The Debut

VIFF is honoured to open the festival with this special by-invitation screening of Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut. When meek Mona (Julianne Moore) lands a part in a musical, she fully inhabits her character, but grows increasingly untethered from reality.

When Esteban Martínez, an acclaimed director with violent tendences, invites his estranged daughter to star in his latest project, the stage is set for a familial reconnection. But as tensions flare, questions about his intentions rise to the surface.

Mike Leigh’s film depicts the lives of Amy and Rosie, best friends and fellow social workers, who care for the dispossessed with all the strength they have. Sometimes it's funny, tragic, and often it's balancing both, this is a work of humble compassion.

A career thief’s circumstances grow desperate when he fences valuable merchandise stolen from a vengeful crime family. John Turturro is exquisite as a wiseacre who is typically one step ahead of everyone but now finds himself behind the eight ball.

A conservative family faces state scrutiny over their parenting in a progressive Norwegian town. Starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or–winning Fjord is a morally knotty drama about the limits of tolerance.

Whatcha Want, a hip-hop-infused drama from award-winning Vancouverite Mina Shum (Meditation Park), sees a restless trophy wife from Hong Kong rise above her wealthy husband’s infidelity by rekindling her passion for dance.

A hedonistic New York club promoter gets an unexpected wake-up call when the 10-year-old son he never knew existed enters his life. Jordan Firstman’s charming, funny debut Club Kid is an offbeat story of parenthood, redemption, and unexpected bonds.

In Jesse Eisenberg’s utterly outlandish yet emotionally honest sendup of the theatre world, a meek novice (Julianne Moore) is cast in a local musical and falls under the sway of the “biggest name in New Jersey community theatre” (Paul Giamatti).

Russia, 2022. While contending with the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a corporate executive tries to insulate his home life from the consequences of the war. But when he discovers that his wife has been unfaithful, things start to implode.

Nobel laureate Thomas Mann returns to postwar Germany alongside his fiercely loyal daughter Erika. Winner of Best Director at Cannes, Paweł Pawlikowski's drama is a piercing study of complicity, family fractures, and the impossibility of true homecoming.

When his wife passes suddenly, a devout assassin (Mahershala Ali) is thrust into single parenthood and set on a collision course with a far-right faith leader (John Cho) and his militia. A dizzyingly choreographed, deeply soulful action thriller.

Image: © Jaclyn Martinez

In 1975, a broke, unknown actor named Sylvester Stallone bet everything on the screenplay he wrote — with himself attached to star. I Play Rocky tells the improbable story behind one of Hollywood's greatest underdog stories.

Image: © Courtesy of Elevation Pictures

An engineer and his brother fall prey to a dangerous mob scheme in 1986 Queens. James Gray’s Paper Tiger is a tense crime drama about family, loyalty, and the price of ambition. Starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson.

An eldercare manager (Virginie Efira) forms a life-changing bond with a terminally ill playwright (Tao Okamoto) in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden, a tender, philosophically rich meditation on mortality, care, and what we owe one another.

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest confection is a mischievously meta mea culpa, a bifurcated comedy about the perils of autofiction: A blocked writer-director borrows liberally from the lives of friends without so much as a by your leave.

With the First World War raging, two young Belgian soldiers develop an explosive chemistry while serving in their company’s theatre troupe . Coward is a reminder that transformative moments of tenderness can occur even amid the darkest circumstances.

Claiming to be the heir to a patch of German farmland, a disfigured soldier ignores the townsfolk’s suspicions, cultivates the land, and takes a wife, all while concealing that they were born a woman. Featuring a mesmerizing Sandra Hüller performance.

Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.

Schoolgirls Fujina and Kyomoto find success creating manga together, until one day a rift occurs… Taking us from triumph through tragedy and out the other side, Look Back has all the grace and tenderness director Koreeda Hirokazu is famous for.

Based on a short story by Colm Toibin and set in the Rockies in the 1950s, the latest from All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh is a piercing emotional drama about a family facing hardships over a few months in a cabin far above town.

In this soul-searching character piece from veteran writer-director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton; Andor), Pedro Pascal plays Alex, a cellist reevaluating his life choices as he returns home to Los Angeles after an ill-advised love affair.

A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes.

Shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, CIA agents Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) are dispatched to Easter Island by their bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi). There, the longtime partners wrestle with their dark pasts and present conspiracies.