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We Deserve an Empire film image; lake in purple lighting at night with canoe

VIFF Short Forum 7

VIFF Short Forum

Image: We Deserve an Empire

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Shorts from Armenia, Canada, Tibet, Colombia, Japan, and Turkey.

 

Oct 3 & 4: Q&A with filmmakers

 

This short film program includes the following films:

Grizzly Bear Country
Mave Ky, Canada (6 min)

Masculinity and male friendships are explored through three friends who go on a backcountry hiking trip in the Alberta Rockies.

 


Magic Candies
Daisuke Nishio, Japan (21 min)

Somewhat of a loner, Dong-Dong is content playing marbles on his own. One day, he goes to buy new marbles but leaves the shop with a bag of magic candies instead. Based on the Korean picture book, Magic Candies by Heena Baek.

 


The Egg
Vahan Grigoryan, Armenia (12 min)

A struggling actor decides to steal an egg at the grocery store.

 


Morî
Yakup Tekintangaç, Turkey (20 min)

When a new teacher starts at school, Morî is convinced that he is her long-lost father.

 


The Boys and the Donkey
Tsering Yangjyab, China (21 min)

In the Tibetan Plateau, four friends roughhouse with a neighbour’s donkey, leading to a nasty scratch on one of their faces. They resolve to punish the beast.

 


Culture Shock
Barry Bilinsky, Canada (15 min)

While Joey struggles to fit in at Culture Camp—where she is sent after defacing a mural—the mural artist’s sister is there also, looking for the vandal.

 


We Deserve an Empire
Mauricio Maldonado, Colombia (23 min)

Scrap metal thieves prepare to excavate an abandoned mine for gold.

 

Supported by

    

Community Partner

Director

Various

Country of Origin

Various

Year

2023-2024

Language

Various with English subtitles

Content Warning

Animal cruelty

18+
118 min
Animation BC Spotlight Cinemas of Asia Drama Experimental & Avant Garde Indigenous Cinema LGBTQIA2S+ Q&As at VIFF Shorts

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

La Grazia

Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
133 min

A contemplative, mournful but richly imagined movie about a retiring Italian President (Toni Servillo from The Great Beauty) facing two thorny ethical decisions that may define his legacy.

Image: © Andrea Pirrello

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Executioner

Dir. Luis García Berlanga
92 min

Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

8

Dir. Julio Medem
126 min

The always stylish, idiosyncratic Basque auteur Julio Medem is back with one of his most ambitious films (and our closing night gala), a sweeping historical romance in eight chapters, spanning eight decades in Spanish history from the 1930s to the present day.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Plague

Dir. Charlie Polinger
95 min

At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Yunan

Dir. Ameer Fakher Eldin
125 min

In this haunting mood piece, Munir is a middle-aged Syrian writer in exile in Germany. In crisis, he takes himself up to one of the Halligan islands in the North Sea, a suitable place to end it all...

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Happy Holidays

Dir. Scandar Copti
123 min

Happy Holidays (the title is ironic) is an expansive, acutely observed sociopolitical family saga which thoughtfully considers the myriad intricacies of Israeli Arab life.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre