Update: Jordan Paterson’s docudrama Tricks on The Dead: The Story of the Chinese Labour Corps in WWI is this year’s #mustseeBC audience winner and red carpet screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Honourable mention to Charlotte’s Story.
Five dramas and six documentaries are featured in this year’s BC Spotlight program at the 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. Start tweeting now about the best of B.C. to generate some buzz ahead of the festival which runs from September 24th to October 9th. And vote for the film or documentary you want to see win an audience award and get a gala screening when #mustseeBC becomes active on September 12th.
Reimagining The Little Mermaid in the Dirty Thirties. Crisis of faith about past lives. 19th-century photographer, cinema pioneer and murderer. L.A. siblings go to American south to settle father’s estate. World where men passé. Young Dene leader fights oil & gas industry. Two Haida Gwaii docs. 1969 protest against racism at Montreal University. Surrey Sandwich Nazi. Chinese labourers from Vancouver buried WWI dead.
FIVE DRAMAS: Dark fantasy Charlotte’s Song, faith drama The Devout, biopic Eadweard, dramedy My Good Man’s Gone and satire No Men Beyond.
Charlotte’s Song
Her story begins where the fairy tale ends. Director Nicholas Humphries reimagines The Little Mermaid as a siren in the Dirty Thirties. In a sinister retelling, a y0ung girl with a special gift (Katelyn Mager) falls prey to a mob boss (Iwan Rheon) in the Dust Bowl of the North American prairies.
[sz-youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPRMjTXcOvs” /]
Producers @jessicabojin @lindzmann from @Charlottes_Song w/director Nicholas Humphries and star Katelyn Mager #VIFF pic.twitter.com/4DJf8PtpEm
— Vancouver Film Fest (@VIFFest) September 9, 2015
CONGRATULATIONS to @Charlottes_Song for being the FIRST film to sell out a screening at VIFF 2015. Bravo @DoneFourProd!
— Vancouver Film Fest (@VIFFest) September 3, 2015
Screenings – September 26th at 9:15 p.m. at VanCity Theatre/October 1st at 3:30 p.m. at SFU Woodwards. And there’s an additional screening on October 9th at 6:30 p.m. in the Vancouver Playhouse.
A crisis of faith drama about reincarnation. Writer/director Connor Gaston’s feature debut tells the story of a Christian teacher (Charlie Carrick) obsessively trying to determine whether his terminally ill daughter (Olivia Martin) had a past life as an astronaut as she claims. In doing so he experiences a crisis of faith and risks ruining his marriage.
Cast of @TheDevoutMovie on the #VIFF #RedCarpet pic.twitter.com/rfaPwDOon0
— Vancouver Film Fest (@VIFFest) September 9, 2015
Screenings – October 2nd at 9:00 p.m. in International Village #8/October 4th at 12:45 p.m. in International Village #8.
Eadweard
Witness the birth of cinema. Vancouver filmmakers Josh Epstein and Kyle Rideout’s first feature-length film is an ambitious biopic about 19th-century-photographer, cinema pioneer and murderer Eadweard Muybridge played by Michael Eklund. Muybridge got away with killing his wife’s lover as the last American to ever be acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide for such a crime. Eadweard – TV Spot from The Industry & Co on Vimeo. 
.@MichaelEklund and the cast of #Eadweard on the #redcarpet! #VIFF pic.twitter.com/G3e4Q4lmTH — Vancouver Film Fest (@VIFFest) September 9, 2015
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Screenings – October 2nd at 1:30 p.m. in International Village #9/October 5th at 8:45 p.m. in Vancouver Playhouse.
My Good Man’s Gone
North American Premiere: Writer/director Nicolas Citton’s dramedy is about L.A. siblings Joni and Wes Carver (Sheri Nichols and Rick Dacey) who travel to the tiny town of Story, Arkansas (pop. 89) to settle their estranged father’s estate. As they interact with townsfolk, dark secrets emerge about their father and themselves. Shot on location in the rural American south.
