The veracity of history is made visible, audible, and tangible. Embodying the principle of “Art as modes of truth production,” strap in for a sensory examination of the varying forms of aggression enacted by those with power as a means of dominance.
Sept 28: Q&A with filmmakers
This short film program includes the following films:
The Cavalry
Alina Orlov, Canada/USA/Israel (17 min)
Using a semi-documentary approach, newcomer Alina Orlov highlights the brutal desensitization techniques used to condition Israeli police horses in the West Bank.
Flowers
José Cardoso, Ecuador/South Africa (30 min)
Filmmaker José Cardoso streams disparate details of a war in Ukraine, “justified” by a string of seemingly unconnected events as an ethnocide 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.
Man Number 4
Miranda Pennell, UK (10 min)
A startling confrontation with a photograph taken in Gaza, in December 2023 (which now exists on social media), triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker.
The Diary of a Sky
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lebanon (45 min)
A self-described ‘Private Ear,’ Turner Prize winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan gathers, investigates, and analyzes audio and video recordings of Israeli fighter jets illegally infringing on the otherwise peaceful skies above Lebanon.
Community Partner
Various
Various
2024
Various with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
A tense mystery and an act of radical protest, this film tells the story of an Iranian lawyer who’s lost his handgun and knows someone in his family took it. With every moment, his wife and daughters grow more afraid of him–yet none of them will confess…
Every Little Thing
If you thought Flow was an emotional rollercoaster, wait til you meet Cactus and Wasabi, baby hummingbirds fighting for their lives under the loving care of hummingbird-whisperer Terry Masear, an Angelino who makes it her mission to nurse injured birds.
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
In January 1961, seven months after Congolese independence, Patrice Lumumba is assassinated. In excavating the history of this political murder, this essay-film traces the complex and unlikely intersections of American jazz and Cold War geopolitics.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan's beloved film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel is the tale of a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, defending an innocent black man accused of rape in a small southern town in the 1930s. As selected by VIFF Premium member Margot Pratt.
Universal Language
In a wintery, Farsi-speaking city that’s equal measures Winnipeg and Tehran, storylines entangle and the concepts of space, time, and identity grow increasingly opaque. Inventive and absurd, Rankin's poetic fable reminds us that Winnipeg is a wonderland. Rated: G