A Nerd and Foodie’s Guide to the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival

Runs Sept 26 – October 6

When the Vancouver International Film Festival offers works that also concern why this city is beloved, that’s because my number one pick is still a place I need to visit one day! And I better have deep pockets since the sushi that’s offered here can be considered by some as perfection. But what’s more important is Tojo, the man behind the restaurant. When he’s been a fixture on television when I was growing up and catching him cook some delicious dishes for morning television viewers, I’m hooked!

But as for what else this festival offers, I offer my nerdy top ten guide. To note, the links go to online ticket sales and show times:

The Chef & the Daruma

The inventor of the California Roll, chef Hidekazu Tojo helped bring sushi to mainstream popularity through his renowned Vancouver restaurant, Tojo’s. The Chef & the Daruma is a mouthwatering film touching on immigration, identity, and reinvention.

Angela’s Shadow

When a socialite visits her nanny’s remote reserve, she discovers her Cree ancestry and delves into her new-found spiritual traditions to save herself and her newborn baby from her husband’s psychotic, and purity-obsessed racism.

Fly Me to the Moon

Spanning three decades, this powerful drama tells the story of a Hong Kong family of immigrants from the Mainland. Working as writer, director, and star, Sasha Chuk maintains an intimate focus as she takes us through 30 years of love and struggle.

Rock Bottom

Inspired by the musician Robert Wyatt and the recording of his 1974 classic of the same name, Rock Bottom is a psychedelic, animated musical odyssey about a drummer reinventing himself after an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down.

Flow

In this wordless and gorgeously atmospheric animated feature, a solitary black cat survives a tsunami and must confront his fear of water whilst sailing through a flooded world with a group of misfit animals. An enchanting adventure film for all ages.

Timestalker

Inspired by old Hollywood’s grand romantic epics and paying homage to costume dramas, speculative fantasies, swashbuckling adventures, and 80s music videos, Timestalker is both a giddy genre confection and a heartfelt tale of hard-won empowerment.

Presence

When a family moves into a new home, tensions simmer, melancholy takes a stranglehold, and things go bump in the night… Steven Soderbergh re-imagines the haunted house film by shooting every eerie scene from a spectre’s viewpoint.

Párvulos

Years after a viral zombie outbreak, three young brothers are forced to fend for themselves in a remote cabin in the woods. Isaac Ezban (The Similars) presents a gory, coming-of-age fable with a warm heart and a dark twist, destined to be a cult classic.

She Loved Blossoms More

Three brothers unleash cosmic horror when they build a time machine out of their mother’s wardrobe to bring her back from the dead. Veslemes’ surreal body horror is a hallucinatory freak show with a pitch-black sense of humour and skin-crawling visuals.

Nightbitch

Amy Adams gives a fearlessly feral performance as the exhausted mother to a demanding toddler who begins to suspect she’s turning into… a dog? Rachel Yoder’s bracingly strange novel has been adapted by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?).