Prepare your eyeballs: it’s nearly time for the Vancouver International Film Festival! The 43rd iteration goes down in theatres citywide from September 26th through October 6th.

Whittling down the 120+ feature-length included (plus 100 short films divided into 10 different screenings) in this year’s program into our “much watch” list of films certainly wasn’t easy. But fortunately, we enjoy a good challenge! Here you have it: 24 films we are aiming to check out, in no particular order, below…

Get Graphic

Perhaps it’s the current surreal state of the world that’s subconsciously drawing me to this year’s animated film universe. That (and self-psychoanalysis) aside, in the case of Flow, it’s likely just because the protagonist of this celebrated Latvian post-apocalyptic film (which stylistically feels like a video game) is an adorable black cat with big, endearing eyes. DETAILS.

On the other hand, British musician and political activist Robert Wyatt is the inspiration for the trippy new animated film, Rock Bottom, by Spanish director María Trénor. DETAILS.

flip the script

Focused on the famous Egyptian cartoonist Doaa el-Adl (of whose works are animated and interspersed throughout), Draw Me Egypt is the feature length headliner of a triumvirate of pertinent political documentaries, which is rounded out by the shorts Facing the Storm: The Indigenous Response to Climate Change and The Smallest Power. DETAILS.

Buzzy as heck, Lee Sook-Yin’s live action adaptation of her ex-boyfriend’s 2011 graphic novel about his experiences with various prostitutes, Paying For It, comes with an irresistibly juicy backstory. DETAILS.

Wanna freak out?

A screening of She Loved Blossoms More, a Greek film about three brothers – Hedgehog, Dummy and Japan – and their self-fashioned time machine. DETAILS.

Meanwhile, Guatemalan fantasy/horror film Jayro Bustamante’s Rita pays tribute to a real life horrific 2017 event where 41 girls died during a fire at the Virgen de la Asunsión orphanage, and is drawing comparisons to OG Guillermo del Toro films. DETAILS.

Then there’s the crazy-true film documenting Brazil’s rebellious and ostentatious hot air ballon art subculture, Balomania. DETAILS.

get real

Sometimes, rather than slipping into a movie theatre in order to escape reality, it’s nice to watch something relatable; to feel “seen” at the same time as you’re observing a well-acted story play out. From what I can suss out from Matt and Mara, it’s the sort of film that’s full of the kind of conversations and interactions that you can imagine having yourself, with your own friends. DETAILS.

Vancouver and Salt Spring Island are more than just atmospheric backdrops in the collaborative film, Preface to a History, which tells the story of the turnaround of a struggling relationship between an aspiring musician named Vlad and his architect girlfriend, Sophy. DETAILS.

I get the same sort of impression from the Japanese film Super Happy Forever – a subtle, very human film about a man’s unique way of coping with the grief of his dead wife. DETAILS.

Then there’s Heirloom, a cringe-y Canadian comedy about a couple raising a dog acquired during the Covid lockdown. Too real? Too soon? DETAILS.

If you’ve ever been ISO a roommate or cohabitation situation, then you should get something – at the very least an empathetic guffaw – out of the new Montreal film documentary, Living Together. DETAILS.

Seriously, though

Youth dictate the narrative in Ninan Auassat: We the Children, a years-in-the-making documentary about children from the Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree and Innu Indigenous nations. DETAILS.

For a dose of timely cinema starring and in-part directed by Palestinian activist, Basel Adra, along with the other three members of his Palestinian–Israeli collective, factor in a screening of the five-year-long film in the making, No Other Land. DETAILS.

Full disclosure

I’m from Winnipeg, which is also the “star” of Matthew Rankin’s new, already-award-winning comedy, Universal Language, where three wildly different storylines converge in the same bizarro Canadian city (aka my hometown). DETAILS.

Frankly, I don’t need to know anything about Rumours, besides that it’s directed by legendary Winnipeg-born director, Guy Maddin (with Evan and Galen Johnson), to prioritize working one of its two screenings into my schedule. However, if that’s not enough for you, here’s the gist: the Canadian auteur’s latest film is a political satire centred around a fictional G7 Summit – and Canada’s especially scandalous Prime Minister in particular – where things go fantastically, horrifically and, presumably, stylistically awry, causing the whole lot of them to go fleeing into the forest. DETAILS.

star attraction

Another non-negotiable for me is anything starring Tilda Swinton. Enter the post-apocalyptic epic, The End, where she plays the uppity art-obsessed wife to Michael Shannon’s retired industrialist cum aspiring writer. DETAILS.

Nor can I get enough of the inimitable Isabelle Hupert, star of A Traveler’s Needs, a film about a strange French woman’s encounters in South Korea. DETAILS.

Get “country”

At the time of publication there is no trailer for the French film Holy Cow, so its inclusion on this list is owing entirely to its synopsis (a teenager decides to work to become a cheese-maker in order to help support his family) plus its silly English title translation, which together tap into my loves of cheese and sense of humour, respectively. DETAILS.

Call me biased towards French farm-animal-related films (who knew?!) for including Shepherds (Bergers) on my shortlist. The premise of award-winning Quebecois director Sophie Deraspe’s new film about a Montreal ad exec who decides to become a shepherd in the French countryside may at its core be a fairly stereotypical “city dweller turns country folk with comedic/romantic/dramatic effects” one, but that doesn’t make it any less irresistible, in my books. DETAILS.

If the films are at least as good as the trailers…

…then these films all show promise! Cherub follows a chubby, middle-aged biologist who spontaneously decides to enter a niche gay magazine’s monthly photo contest. DETAILS.

Impressively artful, Grand Tour promises to take you on a nostalgic global journey through black-and-white depicted 1918. The kind of film that only a true film-lover could make. DETAILS.

F*ck IMDB!

Besides discovering films well before they (potentially) hit our city’s big screens for a full run, VIFF is also an excellent opportunity to catch some cinematic classics and/or recent flicks that might have passed you by, as curated by some specially chosen, smart and talented industry peeps and film-lovers…With that in mind: For this year’s ‘Leading Lights’ program, film director Zarrar Khan (In Flames) highlights four films from around the world that have made a big impression on him personally and professionally, including Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (Marlina si Pembunuh dalam Empat Babak). Distilled by Khan, Indonesian writer-director Mouly Surya’s 2017 film utilizes “the tropes of a spaghetti western, to tell a blazing feminist fable of heart-wrenching solidarity…The film finds solace and catharsis through community, and offers no easy answers. I’m thrilled to share the world’s first satay western with VIFF audiences—a pressure cooker of a film, that offers spectacular violence and deep reflection in equal measure.” Dig it. DETAILS.

Meanwhile, as part of VIFF’s ‘Focus’ series, locally-based guest curators Kika Memeh (a writer, journalist, and interdisciplinary producer) and Ogheneofegor Obuwoma (a Nigerian storyteller, writer, and arts worker) have together picked six films centred on the theme ‘Once, There Is a City’. Included in this shortlist is Swedish director Theresa Traore Dahlberg’s 2017 documentary, Ouaga Girls, a portrait of a small group of young women mechanics-in-training in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. According to Memeh and Obuwoma: “Ouaga Girls proves itself a contemplative film that examines the determination needed to break into a male dominated profession. The rigour demonstrated by the girls establishes this film as an important watch.” DETAILS.