Skip to main content
The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal film image; five people standing against a bus

The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal

Special Presentations

This event has passed

In celebration of The Tragically Hip’s 40th anniversary, the quintessential Canadian band receives a deserved tribute in a docuseries helmed by Mike Downie, brother of the band’s late frontman Gord Downie. VIFF is honoured to have Mike and The Tragically Hip – Rob Baker, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, and Gord Sinclair – join us for this special evening as we share the first two episodes of this definitive series, a love story between a band and the country they call home.

Drawing from archival and personal footage and featuring previously unseen performances, unreleased music, and unprecedented access to The Hip, No Dress Rehearsal is far from hagiographic. Instead, the series candidly and compellingly documents four decades of hits and misses, friendship and frustration, triumph and tragedy. Generous and unguarded, The Hip proves themselves to truly be a band of brothers. And they’re every bit as captivating onscreen as they were onstage.

 

Q&A with director Michael Downie and Gordon Sinclair, Jake Gold, Johnny Fay, Leslie Gailbraith, Paul Langlois & Robert Baker

 

Media Partner

       

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2024

Language

English

Film Contact
18+
120 min
Award Winners Documentary Q&As at VIFF
Courage Films

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Jake Gold

Producer

Bryn Hughes, Kim Creelman, Dave Wells, Kalin Moon, Mike Downie, Rob Baker, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair

Cinematography

Chris Romeike

Editor

Peter Denes

Original Music

The Tragically Hip

Mike Downie headshot; The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal director

Mike Downie

Mike Downie is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and co-founder of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund. Downie is a writer, director, and producer of numerous documentaries including Finding the Secret Path (2018), Invasion of the Brain Snatchers (2013), and The Hockey Nomad (2003). Before his career in film and television, Downie worked as a deep shaft miner in Northern Ontario; a medical researcher at McGill University; a junior economist in Toronto; and as a windsurfing instructor in the US Virgin Islands. He holds a BSc from Queen’s University and an MBA from York University’s Schulich School of Business.

Photo by Ian Patterson

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

Love

Dir. Dag Johan Haugerud
119 min

This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka & The Art of Survival

Dir. Julie Rubio
96 min

If Art Deco had a face, it was surely Tamara De Lempicka, giving us the side-eye at the wheel of a green Bugati in her famous self-portrait. Rubio's invaluable doc teases out the truths behind the myths, shedding light on De Lempicka's still underrated art.

Image: © 2024 TAMARA DE LEMPICKA ESTATE, LLC ADAGP, PARIS ARS, NY

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day

Dir. Ivona Juka
137 min

In this powerful period drama, a Yugoslav filmmaker falls out of favour with the Communist regime in the 1950s. Suspected of homosexuality and ideological impurity, he has enemies in high places, but refuses to concede his human rights.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Wedding Banquet

Dir. Andrew Ahn
103 min

This joyful comedy cleverly updates Ang Lee's 1993 gay marriage comedy and transports the action to contemporary Seattle (actually, Vancouver).

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

On Swift Horses

Dir. Daniel Minahan
119 min

A young couple's California dream turns sour when his charismatic card shark brother (Jacob Elordi) upends their ideas about what they want. This is a sumptuous 50s melodrama with a queer viewpoint.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

April

Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
134 min

A doggedly mysterious and haunting account of an investigation into the professionalism of a Georgian Ob-Gyn, Nina, accused of negligance, Dea Kulumbegashvili's film has been compared to the work of masters like Haneke, Glazer and Reygadas.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema