As far as I can recall, VIFF has always been heavy on the Asian cinema and this year’s festival is no different. Mixed into this years’ lineup for the Lions & Tigers program are a few international and world premieres. I’m particularly looking forward to Johnnie To’s Sparrow and Yim Phil-Sung’s excellent looking Hansel and Gretel.

The festival has also announced a number of the films in the Cinema of Our Time program and there are, as expected, some fantastic titles here. I’ve only casually glanced through and I’ve already picked out 10 must sees including Hunger, Happy-Go-Lucky and Wendy and Lucy. Also worth noting that the fabulous [REC] is on the lineup though I’ve already caught up with that. To see that list of films, scroll down or jump down.

China

24 CITY (Jia Zhangke)
Jia Zhangke’s most daring combination of documentary and fiction yet. The old socialist Factory 420 in Chengdu, Sichuan, is being replaced by ultra-capitalist luxury residences. Interviews with former workers recreate an entire lost world; appearances by famous actors (including Joan Chen) lace realism with poetry.

GOOD CATS (Ying Liang) - North American Premiere
Ying Liang’s savage, funny satire mocks corruption and greed in contemporary China. As ambitious young chauffeur Luo gets deeper into his boss’ schemes, he loses his wife, his money and his moral compass. With a rock band as its Greek chorus: very indie and very surreal.

JALAINUR (Zhao Ye) - World Premiere
Zhao Ye’s visionary film captures a strangely obsessive, beautifully dreamlike relationship between a locomotive engineer on the verge of retirement and his doggedly loyal apprentice. Visual poetry, set in the smoke, steam, and snow of wintry Manchuria.

KNITTING (Yin Lichuan)
An unusual comedy of poverty and romantic jealousy set in southern China. When Chen Jin’s flamboyant ex-girlfriend moves back in to his hovel, his current live-in girlfriend quietly, stubbornly resists. Director Yin Lichuan allows three-way rivalries to develop in unexpectedly intense and off-beat directions.

THE LONGWANG CHRONICLES (Li Yifan) - World Premiere
Li Yifan’s brilliant documentary-almanac chronicles a year in the life of a Chinese small town. Rival underground Christian cults, dubious local electioneering, indentured labour practices: the Chinese government’s policy of “building a socialist countryside” seems far, far away in this revelatory portrait of grassroots life.

THE LOVE OF MR. AN (Yang Lina) - North American Premiere
A documentary from China as intimate as it is revelatory. Filmmaker Yang Lina brings us romantically charismatic Lao An, an eighty-something charmer with a vivacious lover (in her youthful 60s) and a disgruntled wife. Love, sex, betrayal, death: this is real life, not melodrama.

PERFECT LIFE (Emily Tang) - China/Hong Kong - North American Premiere
Li Yueying is a repressed 21-year-old, just starting out in a new job as a hotel maid, living mostly in her own fantasy world. Emily Tang’s quietly masterful film (co-produced by Jia Zhangke) follows her from domestic disappointments through a tentative relationship to the surprises of encroaching middle-age, and counterpoints her life with that of a divorced mother-of-two living in Hong Kong. These women meet only once, very briefly, but have more in common than first appears. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

PLASTIC CITY (Yu Lik-wai)
Three generations of Chinese intellectuals, officials, and activists discuss China’s tortured post-1949 history and present possibilities in Wenhai’s remarkably incisive documentary. “Creatures of politics,” they call themselves, and we see how their remarkable histories animate their current beliefs. Living politics, at intimately close range.

SURVIVAL SONG (Yu Guangyi) - International Premiere
Yu Guangyi documents the disappearing lifestyle of a family of isolated hunter-trappers in the snowy wilds of northeastern China. But he uncovers the uncanny: their boarder Xiao Li, a nearly mute vagrant, whose wild, passionate singing is a cry, piercing unimaginable loneliness, for survival and dignity.

SWEET FOOD CITY (Gao Wendong) - International Premiere
Recut since its premiere in Berlin, Gao Wendong’s debut feature makes brilliant use of cinematic space. In the extraordinary setting of Dalian’s Sweet Food City, a housing/shopping development of the 1990s which is already a massive slum, a jobless chancer strikes up a tentative relationship with a tough hooker–until fate intervenes. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

THE EQUATION OF LOVE AND DEATH (Cao Baoping) - North American Premiere
A tour de force by China’s finest young actress, Zhou Xun, anchors Cao Baoping’s black comedy/thriller. She’s a tough cabbie, whose quest for her lost lover pits her against a couple of hapless drug runners. With a frenzied, labyrinthine plot that twists right up to the end.

UP & DOWN (Wang Wo) - International Premiere
A different way to look at Beijing’s Tiananmen and the Avenue of Eternal Peace that’s witty and slyly subversive to boot.

WE (Huang Wenhai) - International Premiere
Three generations of Chinese intellectuals, officials, and activists discuss China’s tortured post-1949 history and present possibilities in Wenhai’s remarkably incisive documentary. “Creatures of politics,” they call themselves, and we see how their remarkable histories animate their current beliefs. Living politics, at intimately close range.

