From the indoctrination of youth to increasing surveillance, populist ethno-nationalist and fascist ideologies continue to take root, yet dissent remains at the fore.
Oct 2: Q&A
This short film program includes the following films:
Anatomy of a Lost Sound
Zuko Garagić, Bosnia/Herzegovina/Czech Republic/USA (20 min)
A cast of non-actors depict a Czech paramilitary youth camp while an incendiary recording metastasizes antisemitic rhetoric across Europe.
The Uniformed
Timon Ott, Germany (17 min)
After committing to 17 years of service, an 18-year-old discovers that things are not as uniform in the military as he thought.
Monument
Jeremy Drummond, USA (18 min)
Treated and multilayered Super 8 images are juxtaposed, illuminating tensions that bridge protest and reclamation with the perils of nationalism.
Sixty-Seven Milliseconds
Fleuryfontaine, France (15 min)
Blending chronophotography and CGI, French surveillance footage raises questions about policing and institutional violence.
Blind, Into the Eye
Atefeh Kheirabadi & Mehrad Sepahnia, Iran/Germany (20 min)
Ammunition fired deliberately at Iranian protesters points to a particularly insidious form of state repression.
happiness
Fırat Yücel, Netherlands/Turkey (18 min)
As the unfolding genocide in Gaza is streamed around the world, resistence persists for a group of activists and immigrants in Amsterdam sabotaged by insomnia.
Community Partner
Various
Various
2025
Various
Child abuse, racism, police violence
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Executioner
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.
8
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.
The Plague
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...
Yunan
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...
