Shorts from: Canada, France, Lebanon, Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Syria, USA.
Oct 4 & 5: Q&A
This short film program includes the following films:
One Duck Down
Lindsay Aksarniq McIntyre, Canada (5 min)
Filmed on the tundra of the Canadian Arctic, place and personal histories are explored through memories embedded in the land.
Baadarane
Samah El Kadi, Lebanon (15 min)
In a small town on Mount Lebanon, a young boy tests God after his mother’s sudden death.
Water Girl
Sandra Desmazières, France/Netherlands/Portugal (15 min)
Anchored by her relationship to the sea as a freediver, Mia recalls her past.
Adieu Ugarit
Samy Benammar, Canada (16 min)
Benammar interviews Mohamed, who witnessed his best friend’s murder by armed militia on the outskirts of Damascus in 2012.
A Light That Doesn’t Dim
Colby Barrios, USA (19 min)
Sister Jones, a Mormon missionary stationed in Mexico, wants to go home.
Four Walls of Memory
Joanna Płatek, Poland (12 min)
A wild creature chases a girl into a cabin, slams into the wall, and dies. Why doesn’t she leave?
WASSUPKAYLEE
Pepi Ginsberg, France/USA (20 min)
Kaylee, a teenage influencer, struggles to find her groove as the latest member of a popular TikTok content house.
Supported by
Community Partner
Various
Various
2024 & 2025
Various
Animal cruelty, violence, murder
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al