Canadian Premiere
Lin Jianjie’s film starts with a tense ambiguity: when Wei (Lin Muran) hits Shuo (Sun Xilun) in the head with a basketball during gym class, is it an accident or a malicious act? The incident draws the two high school students together, with a remorseful Wei inviting the taciturn Shuo over to his house. It’s there that Shuo meets Wei’s parents, and over the course of more visits, they come to value him over their own son…
Gripping from its very first shot, this feature debut triumphs as an eerie domestic thriller; a sorrowful take on the politics of family planning; a barbed critique of the bourgeois success ethic; and a poetic meditation on love, character, and identity. Writer-director Lin has an eye for the arresting, metaphorical image and a feel for the small, incremental changes that determine our fates but which often escape our notice until it’s too late. Dark, delicate, and beautiful, this is a terrific film from a director with a very bright future in cinema.
Media Partner
Zu Feng, Guo Keyu, Sun Xilun, Lin Muran
China/France/Denmark/Qatar
2024
In Mandarin with English subtitles
At International Village
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Zhou Ping, Rikke Tambo Anderson, Lou Ying, Zheng Yue, Wang Yiwen
Screenwriter
Lin Jianjie
Cinematography
Zhang Jiahao
Editor
Per K. Kirkegaard
Production Design
Xu Yao
Original Music
Toke Brorson Odin
Lin Jianjie
After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics, Jianjie Lin’s passion for deciphering human existence led him to filmmaking. He received his MFA degree in filmmaking from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His short films, A Visit (2015), a satire about corruption and vanity, and Gu (2017), about a family’s last reunion at court, were screened at many international film festivals. Hippopotami, his latest short, which he shot before the feature, is in post-production. It looks at the harshness and absurdity of life through the eyes of a little girl. Brief History of a Family is his feature film debut.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Giant
This was the Yellowstone of its time: a big, sweeping modern Western built around an imposing ranch and family dynamics -- except Giant is much more subversive. James Dean strikes it rich as Jett Rink, much to the disgust of his former boss, Rock Hudson.
Familiar Touch
A loving portrait of an octogenarian transitioning into an assisted living facility, this award-winning first feature by choreographer Sarah Friedland has a simplicity and warmth that's exceptionally poignant.
Super Happy Forever
This beguiling film depicts a man’s return to the Japanese seaside town where he met his now-deceased wife five years earlier. He tries to relive the past, and in the film's final section -- a flashback to 2018 -- the audience is afforded that privilege.
A Streetcar Named Desire
"I don't want realism. I want magic!" declares Blanche du Bois, the tragic heroine who meets her nemesis in her sister's husband, Stanley Kowalski, in Tennessee Williams' great play. Brando's performance as Stanley is a turning point in American acting.
Georgia O'Keeffe: the Brightness of Light
Drawing on her copious correspondence and the world's leading scholars, this is a definitive documentary on the life and work of "the mother of American Modernism."
