Vancouver Film Festival Archives

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

The selection of films offered at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival is sure to sate the delight of fans across all genres, and yeah, we gotta visit Tojo’s restaurant too!

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.

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Top 5 Genre Picks Playing at the Vancouver International Film Festival

This year’s Vancouver International Film Festival is looking terrific with its variety of genre films that’s being offered!

The Vancouver International Film Festival has started, and they’ve added more genre films to their programming! It’s terrific that there’s more representation, but to stay true to their mission, it’s not anything that looks good, but it’s visions that can show the best genre movies can represent from an artistic perspective.

There’s not enough to form a top ten picks out of the thirteen titles, so what I offer is my top five, beginning with:

The Boy and the Heron Japanese Poster

The Boy and the Heron

Spirited Away director Hayao Miyazaki returns from retirement with an enchanting swansong, the story of a young boy, Mahito, growing up in Japan during WWII, who must venture into a fantasy world in order to save his new stepmother.

For those unable to attend these film festival screenings, there’s no need to worry. This movie is making it’s theatrical debut December 8, 2023 and it’s sure to sell out!

6:30 pm Fri Oct 06 Vancouver Playhouse
12:00 pm Sat Oct 07 Vancouver Playhouse

Robot Dreams

Living a solitary existence in Manhattan, Dog is tired of being alone, and builds his own friend: Robot. Their friendship blooms while exploring 1980s New York. This enchanting 2D animation brims with love, loss, and friendship.

6:00 pm Mon Oct 02 The Rio Theatre
3:45 pm Sat Oct 07 International Village 9

The Animal Kingdom

In a world where mysterious mutations are gradually evolving humans into animal hybrids in an unpredictable and frightening way, a father tries to protect his 16-year-old son who is starting to acquire beastly characteristics.

9:00 pm Sun Oct 08 The Rio Theatre

Bitten

Françoise wakes up from an ominous dream that seems to foreshadow her imminent death. Not wanting to waste a minute of her remaining time, she consults her crystal pendulum and convinces her best friend Delphine to attend a mysterious costume party.

6:30 pm Fri Sep 29 The Cinematheque
8:30 pm Wed Oct 04 Vancity Theatre

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

Meet Sasha, the world’s most compassionate young vampire. Her family is at their wits’ end with her refusal to embrace their lethal traditions and threaten to cut her off–until she meets a brooding boy hoping to end his life, and strikes a unique deal.

9:00 pm, Sat Sep 30, The Rio Theatre
8:15 pm, Mon Oct 02, International Village 9

TheNFB at the 2020 Vancouver Film Fest!

The world premiere of Sundance award-winning Vancouver filmmaker Jennifer Abbott’s new feature doc The Magnitude of All Things (Cedar Island Films/Flying Eye Productions/NFB) tops a powerful lineup of National Film Board of Canada (NFB) produced and co-produced documentary and animation at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), taking place September 24 to October 7.

Two NFB feature docs by acclaimed creators are also making their BC debuts:

Inconvenient Indian by Michelle Latimer, a filmmaker, producer, writer and activist of Algonquin, Métis and French heritage.
John Ware Reclaimed by Cheryl Foggo, a Calgary-born filmmaker, author and playwright whose work often focuses on the Black Canadian experience.

The festival is presenting two NFB animated shorts:

The Great Malaise by Quebec animator and illustrator Catherine Lepage.
The Fake Calendar by Meky Ottawa, from the Atikamekw Nation in Quebec, produced through the Hothouse program.

TRAILERS:

The Magnitude of All Things by Jennifer Abbott

(World Premiere) When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. The Magnitude of All Things draws intimate parallels between the experiences of grief—both personal and planetary. We are getting tories from the frontlines of climate change in Northern Canada, Australia, Ecuador, Sweden and England merge with recollections from the filmmaker’s childhood on Ontario’s Georgian Bay. What do these stories have in common? The answer, surprisingly, is everything.

BC-based Abbott has been making films about urgent social, political and environmental issues for 25 years, including co-directing the 2003 Sundance award-winning The Corporation. She’s also back at VIFF this year with The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, co-directed with Joel Bakan.

The Great Malaise by Catherine Lepage

In the voiceover for this animated short, a young woman attempts to describe herself, casting her life in the ideal light that society expects. The film’s imagery, however, tells a different story, poignantly illustrating the intense anxiety that comes with the quest for perfection and the pursuit of happiness. A film that’s both funny and moving, and above all, profoundly human.