Skip to main content
The Wait film image

The Wait

La Espera

This event has passed

Canadian Premiere

In the arid desert of southern Spain, a labourer and recovering alcoholic, Eladio, with his beloved wife and young son, takes residence as the gamekeeper of a rural ranch. Three years into his tenure the family is on the brink of destitution. Forced to take a bribe to make ends meet, Eladio lets a hunting party make an unsafe hunt, and pays the a terrible price. Wracked with guilt, Eladio’s world begins to deteriorate as the debt comes due on his bargain. Director F. Javier Gutierrez brings his horror muscle to bear on what is fundamentally a rich character study and a felt tragedy. Sun-blistered cinematography, and the uneasy emptiness of the scorched Spanish country fuse elements of westerns, thrillers, visceral body horror, and psychological drama into a fresh Faustian folk tale.

 

Series Media Partner

  

Director
Cast

Víctor Clavijo, Ruth Díaz, Moisés Ruiz, Manuel Morón, Antonio Estrada

Credits
Country of Origin

Spain

Year

2023

Series

Altered States

Language

In Spanish with English subtitles

Content Warning

Graphic Violence, Self Harm, Drug & Alcohol Abuse

18+

At International Village

19+

At The Rio

99 min
Action & Suspense Drama

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Producer

Adrián Guerra, Antonio P. Pérez, F. Javier Gutiérrez

Screenwriter

F. Javier Gutierrez

Cinematography

Miguel A. Mora

Editor

F. Javier Gutierrez

Production Design

F. Javier Gutierrez

Original Music

Zeltia Montes

Director

F. Javier Gutierrez headshot

F. Javier Gutierrez

F. Javier Gutierrez is an award-winning filmmaker whose filmography crosses genres of horror, sci-fi and thriller. Before the Fall, Javier’s first feature, premiered in the the Berlin Film Festival. Rings, the third installment of The Ring franchise, opened #2 in the US box office and grossed $83M worldwide. Javier is member of the Directors Guild of America, and the European Film Academy, and serves as President of DR. T Producciones (Spain), and Unfiled Films (USA).

Filmography: Before the Fall (2008); Rings (2017)

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

La Grazia

Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
133 min

A contemplative, mournful but richly imagined movie about a retiring Italian President (Toni Servillo from The Great Beauty) facing two thorny ethical decisions that may define his legacy.

Image: © Andrea Pirrello

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Executioner

Dir. Luis García Berlanga
92 min

Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Deaf

Dir. Eva Libertad
100 min

Writer-director Eva Libertad has made a revealing, compassionate film about the fears and anxieties of a deaf woman (played by Libertad's sister, deaf actress Miriam Garlo) who is about to have a baby.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Mother and the Bear

Dir. Johnny Ma
100 min

Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Plague

Dir. Charlie Polinger
95 min

At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés + Por Derecho (For the Right) Live

Dir. Antón Álvarez
95 min

Winner of the Goya Award for Best Documentary, this is an exquisite and surprisingly intimate portrait of the brilliant young guitarist Yerai Cortés, preceded by an hour of passionate flamenco music, song and dance performed by Flamenco Rosario.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema