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Let the Festival Begin!

The wait is over! We are excited to share with you the stellar line-up for the 45th Vancouver International Film Festival, October 1 – 11. Over 160 films, 85 shorts, VIFF Live performances, VIFF Talks, and special events will light up the screens and stages across Vancouver. Take a moment, explore the program and get ready to VIFF!

Today's Highlights

Ticket Release

Is the movie you want to see on Standby? Check the VIFF Daily emails or this page every morning for seats to your most-wanted films! More tickets may become available throughout the Festival.

Tickets will become available online only at 12:00 pm.

Add These Films to Your Watchlist!

See something you’re interested in? Log into your VIFF account and click the heart icon to add it to your personal watchlist!

Nowhere to Lay My Eyes
Nowhere to Lay My Eyes film image; woman filming with a camcorder

Nowhere to Lay My Eyes

Dir. Hong Sangsoo
72 min

VIFF mainstay Hong Sangsoo returns with the story of a daughter, her estranged mother, and the step-family she's never met. Hong's visual style is unadorned as ever — all the better to highlight the strangeness of human interaction.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema Fifth Avenue Cinema - 19+ only SFU Woodwards

Aanikoobijigan [Ancestor/Great-Grandparent/Great-Grandchild]

Dir. Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil
80 min

In Aanikoobijigan, Indigenous repatriation specialists work to bring the remains and funerary objects of Ancestors home from institutional collections. This is a film shaped by memory, dignity, and a duty of care.

The Cinematheque VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Whispers in May

Dir. Dongnan Chen
95 min

Whispers in May follows Qihuo and her friends in China’s Liangshan Mountains as childhood gives way to womanhood. It blends close observation and scenes of the girls' search with animated fragments of Yi oral myth to create a hypnotic coming-of-age film.

SFU Woodwards

Now Playing

We Are All Strangers

Anthony Chen
157 min

Anthony Chen tells the soulful story of a father and son in contemporary Singapore, each of whom gets married for very different reasons. This is a film about the human cost of poverty — poignant, relatable, and profound.

The Park Theatre

Fireflies in the Dark

Dir. Yogesh Lohan
85 min

Three interwoven stories explore survival, resilience, and the human cost of civil conflict against the ethnic violence that erupted in 2023 in Manipur, Northeast India. Yogesh Lohan offers an intimate portrait of lives caught in the strife.

International Village 9

Dear Future Self

Dir. Ella Cieslinski, Nina Wesemann
79 min

Prompting their students to write a letter to their future selves, two friends find themselves questioning the intertwined trajectory of their own lives. Dear Future Self is a sharply tender story about friendship, dreams, and the desire for agency.

Fifth Avenue Cinema - 19+ only

A Place of Absence

Dir. Marialuisa Ernst
86 min

A Place of Absence follows the Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants along migration routes through Mexico and toward the United States, while tracing the disappearance that shaped the filmmaker’s own family history.

International Village 8 International Village 9
The Diary of a Chambermaid
The Diary of a Chambermaid headshot; two people looking serious in a kitchen

The Diary of a Chambermaid

Dir. Radu Jude
94 min

Radu Jude adapts Octave Mirbeau’s classic (and much-filmed) novel in a uniquely Jude fashion, with our oppressed chambermaid prodded by her smug employers to star in a production of... Diary of a Chambermaid. This is a sly and subversive satire.

International Village 10

Still Night, Burning House

Dir. Carol Nguyen
76 min

A world premiere at TIFF Docs, Still Night, Burning House follows Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Carol Nguyen and her family to Vietnam to try and understand her uncle’s mysterious death and the grief left unspoken.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

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Live

Live performances that push the boundaries of traditional film programming, intersecting cinema culture with music, comedy, podcasting, and performance in unique, cinema-infused live shows.

Talks

The world’s leading creators share expertise on their craft.

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