Whistler Film Festival Archives

A Spotlight on Whistler Film Festival’s Three Animated Features of 2025

The Whistler Film Festival brings its strongest animated lineup yet, debuting Arco, Scarlet, and The Lost Tiger for audiences eager to discover bold storytelling before it hits theatres.

Whistler Film Festival 20253 Although the Whistler Film Festival is not super well known for debuts of animated features, this year caught my attention with three animated works. Whether there’ll be enough snowfall to get in some skiing depends on conditions, but for those wanting an early preview of what’s making the art house screening run, these three films stand out. It’s safe to say Hosoda’s Scarlet is coming in hot after its home country debut (Nov 21, 2025). There will be a full theatrical distribution. Please see below for further information.

Arco

Saturday, December 6 3:15pm
Rainbow Theatre

In the year 2075, 10-year-old Iris lives a quiet life with her robot caretaker, Mikki, while her parents are consumed by their research. Her world changes when a mysterious boy named Arco, dressed in a rainbow-coloured suit, falls from the sky. Arco is a time traveller from a distant, utopian future, accidentally sent to Iris’s time. Together, they embark on an adventure to help Arco return home, all while evading those who seek to exploit his origins.

Drawing inspiration from the works of Moebius and Hayao Miyazaki, this French film written and directed by Ugo Bienvenu offers a poignant exploration of friendship, hope, and the resilience of the human spirit. In order to qualify for Oscar nomination, there was a limited release in early November. A wider release is expected in early 2026.

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When Your Life is Caught on Video, What Zoe.mp4 Captures on Tape Will Leave You Guessing!

In what makes Zoe.mp4 work is that it very nicely puts all of this character’s life in a container that’s over a fire, and it’s waiting to explode!

Making Its World Premiere at Whistler Film Festival on Nov 30. For tickets, please visit the link here.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Zoe.mp4 is the title. Most digital videos are encoded in either the mp4 container format or MKV; and to put anything into a digital document can be unsettling, since anyone can look at it in order to deconstruct whatever gets recorded by the device’s lens. Some say a camera can capture your soul, but what else can it do?

Zoe’s life isn’t picture-perfect. She has doubts about where her career is going, and Julia Sarah Stone excellently plays those fears up. We witness her journey and, when she gets kidnapped, also feel her discomfort. Although the choice to make the title character young is curious, perhaps that’s to make this film relatable for today’s generation. Not everyone knows what they want to do with their growth or find themselves capable of doing.

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The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova

Michael Whatling’s The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova is a meaningful story for the ages; not only it is about family ties that bind but also it teaches us a bit more about ourselves.

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

This film played at the 2018 Whistler Film Festival on Nov 30th.

The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova is a hilarious and heartwarming film. When two estranged siblings are strangers in a strange land and they have to work together to honour their grandmother’s last request–to find the remains of her dog, Peter–what they discover about their family heritage just might help mend fences. What they dig up are their own skeletons in the closet, and not even the remains of a beloved canine will dare tear their lives apart

Aaron (Douglas Nyback) and Sarah (Katherine Fogler) Cotler are in Poland. This film is more about them bonding, much like how Buby (Polish: Busia) and Peter (the dog) were. No flashbacks are immediately offered to let me know just how much these two loved each other; though by the film’s end, we see brother and sister understand each other more.

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