KDocsFF tickets go on sale January 5, with 25 social-justice documentaries on offer

Festival runs February 22 to 26 at VIFF Centre for its biggest festival yet

A full speaker roster returns to KDocsFF; documentary screenings this year include *Wochiigii Lo:* *End of the Peace* (above right) and *Unarchived*.

KDOCSFF RETURNS TO its first in-person events for the first time since 2020, with its biggest festival to date. The festival is Metro Vancouver’s premier social justice film festival.

KDocsFF will screen 25 films from February 22 to 26 at the Vancouver International Film Centre (Vancity Theatre) in Vancouver. The five-day span makes it the longest-ever in-person KDocsFF, and it’s the first in-theatre rendition of the event since 2020.

Tickets start at $5 per film and are on sale starting January 5. Find the full schedule here, and get a sneak peek the highlight reel below.

The theme of the 2023 KDocsFF is “People. Places. Power.” Thirteen of the films are Canadian.

Some notable figures are scheduled to attend this year’s festival: Carol Todd, the mother of teen Amanda Todd who lost her life due to bullying; Phyllis Jack-Webstad, the creator of Orange Shirt Day; and Dewayne Lee Johnson, who is the subject of one of the films and a successful plaintiff against Monsanto.

Farhana Yamin, international lawyer and the subject of Rebellion, is a keynote speaker at the festival. Alex Winter, the director the YouTube Effect, will also attend. The former actor turned award-winning documentarian is best known for starring in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Thoughtfully matched double bills include Unarchived and Writing with Fire; The YouTube Effect and Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age; The Scattering of Man and Wochiigii Lo: End of the Peace; The Doctrine of Recovery and Returning Home; and The Monopoly of Violence and The Cost of Freedom: Refugee Journalists in Canada. (The double bills feature two films for $8, which includes two keynotes and a joint panel and Q&A.)

Watch for a Latin America theme day on February 23, and an Environment theme day on February 24, both hosted in the Vancity Studio Theatre.

And if you missed them at past fest screenings, Alice Street and Jean Swanson: We Need a New Map are both features that will return this year after much success last year.

Articles

New documentary about Arthur Erickson looks at the legend's professional and personal lives

Subtitled Beauty Between the Lines, the film by Danny Berish and Ryan Mah digs deeper than the architect’s portfolio

Film review: Harmonium Symphonique–Histoires sans paroles blends the orchestral and surreal into sheer uplift

White rabbits and Magritte clouds, as Visions Ouest presents film of Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s epic and affecting multimedia performance

The Cinematheque launches 27th-annual European Union Film Festival, November 14 to 28

Featuring film offerings from all 27 European Union members, festival opens with Hungary’s Some Birds and closes with Ukraine’s The Hardest Hour

Hunting Matthew Nichols and Kryptic among B.C. contingent as Whistler Film Festival unveils Canadian entries

They’ll be competing in juried Borsos Competition for Best Canadian Feature at event December 4 to 8

Stir Q&A: Monkey on a Stick filmmaker talks about his exposé of historic Hare Krishna corruption

Boldly pushing the documentary form, Vancouver director tracks a story that involved guns, drugs, money laundering, child abuse, and even murder

Sundar Prize Film Festival welcomes applicants for Filmmaker Mentorship Program

Canada-wide opportunity connects aspiring filmmakers with established industry professionals

Griefwalker conjures a haunting live soundtrack for FW Murnau’s devilish classic Faust

In this classic of German expressionism screening at the Shadbolt, “Every frame is like an album cover,” says the postrock band’s Simon Dobbs

Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 silent horror film Häxan offers an edgy take on witchcraft

The Cinematheque curator Sonja Baksa delivers a week of programming centred on celluloid witches, just in time for Halloween

National Geographic Live presents Life on Thin Ice at the Vancouver Playhouse October 9

Photographer Kiliii Yuyan will be live on stage for the film’s visually stunning exploration of the Arctic

Vancouver International Film Festival announces winners of 2024 juried awards

Inay (Mama) wins the Arbutus Award for best B.C. film; Summit award for best Canadian film goes to Universal Language

VIFF 2024 Talks host Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin in conversation with Métis artist Amanda Strong, October 5

