While working on an indie creature feature about a giant crab, hapless sound recordist Jim is sent back to Pincer Point to find a missing girl and capture a sound no one has ever heard for the film’s climactic roar. Neither task proves easy on the strange island, where tight-lipped locals whisper of a ghost ship and its pirate captain who claims the souls of young men and women for his crew. Armed with his trusty boom mic, however, Jim proves more than a match for seafaring spectres and overgrown crabs, sending back uncanny recordings that inspire the director to reshape his film around them.
Lovingly handcrafted and absurdly hilarious, The Peril at Pincer Point is a crustaceous curio awash with affection for indie filmmaking. Co-directors Jake Kuhn and Noah Stratton-Twine push low-budget cinema to its limits, pairing Pythonesque comedy and retro black-and-white B-movie flair with atmospheric sound design that celebrates the film crew’s unsung hero: the man with the boom.
Content Considerations: Flashing lights, themes of death
Supported by
Media Partner
Jack Redmayne, Alyth Ross, Os Leanse, Jason Hogan, Heidi Parsons
UK
2026
English
At VIFF Centre & International Village
At Fifth Ave
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Igor Engler, Caroline Burton
Producer
Noah Stratton-Twine, Jake Kuhn
Screenwriter
Noah Stratton-Twine, Jake Kuhn
Cinematography
Murray Zev Cohen
Editor
Noah Stratton-Twine
Original Music
Tom Penn
Noah Stratton-Twine
Noah Stratton-Twine is a writer, director, editor, and composer whose work blends sharp character-driven storytelling with a resourceful DIY ethos. His works span a variety of genres, including Peril at Pincer Point — an improvised, Roger Corman–inspired comedy that won the NEON Auteur Award for Uncompromising Visionary at SXSW 2026 — and his upcoming feature The Present Times, a paparazzo tragedy executive produced by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton’s Dirty Films, Eric Roth, and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones.
Filmography: Two Big Feet (2025)
Jake Kuhn
Jake Kuhn is a writer, producer, director, and recent alumnus of the National Film and Television School, where he directed the Python-esque medieval farce Hand to God (2026). A lover of all cinema, Jake directed his first feature Peril at Pincer Point (2026) — winner of the NEON Auteur Award for Uncompromising Visionary at SXSW 2026 — with Noah Stratton-Twine. He is next set to produce The Present Times for director Stratton-Twine, alongside several other feature-length projects that he will both write and direct independently.
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
American Doctor
One of the most powerful documentaries of the year, this puts us smack in the open wound that is Gaza, filtered through the eyes of three American surgeons (of Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian backgrounds) compelled to do their utmost to alleviate harm.
The History of Concrete
After attending a workshop on pitching saccharine Hallmark movies, John Wilson tries to apply all the same best practices to his documentary about concrete. Frequently absurd and endlessly entertaining detours, asides, and digressions ensue.
La Bola Negra
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. Screening on 35mm.
A. Rimbaud
Patrick Wang (The Bread Factory) presents the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in this staggeringly adventurous and deeply considered movie, a three-hour, one-man show quite unlike anything we have seen before. "Poetic, audacious and singular."
The 39 Steps
In our new film studies series, FRAMEWORK, film scholar Michael van den Bos explores the work of Alfred Hitchcock, across four monochrome masterworks. This week: The 39 Steps (1935), a witty and fast-moving spy thriller from Hitchcock's English period.

