Skip to main content

VIFF Short Forum: Program 2

This event has passed

Get in for a rollercoaster journey through the depths of struggle and perseverance. Not for the faint of heart, this collection is as difficult as it is beautiful.

 

October 1 & 2: Q&A with the film teams

 

This short film program includes the following films:

Sisters
Marisa Hoicka, ON (3 min)

Mid-century advertisements, public service announcements, and product demonstrations are stitched together to create an unsettling narrative of two sisters.

 


Four Mile Creek
Ryan McKenna, QC (21 min)

Aurore Cormier was a settler child who died from smallpox at the turn of the 20th century, near what is now known as Thunder Bay. 100 years later, her relatives search for her grave.

 


Cloud Striker
A.W. Hopkins, BC (17 min)

Set in the 1930s, Chief Cloud Striker is on a quest to find his son Elijah, who has been forcibly taken from home and placed in Saint Ignatius Indian Residential School.

 


Conviction
Bruce Thomas Miller, AB (13 min)

Following release from prison, Joseph is faced with the challenges of reintegration into society.

 


Black Box Investigations
Paige Smith, BC (3 min)

Form and function are deconstructed through the artist’s interventions with the camera.

 


Autre Chose
Étienne Lacelle, QC (26 min)

Following a crippling motorcycle accident that killed his lover, a young man rebuilds his bike to take one last ride deep into the Canadian wilderness.

 


The Great Kind Mystery
Ella Morton, NL (17 min)

Inuk and Mi’kmaw artist Amy Hull reflects on her hometown of Daniel’s Harbour, Newfoundland and her connection to the natural world through the Mi’kmaq language.

 


Element
Will Niava, QC (22 min)

Struggling to make a living in the markets of Abidjan, a group of young men decide to step up their hustle and cast a spell in order to make some real money.

 

Supported by

Community Partner

Director

Various

Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2022-2023

Series

VIFF Short Forum

Language

Various with English subtitles

18+
122 min
Shorts

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

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