Another highlight of the series on the same date features Shōgun VFX supervisor Michael Cliett

Post-rock band Griefwalker live-scores silent film Faust at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, October 25

F.W. Murnau’s 1926 classic follows the demon Mephisto, who makes a bet with an archangel that a good man’s soul can be corrupted

Stir Q&A: So Surreal: Behind the Masks filmmakers talk about quest to recast art history

Lively, detective-like documentary reveals how Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw and Yup’ik ceremonial masks found their way into the hands of Surrealist masters—and new attempts to repatriate them

VIFF 2024 reviews: Ruthless drama, monumental sculpture, breathless joyrides, and more

Quick takes on Brief History of a Family, Anora, Viva Niki, and Who by Fire, plus documentaries about everything from design mavericks to Haida logging protests to the children of overseas nannies

In Paying for It, Sook-Yin Lee films an unconventional relationship that hits home—literally

At VIFF, she dramatizes ex-boyfriend Chester Brown’s graphic novel about his explorations in hiring sex workers—while still living with the then-VJ

Legendary Vancouver chef Hidekazu Tojo celebrated in new documentary playing at VIFF

The Chef & the Daruma gets to the heart of the acclaimed culinary artist’s inspirations

A.R. Rahman, who's scored more than 100 films, shares stories and music at the Orpheum, October 5

Slumdog Millionaire composer joins the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at Vancouver International Film Festival keynote event

The Cinematheque hosts Swiss filmmaker Fabrice Aragno as part of JLG Forever series, October 10 and 11

Jean-Luc Godard’s principal collaborator introduces Vancouver audiences to Godard’s final film Scénarios, along with Goodbye to Language

VIFF opener Ari's Theme brings lifelong dream to fruition, with live-performed score

Vancouver Island’s Ari Kinarthy wrote the score and stars in a screening event that memorializes his life

At VIFF, documentaries explore humans’ relationships with high tech

*smiles and kisses you*, Grand Theft Hamlet, and Real offer moving and unsettling views of how we attempt to heal ourselves as part of the Spectrum series

Film review: A Mother Apart unpacks a painful legacy of abandonment at Vancouver Queer Film Festival

NFB documentary traces a spoken-word poet's complex relationship with the woman who left her as a child in Jamaica

At the Vancouver International Film Festival, Portraits series highlights cultural icons and ground-breaking artists

Screenings taking place from September 26 to October 6 include Luther: Never Too Much, Disco’s Revenge, So Surreal: Behind the Masks, and nine others

In Fields of Presence, director Jorge Lozano has an impressionistic “conversation” with his late daughter

Faced with tragedy, Colombian-Canadian film and video artist builds a haunting collage about two indivisible spirits at Vancouver Latin American Film Festival

Stir Q&A: Mexican filmmaker Ángeles Cruz on grief, silence, and reappearing at Vancouver Latin American Film Festival

The creative force behind Valentina or the Serenity delves into mourning through the perspective of a young girl

Film reviews: At Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, a Colombian town in search of a TV and pink-punk Chilean empowerment

Quick takes on La Suprema and Outsider Girls, two energized offerings at the upcoming ode to new cinema

Vancouver International Film Festival reveals full program, opening with live-accompanied Ari's Theme

Canadian highlights include Oscar contender Universal Language, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, and Mexican closer Emilia Pérez

Film review: Green Border gives a ground-level look at the brutality of Europe's migrant crisis

Agnieszka Holland’s new film focuses on the zone between Belarus and Poland, where refugees are stuck in a deadly political battle

Deckchair Cinema closes the summer with The Warriors' hyperstylized ode to warring street gangs, August 29

Last of Polygon Gallery’s outdoor screenings feature the cult hit’s battling youth gangs in a famously inspired array of ‘70s costuming

Film review: Murder and old movie houses in enigmatic Chinese noir Only the River Flows

Nothing is that simple in Wei Shujun’s film, the latest from one of the rising stars of international cinema

Film review: Sugarcane documentary brings moving humanity to the horrors of a B.C. residential school

Premiering at VIFF Centre and the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre, remarkable film about the dark legacy of Williams Lake institution wields quiet power