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International Shorts: Nothing Comes Easy

Image: Mira, VIFF 2023

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In this program of short films our protagonists discover that sorting out their lives can be much more difficult to achieve than they realized.

 

This short film program includes the following films:

Far From the Tree
Emma Marková, Czech Republic (23 min)

A woman and her teen daughter live in a small dead end city where both women are trying to break out of their miserable circumstances.

 


Cut
Samuel Lucas Allen, Australia (19 min)

A teenage boy caught in a web of lies is pulled in different directions as he tries to juggle anti-Semitism, his queerness and an orthodox Jewish father.

 


Night Shift
Santiago Lago, Argentina (27 min)

The night shift clerk at a sex hotel, suffering from narcolepsy, is faced with a night when things are unusually busy and housekeeping finds a gun in room 6.

 


Spasm
Sahra Asadollahi, Iran (27 min)

A woman who has never acted in film before goes for an audition that becomes a test of more than just her acting ability.

 


Mira
Eva Louise Hall, USA (12 min)

A struggling accordionist busker gets more than she bargained for when her desire to get noticed attracts the attention of a mysterious and enticing competitor.

 

Community Partner

Director

Various

Country of Origin

Various

Year

2022-2023

Series

International Shorts

Language

Various with English subtitles

18+
108 min
Shorts

Book Tickets

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Cutting Through Rocks
Cutting Through Rocks film image; person riding a motorcycle backlit by a sunset

Cutting Through Rocks

Dir. Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni
95 min

Winner of Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, Cutting Through Rocks follows Sara Shahverdi — motorcyclist, midwife, and first-ever councilwoman elected in her Iranian village. A vérité triumph by Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni.

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Train Dreams

Dir. Clint Bentley
104 min

A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.

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Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Dir. David Borenstein & Pavel Talankin
90 min

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and Special Jury Prize Winner, Sundance, 2025, this exposé shot by a Russian primary teacher shows how the Putin propaganda machine works to militarize children.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Spring After Spring

Dir. Jon Chiang
78 min

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VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Chronology of Water

Dir. Kristen Stewart
128 min

Kristen Stewart's fearless directorial debut is based on the best-selling memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots), a chronicle of her abusive childhood, traumatized adulthood, and escapes through swimming, drugs, sex, and ultimately writing.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
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Sound of Falling

Dir. Mascha Schilinski
149 min

A remote German farmhouse is the stage for the mundane and magical experiences of four girls who call the foreboding place home at various intervals over the course of a century. In turns delicate and devastating, this is cinema at its most experiential.

Image: © Fabian Gamper

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema