Intimate and unapologetic stories of women and queer lives are uncovered through provocative and deeply personal accounts that examine memory, identity, and dignity.
Oct 3 & 11: Q&A
This short film program includes the following films:
Rezbotanik
Pedro Gonçalves Ribeiro, Portugal/Brazil/Spain (19 min)
After a night partying, Rezmorah sobers up in the botanical gardens of Lisbon, pondering what the plants can teach us about queerness.
Abortion Party
Julia Mellen, Spain (14 min)
Director Julia Mellen animates and celebrates the termination of her pregnancy with an unexpected array of guests.
It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave
Zhuoyun Chen, China/USA (19 min)
A young woman’s drifting consciousness traces the mystery of an elusive red car.
Daria’s Night Flower
Maryam Tafakory, Iran/UK/France (16 min)
Daria has written her first manuscript about falling in love with a mysterious girl called Blue. The night flowers in her garden hide the secrets of a country that has turned love stories into routine crime scenes.
Goodbye, Fishies
Jonathan Zhang, Australia (12 min)
Personal stories reinterpreted by the actors and director, depict a Thai mother consumed with deep regret for missing her grandmother’s last moments.
Lloyd Wong, Unfinished
Lesley Loksi Chan, Canada (29 min)
Thirty years after his passing, filmmaker Lesley Chan re-examines Lloyd Wong’s uncompleted video art project about living with HIV.
Community Partner
Various
Various
2024 & 2025
Various
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Whispers in the Woods
A luxuriant, healing immersion in nature with ravishing wildlife photography, this is the cinematic equivalent of "forest bathing," a trip deep into the Vosges, France, with photographer Vincent Munier (The Velvet Queen), his father and his son.
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
A bona fide classic and arguably the greatest Canadian film of the 90s, Girard's dazzling deconstruction of the biopic gives us the mercurial pianist Glenn Gould as Picasso might have rendered him, a cubist portrait combining multimedia vignettes.
King Arthur's Night
John Bolton's film of Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef's musical staging recreates Camelot at Harrison Hot Springs. It's a self-referential piece which joyfully reframes a classical narrative through the prisms of disability, inclusivity, and imagination.
Dazed and Confused
The last day of high school in May, 1976: seniors debate party politics while next term's freshmen run the gauntlet of brutal initiation rites, barely comforted by the knowledge that they'll wield the stick one day.
Democracy Under Siege
As the USA turns 250, Oscar-nominated director Laura Nix considers the roots of the current political crisis with commentary from historian Heather Cox Richardson, progressive politician Jamie Raskin, and cartoonist Ann Telnaes, among others.