HONG KONG

HIGH NOON (Heiward Mak) - North American Premiere
One of the freshest new Asian coming-of-age stories comes from young Hong Kong director Heiward Mak. This remarkable feature, about seven boys whose exploits escalate from taunting teachers to erotic video, drugs, and troubling violence, is beautifully composed and vibrantly contemporary.

SPARROW (Johnnie To) - North American Premiere
A delightful jeu d’esprit combining yearning romance, gentle action (of the pickpocketing kind), and cinematic dazzle, Johnnie To’s non-action near-musical surprises and beguiles. French in inspiration: think Jacques Demy with a sprig of Melville. Champagne sparkle with a tender heart.

INDONESIA

THE BLIND PIG WHO WANTS TO FLY (Edwin) - North American Premiere
Maverick talent Edwin’s debut feature uses the experiences of Indonesians of Chinese descent to uncover a hidden history of prejudice, paranoia and shameless exploitation. The storytelling is oblique, the images are radiant, and the revelations are sometimes shocking.

UNDER THE TREE - A BALI STORY (Garin Nugroho)
Garin Nugroho heads for the ancient/modern holiday island Bali to tell three stories about women, birth and death. The stories are unrelated, but their motifs criss-cross in interesting and surprising ways: pregnancy, adoption, baby-trafficking and abortion yield a complex tangle of variations on the theme of motherhood, all set in the context of an ancient Balinese death ritual.

JAPAN

ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE (Kitano Takeshi)
Another change of pace for Kitano Takeshi: a sad comedy about a boy’s lifelong quest to become a credible artist, lavishly illustrated with Kitano’s own paintings. (He plays the character in the closing scenes.) Modern art-history was never like this…

AFTER SCHOOL (Uchida Kenji)
Uchida Kenji’s hit thriller has as many twists as The Usual Suspects but stays rooted in its likeable, fallible characters. A common-or-garden salaryman has gone missing, maybe with a woman, but as assorted yakuza, private eyes and schoolteachers discover, more is going on than meets the eye. With hot new stars Oizumi Yo and Sasaki Kuranosuke.

ALL AROUND US (Hashiguchi Ryosuke)
Hashiguchi Ryosuke’s superb new film (his first since Hush) traces a marriage across nearly a decade, during which the easy-going husband (played by novelist Lily Franky) becomes a courtroom artist and finds himself sketching some of Japan’s most notorious criminals, while the control-freak wife (newcomer Kimura Tae) recovers from a near crack-up.

GERMAN + RAIN (Yokohama Satoko) - International Premiere
Sensationally original debut feature by woman director Yokohama Satoko, centred on an indomitable 16-year-old rebel. Assistant gardener Yoshiko grapples with a talent contest, a dying father, a predatory paedophile, a small boy who wants to be a girl and a German soul-mate, all the while pursuing her dream of musical glory. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

GOD’S PUZZLE (Miike Takashi) - International Premiere
Never shy of tackling the big issues, Miike Takashi here explains quantum physics - through the stories of an embittered woman genius and a laddish male idiot, the latter impersonating his twin brother while he’s away searching for spiritual truths in India. The mix of low comedy, high theory, sex, puddles and special effects will certainly make your particles accelerate.

KAZA-ANA (Uchida Nobutero) - International Premiere
“Unrequited love raged through me like a stray dog.” Uchida Nobutero’s excellent indie feature tells the story of what the tabloids would call a “love triangle.” Nabe dumps his girlfriend Mika (by inviting her to a party and then not showing up himself) so that he can seduce her friend Yoko. And his strategy works, but only for a while… Egos clash, desires fade and people change in the gap between love and lust. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

MIME-MIME (Sode Yukiko) - International Premiere
Makoto is as independent-minded as young women get. She lives alone, hates her mother and sister and dates a married man. She doesn’t want to form attachments, but a classmate from primary-school may be the rock on which she crashes. Sode Yukiko’s sparky independent feature confirms that Japan’s women directors are tackling women’s issues in radically new ways. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

MURAKAMI KENJI TRILOGY [Dear Mrs. Ogi + Interview + Fujica Single Date] (Murakami Kenji)
A droll trilogy of linked film essays in which Murakami Kenji (remember Tel-Club?) ponders the demise of Super-8 and gets to grips with what it takes to be an indie film-maker in these troubled times. Several old friends (and past guests) of the Dragons & Tigers series put in appearances, but these are essentially ‘pages’ from a video diary: funny, shocking, provocative and deliciously self-deprecatory.

NAKED OF DEFENSES (Ichii Masahide)
Ichii Masahide (Dog Days Dream) returns with a remarkable movie about a psychologically damaged woman’s road to recovery. Ritsuko makes plastic toys on a production line; she’s shunned by her husband since suffering a miscarriage in a road accident. The arrival of a pregnant newcomer in the factory brings her inner conflicts to the surface.

STILL WALKING (Kore-eda Hirokazu)
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s explorations of the family are beginning to take on Ozu-like dimensions. Two adult children and their families visit their elderly parents for 24 hours to mark the anniversary of their elder brother’s death in a drowning accident. Nothing “dramatic” happens, but a great deal of emotional truth is slowly revealed. Beautifully acted and observed.

