Skip to main content
Flowers film image; blurred face

Flowers

Flores

MODES

North American Premiere

Recently winning the International Grand Jury Award at the Sheffield DocFest, director Jose Cardoso’s deeply personal and mesmerizing tapestry of internet and news footage is collected and absorbed, consciously and unconsciously, woven together–– indicative of the stuff that fuels our daily web feeds. He streams disparate details of a war in Ukraine “justified” by a string of seemingly unconnected events, as an ethnocide perpetrated by Brazil’s extreme right-wing unfolds in the Amazon. The duties of parenthood routinely interrupt the onslaught of tense imagery, granting gentle moments in the garden with his young son. All the while, the popular Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh offers ancient teachings to embrace one’s enemy as the object of our collective compassion.

 

Community Partner

Director
Featuring

Vladímir Putin, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Seydú Cardoso, María García Freire, Wynn Alan Bruce, Jair Bolsonaro

Credits
Country of Origin

Ecuador/South Africa

Year

2024

Language

In Spanish, English, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Tupí with English subtitles

Film Contact
Links
Content Warning

Graphic violence, self harm

18+
30 min
Documentary Experimental & Avant Garde Human Rights & Social Justice Shorts

Credits & Director

Producer

Adrian Van Wyk, María Fernanda García

Editor

José Cardoso

Original Music

Boris Vian

José Cardoso headshot; Flowers director

José Cardoso

His previous works such as Iwianch, The Devil Deer (2021) and What the Soil Remembers (2023) was awarded at Ann Arbor Film Festival, IFFR Rotterdam, Regina, CSFF and Ningbo China, among others and selected at Sitges, La Habana, Oberhausen, e-flux, Kurzfilm Hamburg, BlackStar Film Festival, ImagineNative, among others.

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