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
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Whispers in the Woods
A luxuriant, healing immersion in nature with ravishing wildlife photography, this is the cinematic equivalent of "forest bathing," a trip deep into the Vosges, France, with photographer Vincent Munier (The Velvet Queen), his father and his son.
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
A bona fide classic and arguably the greatest Canadian film of the 90s, Girard's dazzling deconstruction of the biopic gives us the mercurial pianist Glenn Gould as Picasso might have rendered him, a cubist portrait combining multimedia vignettes.
King Arthur's Night
John Bolton's film of Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef's musical staging recreates Camelot at Harrison Hot Springs. It's a self-referential piece which joyfully reframes a classical narrative through the prisms of disability, inclusivity, and imagination.
Dazed and Confused
The last day of high school in May, 1976: seniors debate party politics while next term's freshmen run the gauntlet of brutal initiation rites, barely comforted by the knowledge that they'll wield the stick one day.
Democracy Under Siege
As the USA turns 250, Oscar-nominated director Laura Nix considers the roots of the current political crisis with commentary from historian Heather Cox Richardson, progressive politician Jamie Raskin, and cartoonist Ann Telnaes, among others.