Canadian Premiere
In this highly original biopic, Birgit Minichmayr (Maren Ade’s Everyone Else) plays the renowned Austrian painter Maria Lassnig at all ages of the artist’s life, traversing the decades with nary a change in appearance. Unbound by conventional narrative form, the film skips freely between disparate times and places, recounting how Lassnig asserted herself as a female artist in the male-dominated art world of postwar Austria. Like the self-portraits for which she was best known, it is a daring experiment with identity, presenting a sensuous rush of emotion that transcends the limitations of a linear story.
Directed by Anja Salomonowitz, Sleeping With a Tiger is a formally innovative look at an uncompromising female artist, and a standout of this year’s Berlinale Forum. Mixing interviews, historical footage, scenes with actors, and fragments of short films directed by Lassnig herself, the film is a radical depiction of the painter’s inner and outer life, one that captures the enduring enigma of her art.
Birgit Minichmayr, Johanna Orsini, Lukas Watzl, Oskar Haag
Austria
2024
In German, English and French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Antonin Svoboda
Screenwriter
Anja Salomonowitz
Cinematography
Jo Molitoris
Editor
Joana Scrinzi
Production Design
Andreas Ertl, Martin Reiter
Original Music
Bernhard Fleischmann
Anja Salomonowitz
Anja Salomonowitz has developed her own film language. Her films are explicitly political while expanding the boundaries and possibilities of film in their artistic form. She studied film in Vienna and Berlin under Ulrich Seidl and mentors students at Aalto University Helsinki and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Anja was chairwoman of the Austrian Documentary Film Association and the Austrian Film Directors’ Association, served on the supervisory board of the Austrian Film Fund, and is a dramaturge for the Austrian Screenplay Association. Currently based in Vienna, she is working on a film about Ukrainian activist and founder of the feminist group FEMEN, Inna Shevshenko.
Filmography: You Will Never Understand This (2003); It Happened Just Before (2006); Spain (2012); The 727 Days Without Karamo (2013); The Boy Will Be Circumcised (2016); This Movie Is a Gift (2019)
Photo by Heribert Corn
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Ghost Elephants
Everyone's favourite German adventurer, Werner Herzog goes on the hunt for the largest land mammal on the planet, the fabled "ghost elephant" of the Angolan highlands -- that may, or may not, exist.
The Things You Kill
Thirty-something professor Ali leads an apparently stable life. But when his ailing mother dies under ambiguous circumstances, he starts to unravel, resulting in an act that shatters our understanding of his person.
Miroirs No. 3
Following a car crash that kills her boyfriend, piano student Laura is physically unhurt but emotionally distraught. A local woman takes her in, but she gradually realizes she's in the midst of an eerie, mysterious family situation.
Image: © Schramm Film A4 Kopie
Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World
Bonnie Thompson, Bonnie Sherr Klein, Moira Simpson, Zainub Verjee, Judy Rebick are among the Canadian feminist creatives who recount tales from the trenches, the gory glory days of 1970s, 80s and 90s, before the internet changed everything.
Montreal, ma belle
In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.
The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes
A beautiful portrait of E.J. Hughes, who quietly helped reshape the artistic landscape of British Columbia in the 20th century. This extraordinary documentary explores Hughes’s legacy not only as an artist, but as a devoted, humble human being.