UNITED RED ARMY (Wakamatsu Koji) - Canadian Premiere
Between July 1971 and February 1972, two radical-student groups in Japan joined to form the United Red Army, a militant-terrorist organization which stole weaponry from the police and declared war on the Japanese authorities. Wakamatsu Koji’s incendiary docu-drama recreates those fateful months with cool impartiality–and visceral immediacy.

WHAT THE HEART CRAVES (Takahashi Izumi) - North American Premiere
The long-awaited new feature by D&T Award-winner Takahashi Izumi explores more of the dark underside of contemporary lives. A mix-up with house-keys during a conjuring trick throws several lives into confusion, and has a fateful effect on Mukai’s relationship with his flaky girlfriend Kozue.

THE WITCH OF THE WEST IS DEAD (Nagasaki Shunichi) - North American Premiere
Nagasaki Shunichi’s exquisite adaptation of a novel by Nashiki Kaho must be one of the most luminous feminine rite-of-passage films ever. A troubled teen is sent to stay with her English grandmother in the Japanese countryside; the old lady teaches her “witches’ lore” and the girl recovers her emotional equilibrium. But life is never as neat and tidy as you might wish… Stars Shirley MacLaine’s daughter, Sachi Parker.

MALAYSIA

SELL OUT! (Yeo Joon Han) - North American Premiere

An idealistic engineer defies a faceless corporation, while a ruthlessly ambitious TV hostess devises a death-obsessed reality show. Yeo Joon Han’s contemporary Malaysian black comedy intersperses hilariously touching musical numbers throughout his savagely witty spoof of commerce, and true art.

THIS LONGING (Azharr Rudin) - North American Premiere
Sidi is a scrappy boy living in a condemned tenement. His escapades revolve around avoiding school and hallucinatory scenes of night fishing with his father. Malaysian director Azharr Rudin’s first film is a formally daring mood piece that meditates on the meaning of leaving one’s past behind.

PHILIPPINES

ALTAR (Rico Maria Ilarde) - International Premiere
Rico Ilarde’s prizewinning horror movie offers a distinctively Filipino take on the haunted house with a portal to hell in the basement as two jobless men find work renovating a strange house in the countryside. Strong genre thrills and very fine visuals.

BLINK (Ronaldo Bertubin) - North American Premiere
Ronaldo Bertubin’s feisty indie feature looks and sounds like a thriller, but it’s actually a fresh (and, uh, homo-erotic) take on the Quiapo slum melodrama as developed by the likes of Lino Brocka. Small-time crook Ambet wants to pay for an operation to cure his sister’s glaucoma; should he trust photo-journalist Marlon, who wants to use him to expose the local criminal rackets?

JAY (Francis Pasion) - North American Premiere
Today, on Dearly Departed Ones, a mother in Pampanga whose house was half-buried by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo turns on the TV news and discovers that her elder son, a schoolteacher in Manila, has been stabbed to death in a gay sex-crime. Francis Pasion’s prizewinning debut feature is both a lacerating satire of the ethics of “reality TV” and a wry commentary on the west’s predilection for certain images of the “Third World.”

SERBIS (Brillante Mendoza) - Philippines/France
Brillante Mendoza follows last year’s Foster Child and Slingshot with the story of an epically dysfunctional family. They operate a decrepit cinema (called “Family”), which attracts few but men looking for male and transvestite hookers, but conjure up enough melodrama in their own relationships to fill a dozen of the movies they screen.

THE “THANK YOU” GIRLS (Charliebebs Gohetia) - International Premiere
Charliebebs Gohetia, the editor of Brillante Mendoza’s films, turns director with this deeply Filipino variation on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. A gaggle of drag queens and their domestic entourage travel around the sticks, joining “beauty pageants” in which they impersonate the likes of Miss Ecuador. There’s laughter and tears on stage, but how do their off-stage realities match up? Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

YEARS WHEN I WAS A CHILD OUTSIDE (John Torres)
The new feature by D&T Award-winner John Torres represents a very personal coming-to-terms with his father, a publisher of self-help textbooks, who left the family and started another without telling anyone. It’s as essayistic and discursive as Todo, Todo, Teros, but anchored in very precise feelings of love, loss and resentment.

SINGAPORE

LUCKY 7 (Sun Koh, K Rajagopal, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothong Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Ho Tzu Nyen, Tania Sng) - North American Premiere
Sun Koh is a naughty director. She invited six other Singaporean filmmakers to join her in a game of “exquisite corpse”: a chain of episodes linked only by the presence of actor Sunny Pang which mysteriously adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Singapore’s film culture has rarely looked livelier. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

SOUTH KOREA

ACTION BOYS (Jung Byung-Gil) - Canadian Premiere
Jung Byung-Gil’s hair-raising documentary suggests that it may be more dangerous to be a stuntman in Korea than anyplace else on earth. Eight hapless young men are the only ones to stay the course in Seoul Action School; their future (in movies like The Host and The Good The Bad The Weird) will test more than just their breakable bodies…

CROSSING (Kim Tae-Kyun)
Kim Tae-Kyun (Volcano High) comes up with a wrenching new angle on the gap between North and South Korea. A desperate North Korean coal-miner, looking for medicine for his ailing wife, manages to cross the border into China … but finds himself cast as a “refugee” and trapped in South Korea.

