the connection between schizophrenia and theology through the life of Robert Dole.
N’xaxaitkw
Asia Youngman, BC (17 min)
New to town, Zaraya befriends her next-door neighbour, who invites her to go on a search for the legendary lake monster, N’xaxaitkw—known to settlers as Ogopogo.
I, Sun
Julien Falardeau, QC (12 min)
A sun worshipper’s commitment grows desperate when he catches a sunflower turning towards him.
Baba
Meran Ismailsoy, Anya Chirkova, ON (14 min)
All hell breaks loose when a depressed father calls in his son to help mediate an argument with the landlord.
Grown in Darkness
Devin Shears, NL (17 min)
Emmanuel pays his longtime friend, Henry, a visit on his rhubarb farm during harvest. Through the next few days, the two examine the nature of their relationship.
La Plage aux êtres
Kendra McLaughlin, ON (20 min)
Time, memory, and grief are explored in this close look at the preservation of an unidentified creature.
Supported by
Community Broadcast Partner
Community Partner
Various
Canada
2021-2022
Various with English subtitles
Open to youth!
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
NAZA
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.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
You Had to Be There
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
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
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.
My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile
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.