Canadian Premiere
1970s, in the High Alps. Fifteen-year-old runaway orphan Jeanne (Clara Pacini) finds shelter in a movie studio where a film adaptation of her favourite fairy tale, Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, is being shot. From her hiding spot behind the stage, Jeanne becomes enthralled with the film’s mysterious and exacting star, Cristina van den Berg (Marion Cotillard). When Jeanne is mistaken for an extra on set, Cristina takes a shine to her. But cold is the heart of the Snow Queen, and she demands sacrifices from those who love her.
This spellbinding fantasy drama from director Lucile Hadžihalilović combines an experimental arthouse aesthetic with stunning wintry landscapes to paint a dark, oneiric world that flows freely between Jeanne’s tactile reality and the Snow Queen’s cinematic fantasy realm. Up-and-comer Clara Pacini shines in her delicate portrayal of teenage vulnerability, while Academy Award–winning actress Marion Cotillard brings masterful nuance to her depiction of the ice-cold screen queen. Winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at Berlinale.
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution, Berlinale 2025
Community Partner
Lucile Hadžihalilović
Marion Cotillard, Clara Pacini, August Diehl, Gaspar Noé, Marine Gesbert
France/Germany
2025
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits
Producer
Muriel Merlin
Screenwriter
Lucile Hadžihalilović, Geoff Cox
Cinematography
Jonathan Ricquebourg
Editor
Nassim Gordji Tehrani
Production Design
Julia Irribarria
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Turner & Constable
Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.
The President's Cake
Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.
Sinners
2025's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
Montreal, ma belle
In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