Screenings – September 29th at 6:15 pm in the International Village #8/October 3rd at 4:00 p.m. in the International Village #8.
What would the world be like if women were in charge? Men are on the verge of extinction in this mockumentary from Vancouver writer/director Mark Sawers. In an alternate history to our own, women have been able to reproduce without men since 1953 and over time stop giving birth to male babies altogether. That makes Andrew Myers (Patrick Gilmore) the youngest man in the world at age 37. He works quietly for Terra (Tara Pratt) and Iris (Kristine Cofsky) and their all-female family in West Vancouver until his affair with Iris puts him in the media spotlight. Is Andrew key to men’s bid for survival?
Our Sept.26 screening at @viffest is now SOLD OUT! Still tickets left for Oct.2. Don’t miss out… http://t.co/KEEOENgs7a #viff15 #viff15
— No Men Beyond… (@NoMenBeyond) September 23, 2015
Screenings – September 26th at 8:30 pm in the Rio Theatre/October 2nd at 4 p.m. at SFU Woodwards. And there’s an additional screening on October 3rd at 9 p.m.at Cinematheque.
SIX DOCUMENTARIES: Fractured Land, Hadwin’s Judgement, Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the Universe, The Sandwich Nazi and Tricks of the Dead.
Fractured Land
Fiona Rayher and Damien Gillis’s documentary follows young Dene lawyer Caleb Behn as he battles the oil and gas industry. Will he become one of his generation’s great leaders?
Fractured Land Official Trailer from Fractured Land on Vimeo.
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Screenings – September 27th at 6 p.m. at Rio Theatre/September 30th at 4:10 p.m. in International Village #9.
Hadwin’s Judgement
Inspired by John Vaillant’s book The Golden Spruce, Sasha Snow tells the story of Grant Hadwin, a logging engineer who chainsawed down a 300-year-old sacred tree on Haida Gwaii as a protest against out-of-control logging in the area.
‘HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT’ OFFICIAL NFB TRAILER from Sasha Snow on Vimeo.
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Screenings – October 1st at 9 p.m. in the Vancouver Playhouse/October 5th at 1:30 p.m. in the Vancouver Playhouse.
Haida Gwai: On the Edge of the Universe.
VIFF favourite Charles Wilkinson (Oil Sands Karaoke) returns with an ode to Haida Gwaii and the people who live there as they prepare for a showdown over the Northern Gateway pipeline. Winner of Best Canadian Feature Documentary at Hot Docs 2015.
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Screenings – September 29th at 9 p.m. in the Vancouver Playhouse/October 3rd at 1:30 p.m. in the Vancouver Playhouse/October 9th at 12 p.m. in Vancity Theatre.
Vancouver director Mina Shum’s first full-length documentary re-examines the February 1969 events at Sir George Williams University when a protest against a professor’s racism against black Caribbean students ballooned into a 14-day occupation of the university’s computer room by students from all over Montreal.
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Screenings – September 26th at 6:00 p.m. in the Rio Theatre/September 29th at 1:15 p.m. in International Village #10.
The Sandwich Nazi
No Sandwich for You. Filmmaker Lewis Bennett tells the story of utterly crass and funny former Lebanese male escort Salam Kahil who ends up running a Surrey deli with the biggest sandwiches known to man.
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Screenings – September 27th at 8:45 p.m. in the Rio Theatre/October 3rd at 4 p.m. in the Rio Theatre.
Tricks on the Dead
History is nothing but a pack of tricks we play upon the dead. — Voltaire.
Jordan Paterson’s docudrama looks at a shameful chapter in our history during World War I when 140,000 indentured Chinese labourers were secretly sent in locked train cars and ships from Vancouver and other Canadian cities to Europe’s western front where they dug trenches and cleared away the dead.
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Screenings – September 30th at 6:45 p.m. in the International Village #10/October 4th at 3:45 p.m. at SFU Woodwards.