Atom Egoyan, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ken Loach as Vancouver International Film Festival unveils first of its programming
PuSh festival cofounder Norman Armour to curate boundary-pushing VIFF Live program
Monster
Seven Veils.
THE VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL Film Festival has released some teasers for its 42nd annual event, running September 28 to October 8—and they include returns of foreign-film icons like Hirokazu Kore-eda and Catherine Breillat, as well Canadian veteran Atom Egoyan’s latest feature.
VIFF announced the first of its Special Presentations today, including Seven Veils by Egoyan, an opera-inspired psychodrama about a young theatre director (Amanda Seyfried) who’s working through her own trauma while remounting the opera Salome. In the 1990s, Egoyan staged Salome here at Vancouver Opera, as well as at the Canadian Opera Company.
Robert McCallum’s Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe, an ode to the Canadian children’s television personality, is also on the roster. And Chelsea McMullan’s Swan Song, focuses on National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 production of Swan Lake that was helmed by Karen Kain; McMullan documented the making of Crystal Pite’s Angel’s Atlas at the National in a film at last year’s fest.
The lineup will also include Japanese auteur and Shoplifters director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, a heartbreaking critique of bullying, queer coming-out, and family dysfunction; and British social realist Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, a working-class drama that explores xenophobia in a village after Syrian refugees arrive. There’s also a strong contingent of female directors in the Special presentations: rising French filmmaker Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, the courtroom drama that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year; always-provocative French director Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, about a brilliant lawyer who begins a relationship with her 17-year-old stepson; and Italian visionary Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, about an English tomb raider living with Italian bohemians.
In all, the fest will feature a roster of 130 features and 100 shorts—with many more to be announced over coming weeks.
Today the fest also announced that this year’s boundary-pushing, cross-disciplinary VIFF Live program is guest curated by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival cofounder Norman Armour. Amid the highlights he’s gathered: 32 Sounds by filmmaker Sam Green, a documentary-meets-live sensory experience, and Machine Folklore, by Software2050 & NAXS FUTURE—an immersive audio-visual performance-screening that melds AI and virtual consciousness in its portrait of humanity.
Tickets are now on sale for the two VIFF Live events, and VIFF+ Members can purchase festival ticket packs starting today. Ticket packs go on sale to the general public on August 17. Find more info here.
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