Skip to main content
The Fruit Tree film image, director Isabelle Tollenaere

The Fruit Tree

Canadian Premiere

For Sharleece, looking out of the window of a house for rent in a desert town where she lives evokes unexpected memories of her childhood home in Los Angeles. The passing of time is ever-present.

Director
Cast

Sharleece Bourne, Alexis Bolden

Credits
Country of Origin

Belgium

Year

2022

Language

English

Film Contact
14 min

Featured in:

Parasite Family film image, director Prapat Jiwarangsan

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.

 

MORE INFO

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

2026 Oscar® Shorts (Live Action)

Dir. Various
119 min

This year's contenders in the Live Action category include comedies, drama, an experimental musical, and a dystopian fantasy; films from the UK and the US, France and Israel.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Turner & Constable

Dir. David Bickerstaff
93 min

Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

2026 Oscar® Shorts (Animated)

Dir. Various
83 min

The nominees for Best Animated Short Film include The Girl Who Cried Pearls, a fable from Canadian filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, narrated by Colm Feore.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The President's Cake

Dir. Hasan Hadi
105 min

Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Sinners

Dir. Ryan Coogler
137 min

2025's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Montreal, ma belle

Dir. Xiaodan He
118 min

In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Credits

Producer

Bo De Group, Hans Everaert

Screenwriter

Isabelle Tollenaere

Cinematography

Isabelle Tollenaere, Grimm Vandekerckhove

Editor

Isabelle Tollenaere

Original Music

Hendrick Lasure

Art Director

Nicklas Nilsson

Director

Isabelle Tollenaere headshot, The Fruit Tree director

Photo by Jana Coorevits

Isabelle Tollenaere

Isabelle Tollenaere is an independent filmmaker and artist from Belgium. Her work playfully moves between the codes and conventions of documentary and fiction, film, and contemporary art. Her films have been widely presented and awarded at the Berlinale Forum, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Centre Pompidou, Vienna International Film Festival, Visions du Réel, FID Marseille, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX).

Filmography: Battles (2015); Victoria (2020)