HANSEL AND GRETEL (Yim Phil-Sung) - International Premiere
A callow young man crashes his car on a forest road and finds sanctuary in the “House of Happy Children”–where his cellphone can’t connect, the housephone is down and there’s no apparent way out… Fresh from a cameo role in The Host, director Yim Phil-Sung uncovers the grown-up horrors implicit in fairy tales like no-one since Angela Carter. A dazzling, disturbing entertainment. Dragons & Tigers Award Gala screening.

NIGHT AND DAY (Hong Sangsoo) - Canadian Premiere
Largely shot in Paris, Hong Sang-Soo’s latest chronicles the emotional instabilities of a middle-aged painter who has fled Korea because he fears arrest as a dope-smoker. Sung-Nam (played by Kim Young-Ho) can’t speak French and misses his wife, but a chance encounter with a young Korean art student and her flatmate threatens to derail his life.

SYNCHING BLUE (Seo Won-Tae) - Canadian Premiere
A Korean man living in California spends most of his time masturbating. A woman works as a pool attendant and life guard. The pool is used for practice by a synchronized swimming team. Seo Won-Tae’s smart and sardonic movie poses the urgent question: what links masturbation and synchronized swimming? And is there a place for sex in the equation? Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.

TROPICAL MANILA (Lee Sang-Woo) - North American Premiere
Lee Sang-Woo’s deliberately shocking movie centres on a Korean émigré in the Philippines, a wanted man who is waiting out the statute of limitations before going home to not face the music for his crimes. In the meantime he has a Filipina wife to abuse, and a teenage son to beat up. Based on a real-life case, this is funny, tasteless, sad and, well, shocking.

TAIWAN

ORZ BOYZ (Yang Ya-Che) - North American Premiere
Fairy tales and sadder youthful realities mix in Yang Ya-che’s story of two very young troublemakers who live in Taipei. With equal parts boyhood dreams, coming-of-age drama, and animated fantasy, the film devises an imaginatively separate childhood world that offers unexpectedly mature riches.

PARKING (Chung Mong-Hong)
Taiwanese star Chang Chen’s car is blocked. Over a long night in Taipei, through episodes both comic and creepy, sexy and sentimental, he meets a one-armed gangster barber, a garrulous tailor, delusional grandparents, and a desperate prostitute. Chung Mong-Hong’s romantic nocturnal adventure packs a wicked twist.

THAILAND

THE CONVERT (Kong Rithdee, Kaweenipon Ketprasit, Panu Aree) - International Premiere
Documentary feature by Panu Aree and last year’s D&T juror Kong Rithdee follows the ups and downs in the marriage of a Thai woman and a Thai-Muslim man. June is a typical, fun-loving Thai who finds herself obliged to convert to Islam when she accepts an unlikely proposal of marriage from Ake, who reminds her of her dad. Wryly observed and full of small revelations.

WONDERFUL TOWN (Aditya Assarat)
A Bangkok architect sent to supervise rebuilding in a coastal town hit by the 2004 tsunami drifts into a casual affair with the Thai-Chinese manageress of his hotel. But the sullen local community, still numbed by the loss of so many loved ones, disapproves of extra-marital sex and is still looking for a scapegoat for the tragedy … Aditya Assarat’s multi-prize-winning debut announces a major new voice in South-East Asian cinema.

Cinema of Our Time

3 WOMEN - Manijeh Hekmat (Iran)
Three generations of Iranian women–a recalcitrant daughter chafing at the boundaries of contemporary middle-class society, her mother who came of age during the Islamic revolution, and her grandmother, steeped in traditional ways–serve as the focus of Manijeh Hekmat’s powerful realist drama. “A compelling sociological portrait.”-Variety

AMONG THE CLOUDS - Rouhollah Hejazi (Iran)
On the Iraq/Iran border, a teenage porter falls for an older girl with a mysterious past. The pain of young love is given its due attention in Rouhollah Hejazi’s lyrically filmed drama. Winner of Best Iranian feature debut at the recent Fajr Film Festival.

BALLAST - Lance Hammer, guest (USA)
“A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports [this] extraordinary debut by Lance Hammer… Following a Mississippi Delta family… the film runs a course from wrenching death to possible uplift that seems real every second.” - Variety. Winner, best director, Sundance 08.

BIRDSONG - Albert Serra, guest (Spain)
Albert Serra (Honor de cavalleria VIFF 06) returns with this gorgeously shot re-telling of the Three Kings biblical odyssey. Serra’s penchant for stunning vistas and his profound love of, and respect for, the awesome aspects of the natural world are paramount as he follows his three wise men over mountains and through deserts on their journey to Jesus. Note: we will also be presenting Waiting for Sancho - Mark Peranson’s documentary about the making of Birdsong - at this year’s VIFF.

