Shorts from: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Portugal.
Oct 7 & 8: Q&A
This short film program includes the following films:
The Light of Immortality
Mikołaj Janik, Poland (25 min)
A man’s obsession with collecting vintage lamps slowly unravels the shadow of what is real and what is not, as his family, for decades, has quietly supported and adapted to his ever-growing fantasy.
Tears Burn to Ash
Natalie Murao, Canada (15 min)
An encounter with a doppelganger in Japan cracks open the edges of reality, as a return to the homeland becomes a search through memory, absence, and the ghosts of identity.
My Dad is an Astronaut
Bianca Rose Cheung, Canada (14 min)
Through dreamy textures and thermal imaging, the film hums with quiet longing, lost signals, and the strange intimacy of distance.
Mother of Dawn
Clara Trevisan, Belgium/Brazil/Finland/Portugal (9 min)
In the dead of night, a hungry creature searches for food — until something breaks the cycle.
Bleat!
Ananth Subramaniam, Malaysia/Philippines/France (16 min)
An elderly couple faces a dilemma when their male goat, destined for ceremonial slaughter, turns out to be pregnant.
Muljil: Diving
Young Eun Yoo (Yooye), South Korea (26 min)
Yang Young-sam, a 77-year-old haenyeo (female freediver) battling dementia, prepares for a final ritual goodbye.
Supported by
Community Partner
Various
Various
2024 & 2025
Various
Animal cruelty, graphic violence
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