VIFF Short Forum 5

The return of scary: fear in all its chilling, suspenseful, and unsettling shades.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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