BURN THE BRIDGES - Francisco Franco (Mexico)
A crumbling mansion, a little bit of incestuous lust, and a few homoerotic interludes combine to dark effect in director Francisco Franco’s debut drama. While caring for their dying mother, a brother and sister discover their mutual attraction for each other. “Remarkably pungent… one of the… superior dramas in recent Mexican filmmaking.”- Variety

BURNED HEARTS - Ahmed El Maanouni, guest (Morocco)
Moroccan cinema comes of age in this beautifully realized drama from director Ahmed El-Maanouni. A young architect returns to his childhood home, only to be catapulted back into difficult memories of his days as a virtual slave to his ironsmith uncle. “A carefully textured reflection on the conflicts in contemporary Moroccan society.”- Variety

EL CAMINO - Ishtar Yasin (Costa Rica)
Ishtar Yasin’s evocative debut feature easily spans the bridge between other-worldly loveliness and tragic fatalism. When a brother and sister set out on a journey from Nicaragua to Granada to search for their long-absent mother, they discover a world of beauty and suffering.

CAPTAIN ABU RAED - Amin Matalqa (Jordan / USA) Canadian Premiere
The handsome winner of the Audience Award in the World Cinema competition at Sundance, this first-ever independent film from Jordan makes fantastic use of the city of Amman as a backdrop for a winning tale about a wise old airport janitor mistaken for a jet-setting pilot by the kids in his neighbourhood…

CHOUGA - Darezhan Omirbaev (Kazakhstan / France)
Kazakhstan’s leading filmmaker Darezhan Omirbaev (The Road) returns with this adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, set in the new capital Astana and the southern city Almaty. Chouga, a well-off married woman with a child, throws everything away to follow an ill-advised passion for another man…

CLOUD 9 - Andreas Dresen (Germany)
Andreas Dresen (Summer in Berlin) returns with this crowd-pleaser, a hit at Cannes, about a woman in her mid-60s, happily married for 30 years, who falls for the attentions of a 76-year-old. Rarely has a film so honestly - and poignantly - shown that love and sex are not solely the purview of the young.

CORRECTION - Thanos Anastopoulos (Greece)
One of the best Greek films of the past year features a homeless man, newly released from prison, who wanders the streets of multi-ethnic Athens on a journey that may or may not have sinister implications. Along the way, director Thanos Anastopoulos poses questions about identity, xenophobia and the nature of violence in contemporary Greek society.

DAYS IN BETWEEN - Lola Randl (Germany)
Playing out like a Last Tango in Deutschland, Lola Randl’s mysterious debut gives us a successful scientist, Agnes, who, after being press-ganged by her sister into looking after an apartment, finds herself spending more and more time there. One day, she wakes up and finds a strange man, Bruno, lying beside her…

DELTA - Kornel Mundruczo (Hungary)
Set against the stunning backdrop of an isolated stretch of the Danube river delta, a brother and sister try to build a life together, in the face of community intolerance. Over four years in the making, Kornel Mundruczo’s (Pleasant Days, VIFF 02) dark, deeply affecting drama won Best Film at Hungarian Film Days.

IL DIVO - Paulo Sorrentino (Italy)
Director Paolo Sorrentino’s portrait of seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti (a brilliant performance by Toni Servillo) is packed with wicked wit, brilliant cinematography and drama galore. Andreotti dominated Italian politics until undone by scandal and the predations of the Mafia. Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes 2008.

DRIFTER - Sebastian Heidinger (Germany)
Taking the notorious Christiane F. as an obvious precursor, Sebastian Heidinger’s dramatic documentary follows the lives of three young Germans caught up in drug, addiction, prostitution and petty crime in and around Berlin’s notorious Zoo Station. Harrowing and heartfelt, the film shows just how little things have changed in 30 years.

DUNYA & DESIE - Dana Nechushtan (Netherlands)
Dana Nechushtan touches on issues of family and fitting in as Moroccan Dunya and Dutch Desie - both 18 - negotiate parental expectations and what it means to straddle two worlds. The Netherlands selection for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. “This cross-cultural road movie positively sings with upbeat energy and humor, nailing its target audience with a well-crafted story of friendship and understanding.” - Variety

EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY - Michelange Quay (Haiti / France)
“Set in his native Haiti, director/screenwriter Michaelange Quay’s sophomore feature is a poetic, taboo-shattering meditation on the flow of power between black and white centering on a pale woman’s [Sylvie Testud] bizarre relationship with numerous dark-skinned children.” - The New York Times

EDEN - Declan Recks (Ireland) Canadian Premiere
Eugene O’Brien’s play forms the basis for Declan Recks’ unravelling of a marriage in decline. Breda and Billy are approaching their 10th anniversary, but they don’t have much to celebrate. Entropy has taken its toll, and the couple’s painful realization of this fact is tragedy writ small. Eileen Walsh copped the best actress award at Tribeca 2008.

ERIK NIETZSCHE: THE EARLY YEARS - Jacob Thuesen (Denmark / Sweden)
What made Lars von Trier into the oft-loathed, increasingly vilified evil genius he is currently perceived to be? In a phrase: film school. Jacob Thuesen’s wickedly funny film (co-written with von Trier), is packed with filthy jokes, razor sharp satire, and more than a few famous faces.

