Levers starts with a bang as a crowd gathers in an unnamed Manitoban city for the unveiling of a new sculpture. Later that evening, a large blast erupts and ushers in a day of darkness. Worldwide, people huddle around the warm glow of their television screens eagerly awaiting a new sun to rise. Determined to satiate her curiosity surrounding recent events, an intrepid civil servant undertakes an odyssey into a world shrouded in mystery.
Developed from a script of poetry, filmed on location throughout the Red River Valley on broken Bolex cameras, and mixing in-camera effects with a delicate eye for natural beauty, Rhayne Vermette’s sophomore feature conveys an ominous story through a potent mixture of bewitching fantasy and the idleness of the everyday.
Val Vint, Andrina Turenne, Will George
Canada
2025
In English and French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Producer
Rhayne Vermette, Oliver King, Charlene Moore
Screenwriter
Rhayne Vermette
Cinematography
Rhayne Vermette, Ryan Steel, Heidi Phillips, Kristiane Church
Animation
Elise Simard
Production Design
Janelle Tougas
Original Music
Bret Parenteau
Rhayne Vermette
Rhayne Vermette, born in Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitoba, is a primarily self-taught artist and filmmaker whose work explores place, time, and rhythm through collage, photography, and analog film. Her films have screened internationally, including at TIFF, Berlinale, and New York Film Festival. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award. Her debut feature Ste. Anne (2021) received critical acclaim, winning TIFF’s Amplify Voices Award. Rhayne lives and works in Winnipeg.
Filmography: Ste. Anne (2021)
Photo by Calvin Thomas
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Silent Friend
In this entrancing reverie from On Body and Soul director Ildikó Enyedi, we are invited to contemplate several human specimens from the vantage point of a mighty Ginkgo biloba tree on the grounds of a German university.
Fiume o Morte!
The Croatian city of Rijeka rediscovers its own past in this delightfully unconventional hybrid documentary about Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the city known in Italian as Fiume in 1919.
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
Bushido
An impeccable samurai (and "Go" expert), Kakunoshin is framed for a crime and forced into exile. Years later he stumbles across the true reason for his fall from grace, and sets about exacting his revenge...