
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
Mongrels
Like Riceboy Sleeps, Jerome Yoo's debut feature is a beguiling, introspective film looking back on the Korean immigrant experience in the Canadian hinterland, here split across three chapters, each with a distinct visual aesthetic.
Doctor Zhivago
This Valentine Day, wrap yourself in David Lean's epic, all-star love story, set against the tumult of the Russian Revolution. With Maurice Jarre's haunting score, Omar Sharif as the soulful doctor/poet, and Julie Christie as his soul-mate Lara.
Oscar® Shorts 2025: Documentary
Four of this year's short documentary nominees are from the USA, and three of them deal with violence: a prisoner on death row, Parkland, and a police shooting incident in Chicago, 2018. Happily the other nominees focus on classical music.
Paying For It
Talk about a hall of mirrors! Sook-Yin Lee wittily adapts the graphic novel of the same name by her ex-boyfriend, Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, about the end of their relationship Brown's subsequent decision to start paying for sex.
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
Brief Encounter
Considered one of the greatest British films ever made, this evergreen love story plays like In the Mood for Love, 1945 edition, with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson instead of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, and Rachmaninoff instead of Nat King Cole.