THE ETERNITY MAN - Julien Temple (Australia)
When the word ‘eternity’ (written in white chalk and in beautifully flowing copperplate script) began showing up on buildings, sidewalks and bridges in Sydney, Australia, the mystery of its origins enthralled the entire city. Sisyphusean obsession, divine mystery, and the power of a single word combine to mesmeric effect in director Julian Temple (Absolute Beginners) stunning film.

FIRAAQ - Handita Das (India)
This dramatic, deeply engaged fiction feature by Nandita Das depicts the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots in India. Focusing on four linked Hindi and Muslim families, this furiously compassionate look at communal violence locates sparks of hope amidst its spiritual and physical victims.

FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA - Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland / France)
Jerzy Skolimowski makes a return to the big screen with this voyeuristic tale of obsessive love. A hospital worker spies on the younger Anna, a woman he may, or may not have, raped many years before. “Directed with absolute assurance from the get-go… marbled with moments of black comedy… has the feel and control almost of a story from Kieslowski’s Decalogue…” - Variety

THE GIRL BY THE LAKE - Andrea Molaioli (Italy) Canadian Premiere
A beautiful girl found dead and naked by the side of a lake sets off the serpentine twists in director Andrea Molaioli’s debut thriller. Multiple suspects, a hardened detective (the extraordinary Toni Servillo from Il Divo) with troubles of his own and a remote and austerely gorgeous setting add up to a riveting tale of corruption, murder and the gulf between parents and their children.

GOMORRAH - Matteo Garrone (Italy)
Matteo Garrone’s (First Love, VIFF 05) brutal indictment of the Camorra Mafia stunned audiences at the recent Cannes Film Festival with its cinematic power. Based on writer Roberto Saviano’s best-selling exposé that dared to name names (Saviano is currently under police protection and had to be snuck into the film’s screening). Winner of the Grand Prix, Cannes 2008.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - Mike Leigh (UK)
Director Mike Leigh (Vera Drake) turns the tables on his audience with a film that more than lives up to its title. Lead Sally Hawkins copped the Best Actress prize at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. “Leigh challenges our assumptions about realism, pessimism and irony…” - The Guardian

HEAVEN’S HEART - Simon Staho (Sweden)
Two bourgeois Swedish couples find that a dinner party discussion about adultery has serious repercussions upon their apparent wedded bliss in Simon Staho’s drama. A blend of raw emotion, fearless performances, and stylized cinematography it plays like an update of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage laced with Harold Pinter’s Betrayal.

HELEN - Christine Molloy, Joe Lawlor (UK / Ireland) Canadian Premiere
A deftly controlled and visually auspicious drama, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s debut zeros in on lonely 17-year-old Helen (newcomer Annie Townsend) who volunteers to stand in for a missing girl in a police re-enactment. Lacking an identity of her own, she throws herself into the role with eerie consequences.

THE HOLLOW - Marina Razbezhkina (Russia)
Filmed in the remote Tver region of Russia, Marina Razbezhkina’s hallucinatory drama was inspired by Sergey Esenin’s semi-autobiographical novella. This pantheistic tale contains a world of allusions, not the least of which is the age-old division between male and female, and a deeply Russian masochism.

HUNGER - Steve McQueen (UK)
The story of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands is recreated with uncompromising integrity by Turner Prize-winning artist turned filmmaker Steve McQueen. “Hunger is raw, powerful filmmaking and an urgent reminder of this uniquely ugly, tragic and dysfunctional period in British and Irish history.” - The Guardian. Winner, Camera d’Or, Cannes 2008.

I AM GOOD - Jan Hrebejk (Czech Republic) International Premiere
Director Jan Hrebejk’s new film is something of a departure from his previous work. In the early 90s, a motley collection of friends take on an organized crime ring when one of their pals is suckered in a card game. A light-hearted comedy that combines action, intrigue and a loving tip of the hat to the Newman/Redford classic The Sting.

IN YOUR ABSENCE - Iván Noel (Spain) World Premiere
Debuting director Iván Noel fashions a beautiful coming-of-age tale with a decided twist, set in the gorgeous rolling hills and verdant fields of Andalusia in southern Spain. Haunted by the death of his father, young Pablo takes an interest in a passing stranger, in town while his car is being repaired, with unpredictable and tragic results.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - Tomas Alfredson (Sweden)
When 12-year-old Oskar is befriended by the preternaturally pale and possessed girl next door, blood and snow begin to mix in his Stockholm neighbourhood. Director Tomas Alfredson (Four Shades of Brown, VIFF 04) does the seemingly impossible by reinventing the hoariest of horror genres - the vampire film - with sly wit and surprising sweetness.

LINEWATCH - Kevin Bray (USA) International Premiere
Cuba Gooding, Jr. stars as Michael Dixon, a man trying to reinvent his life and escape his violent past in Kevin Bray’s taut drama. Before he became a member of the linewatch (a group of lawmen who patrol the border between Mexico and the US) Dixon was a ruthless gang member - and his past is catching up to him.

