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Our Grandmother the Inlet film image

VIFF Short Forum: Program 1

Image: Our Grandmother the Inlet, VIFF 2023

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As time moves ever the more forward, histories are revisited. Some continue to be honoured while others are called for a reckoning.

 

September 29 & October 1: Q&A with the film teams

 

This short film program includes the following films:

Our Grandmother the Inlet
Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos, Kayah George, BC (9 min)

Kayah George, a young Tsleil-Waututh woman and her grandmother Ta7a, daughter of the late Chief Dan George, reflect on their relationship to water, culture, and land.

 


Unspeakable Heap
Kara Ditte Hansen (14 min)

An accumulation of histories is explored via the filmmaker’s uncle, a retired Grego-Roman Olympian wrestler who lives in a sinking house built atop a decommissioned landfill.

 


Master of the House
Dylan Maranda, BC (17 min)

A young sommelier struggles to balance friendship and ambition on the night an acclaimed restaurant critic dines at his work — Reclamation, a restaurant hyped on reinventing Indigenous cuisine.

 


The Company We Keep
Wojtek Jakubiec, QC (6 min)

An intimate portrait of a ceramics artist and her dog.

 


Modern Goose
Karsten Wall, MB (20 min)

The adaptive behaviours of the Canadian geese are examined as city co-habitants affected by human intervention and climate change.

 


Outside Center
Eli Jean Tahchi, QC (21 min)

Finding community via his gay rugby league, Jamaican-born Desmond navigates life, love, and identity as an immigrant living in Munich, Germany.

 


Death Mask
John Greyson, ON (10 min)

This experimental opera reenacts the lesser known history of Chinese medical student Li Shiu Tong, and his lover Magnus Hirschfeld, a much older German sexologist and gay rights pioneer during Nazi Germany.

 


All the Days of May
Miryam Charles, QC (7 min)

Following the production of a documentary on the death of her daughter, a mother reflects on life, grief, and time.

 


Mothers and Monsters
Edith Jorisch, QC (16 min)

In this surrealist satire, a celebratory banquet hosted for and by new mothers is disrupted by a series of strange disturbances.

 

Supported by

Community Partner

Director

Various

Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2023

Series

VIFF Short Forum

Language

Various with English subtitles

18+
120 min
Shorts

Book Tickets

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

Short Forum 1: The Scarier One
Object of Riddle film image; a disproportionate metal face

Short Forum 1: The Scarier One

93 min

The return of scary: fear in all its chilling, suspenseful, and unsettling shades.

International Village 8

That Shadow Fading

Dir. Samuel Urbina
76 min

Samuel Urbina's feature debut is a quiet, deeply affecting mother and son drama following Sol, a single mother about to become an empty nester as her son Junior prepares to move to Lima upon graduating college.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York film image; man walking down a city street

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

Dir. Noah Segan
88 min

A career thief’s circumstances grow desperate when he fences valuable merchandise stolen from a vengeful crime family. John Turturro is exquisite as a wiseacre who is typically one step ahead of everyone but now finds himself behind the eight ball.

Vancouver Playhouse The Rio Theatre

Gabin

Dir. Maxence Voiseux
105 min

Filmed over 10 years, Gabin follows Gabin Jourdel from age 8 to 18 and the animals, schoolwork, chores, and imagined futures that define his youth. As he grows, his adolescence becomes a question of inheritance and choosing one’s own future.

International Village 10

Frank & Louis

Dir. Petra Volpe
95 min

In a bid to increase his changes at parole, Frank joins an initiative where long-term inmates care for aging prisoners suffering from dementia. But when he meets the elderly Louis, it puts his own predicament into perspective.

Fifth Avenue Cinema - 19+ only
Iron Boy
Iron Boy film image; 2D animated boy looking at clouds

Iron Boy

Dir. Louis Clichy
90 min

Iron Boy, a hand-painted animated feature, follows a hardworking preteen farm boy and his sublime flights of fancy as he faces the earthshaking upheavals of growing up in an iron back brace. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes 2026.

Image: © Eddy Cinema, Beside Productions, Regular Production, France 3 Cinema, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, RTBF

Lindsay Family Stage at Granville Island