LIVERPOOL - Lisandro Alonso (Argentina)
Director Lisandro Alonso (Los muertos) returns with this story of a man drawn home to the family he abandoned years earlier. “On every level, from the expressive capacity of natural image and sound to the emotional content of the characters onscreen, [the film] marks personal artistic progress and an impressive standard for others to match.”- Variety

LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS - Manish Acharya (India / USA)
There is more oddity, camp, colour, and off-pitch warbling in Manish Acharya’s vibrant film than in the last seven seasons of “American Idol.” Set in New Jersey, it follows a pack of unlikely songsters who do battle in order to win the “Desi” American Idol competition, sponsored by a pork company (hence the loins).

THE LOST COAST - Gabriel Fleming (USA) Canadian Premiere
When three high school friends (Mark, Lily and Jasper) visit California’s Lost Coast, all reservations, sexual and otherwise, are abandoned in the lush beauty of their surroundings. Years later, the trio reunites for an eventful and ecstasy-heightened nocturnal reverie in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

MAGNUS - Kadri Kõusaar, guest (Estonia / UK)
After a near death by overdose, young Magnus is taken in hand by his absent father for some “paternal care” - despite the fact that his stocky dad, while unwaveringly upbeat, is an unrepentant whoremonger and drug abuser… “Gently drifting between drollery and moodiness… Magnus is a profound emotional experience…. [An] astounding debut from 26-year-old writer-director Kadri Kõusaar…”- Variety

MOCK UP ON MU - Craig Baldwin (USA)
In 2019, L. Ron Hubbard has conquered and renamed the moon (Mu). Meanwhile on earth, Marjorie Cameron and Jack Parsons fight the power. With a combination of found footage, real-life heroes and weirdoes, and various other stuff, subversive shit-disturber Craig Baldwin (Spectres of the Spectrum, VIFF 99) has fashioned a “collage-narrative” that defies categorization.

MOMMA’S MAN - Asazel Jacobs (USA) Canadian Premiere
When fully grown Mikey faces a crisis in his marriage, he returns to his parent’s house and refuses to leave; the situation soon escalates into much more than an infantilization fantasy run amok. Azazel Jacobs’ superbly crafted feature stars his parents - legendary filmmaker Ken Jacobs and wife/mom Flo - and is shot in their amazing New York loft.

MOTHERLAND - Nello La Marca (Italy) North American Premiere
A small Sicilian town combining sea and mountain vistas is the setting for this intensely hued, almost sculpturally visual drama. Contrasting two different families (one Italian, the other North African), Nello La Marca’s superb film engages with some intractable European issues, namely poverty, illegal immigration and economic disparity.

MY MARLON AND MY BRANDO - Hüseyin Karabey (Turkey) Canadian Premiere
Based on actress-screenwriter Ayça Damgaci’s real-life adventure, Hüseyin Karabey’s elegantly edited narrative tells of Damgaci’s journey from Istanbul through Turkey and Northwest Iran to Iraq in 2003 to re-unite with the great love of her life, Kurdish actor Hama Ali Khan (also playing himself here).

THE NEW YEAR PARADE - Tom Quinn (USA)
A bitter divorce has repercussions on a family of mummers (parade musicians). Using a mixture of real events and improvised dialogue, director Tom Quinn’s affecting story possesses the tang of truth and a hard intelligence. Winner of the Slamdance Grand Jury Prize.

O’HORTEN - Brent Hamer (Norway)
Odd Horten’s entire life has been governed by a strict train schedule. But after 40 years of driving one route, he’s more than a little lost upon his retirement. Director Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories) brings a sly wit and deep abiding warmth to this story of a man remaking his life, one stop at a time.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST - Miguel Gomes, guest (Portugal / France) North American Premiere
In the mountains of Portugal, August is traditionally a time of celebration, full of feasting, singing, jumping off bridges and various other forms of debauchery. Director Miguel Gomes combines the deep pull of history and the complexities of family through an intimate melding of fact and fiction.

PACHAMAMA - Toshifumi Matsushita (Bolivia / Japan / USA)
A superb ethnographic drama about the Quecha people of Bolivia who have lived close to the land for centuries (the term Pachamama means Mother Earth). When a young boy undertakes a traditional journey with his father and a troop of llamas along the Ruta de la Sal (salt trail), he must confront the complexities of adult life.

PARUTHIVEERAN - Ameer (India) North American Premiere
A caste-crossed tale of doomed love that mixes song and dance with passion and tragedy. The eponymous hero and the spirited woman who loves him are caught up in the coils of honour and revenge that can only end one way. “The story climaxes in a shock sequence that devastates us as cathartically as the climax to The Wild Bunch…”- Financial Times

[REC] - Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza (Spain)
Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are rapidly carving a name for themselves as Spain’s leading horrormeisters. Their propulsive new scarefest features a female TV presenter, a gaggle of cops and firefighters and the residents of a Barcelona apartment trying to stave off the flesh-eating victims of a virus… Smart and fast-paced, with moments of genuine shock and horror. This will be your only chance to see this on the big screen as it has been picked up for a big-budget Hollywood remake.

THE REST IS SILENCE - Nae Caranfil (Romania) Canadian Premiere
Director Nae Caranfil crafts a gorgeous belle époque homage to the birth of cinema by retelling the story behind the first ever Romanian feature film, a two-hour magnum opus made in 1912. Epic in both scope and execution. “An intelligent crowd-pleaser made with affection…”- Variety

REVANCHE - Götz Spielmann (Austria)
An “existential thriller” that eschews all hints of sentimentality, Götz Spielmann’s (Antares) tightly wound, brilliantly directed drama revolves around brothel handyman/driver/criminal Alex (Johannes Krisch) and his desire for revenge when a cop accidentally kills Alex’s love during a bank robbery gone awry. A cool, perfectly controlled, wonderfully photographed gem.

SHE UNFOLDS BY DAY - Rolf Belgum, guest (USA) International Premiere
When Rolf Belgum began filming his Alzheimer’s-stricken 80-year-old mother Merrilyn, his documentary went AWOL, morphing into a surreal blend of medical drama, wolves, bugs and one peculiarly charming dog. This remarkable hybrid of art and life almost requires an entirely new definition of filmmaking.

SITA SINGS THE BLUES - Nina Paley, guest (USA) Canadian Premiere
Deliciously mixing the ancient Hindu epic The Ramayana with the breakup of her own marriage, animator Nina Paley single-handedly fashions an eye-popping phantasmagoria of sound and colour. “Both heartfelt and consistently witty… the type of low-fi animated musical that puts Disney to shame.”- Filmmaker

SNOW - Aida Begic (Bosnia Herzegovina / Germany / France / Iran)
In a remote Bosnian village, wartime survivors attempt to keep the memories of their loved ones alive. But when the first snow threatens further isolation, the stage is set for a final confrontation with the outside world. Aida Begic’s feature debut captured the International Critics’ Week Grand Prix at Cannes 2008.

SON OF A LION - Benjamin Gilmour (Australia / Pakistan)
A sensitive young boy in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan wants to go to school rather than follow his fundamentalist father’s métier - the handcrafting of firearms. Benjamin Gilmour’s engaged political drama “packs [an] emotional punch.”- Variety

SONETAULA - Salvatore Mereu (Italy) Canadian Premiere
“The promise Salvatore Mereu showed in his debut Three Step Dance comes to stunning fruition with his elegiac follow-up… a seamless blend of Pasolini and Terrence Malick. Mereu weds landscape to lives played according to the seasons, creating a tone poem on a centuries-old existence mournfully but inevitably crushed by an ambivalent, encroaching modernity.”- Variety

THE SONG OF SPARROWS - Majid Majidi (Iran) North American Premiere
When a family man named Karim loses his job at an ostrich farm, he takes the first job he can get. But can his wife and kids convince him to return to a simpler life before the complexities of the city forever change him? “[Majid Majidi's] deeply humanistic story set among the society’s underprivileged explores how capitalism and technology corrupt man…”- Variety

SUGAR - Ryan Fleck, guest (USA)
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s (Half-Nelson) new film tells the story of a 19-year-old Dominican baseball pitcher trying to break into the big leagues. “It’s a lovely turn that rides out a tricky drama all the way to a muted, wonderful finish that resists the usual sports-movie clichés.” - The New York Times

THREE MONKEYS - Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey) North American Premiere
The title of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s bruise-black noir is a reference to the evil that mutes, deafens and blinds. When a driver takes the fall for his boss (in return for a cash reward, of course) tragedy begins to mass on the horizon. Winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

TRICKS - Andrzej Jakimowski (Poland) Canadian Premiere
Stefek learned how to manipulate fate from his older sister, but when he tries to reconnect his estranged parents, things don’t quite work out. Stefek must risk everything in one last gamble with destiny. Director Andrzej Jakimowski brings a bittersweet, seriocomic touch to this serendipitous fable, a “realistic yet poetic gem.”- Variety

UNDER THE BOMBS - Philippe Aractingi (Lebanon) Canadian Premiere
Director Philippe Aractingi mixes real footage of the massive destruction wrought by Israel’s 33-day bombardment of Lebanon with a mother’s desperate search for her son. “Shot in part during the 2006 summer war between Hezbollah and Israel which devastated Lebanon’s infrastructure and civilian population, the docu-fiction road movie plays like a cri de coeur.” - Variety

WENDY AND LUCY - Kelly Reichardt (USA)
Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, VIFF 06) returns with another modest ode to the American past and present. Michelle Williams is Wendy, a young woman with her dog Lucy in tow on her way to a job in Alaska. When her ancient car breaks down, she ends up broke and stuck in a small Oregon town…

WHERE ARE THEIR STORIES? - Nicolás Pereda (Mexico / Canada)
Nicolás Pereda’s debut feature tells the story of Vincente, a young man who journeys to Mexico City to seek legal aid for his ailing grandmother. Resting lightly on this story is a vast unspoken weight of ideas, impression and images that are near Bressonian in their stillness and depth. Pereda makes an exciting new addition to Mexico’s ranks of powerful filmmakers.