The 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) will feature a stellar selection of seven National Film Board of Canada (NFB) productions and co-productions, including the world premiere of the riveting NFB feature-length documentary The Stand by Burnaby-based Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter.
Auchter will be joined at VIFF by Vancouver director Yuqi Kang, whose heart-pounding Intuitive Pictures/NFB co-produced feature doc 7 Beats Per Minute makes its BC premiere.
This year’s festival is also notable for a pair of NFB feature docs from Quebec offering diverse portraits of a new generation, with the world premiere of Abenaki filmmaker Kim O’Bomsawin’s Ninan Auassat: We, the Children and the BC premiere of Montreal director Halima Elkhatabi’s Living Together (Cohabiter).
Excellence in animation will also be on display in the Spotted Fawn Productions/NFB stop-motion short Inkwo for When the Starving Return by Sechelt, BC-based Michif/Métis creator Amanda Strong, as well as Montreal-based animator Michèle Lemieux’s Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen work, The Painting (Le Tableau).
Strong and distinguished Abenaki artist and filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin will join a VIFF Talk panel discussion about their work, which will include a sneak peek at Obomsawin’s new short film. Obomsawin will also be giving a musical performance of her acclaimed album, Bush Lady.
Festival lineup of NFB films
Northern Lights
The Stand by Christopher Auchter (94 min 33 s) | WORLD PREMIERE
Producer: Shirley Vercruysse
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| Frank Beban standing alongside employees of Frank Beban Logging, speaking with media on Lyell Island, then part of what was known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. |
On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyell Island, demanding the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. Drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage and audio, The Stand recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation’s resolute act of vision and conscience changed the world.
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| Haida defenders, and allies like Svend Robinson, call for the government to work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. (Images provided by the NFB) |
Christopher Auchter (Waat’sdaa) grew up roaming the beaches and forests of the Haida Gwaii archipelago off Canada’s West Coast, and his art is rooted in the land and stories of the Haida people. His previous projects include Now Is the Time (2019), a multi-award-winning look back at the first new totem pole raising on Haida Gwaii in almost a century.
7 Beats Per Minute by Yuqi Kang (100 min) | BC PREMIERE
Producers: Ina Fichman (Intuitive Pictures), Sherien Barsoum (NFB)
Awards and Festivals
World Premiere - Official Selection
SXSW - South by Southwest Film & TV Festival, U.S.A. (2024)
Official Selection
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival, Canada (2024)
Official Selection
DocLands Documentary Film Festival, U.S.A. (2024)
Official Selection
Atlantic International Film Festival, Canada (2024)
Official Selection
Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada (2024)
Official Selection
Calgary International Film Festival, Canada (2024)
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| Jessea Lu floating on the water's surface. Photo credit: Image from the film - Courtesy of Intuitive Pictures and the National Film Board of Canada. |
Yuqi Kang’s documentary captures the descent of a lifetime, when freediving champion Jessea Lu returns to the site of her near-death experience to face the traumas of her past and find a way back to connection. With intimate cinéma vérité camerawork, underwater imagery and personal interviews, 7 Beats Per Minute places the audience and the filmmaker herself in the immediacy of the experience, when barometric pressure compresses the body, the heart slows and the pulse drops.
Yuqi Kang is a Mongol Chinese Canadian filmmaker driven by a passion for crafting psychological profiles set in extreme circumstances. Her directorial feature debut, A Little Wisdom, premiered at Busan, SXSW, Karlovy Vary and Hot Docs, where it won Best Canadian Feature. Kang was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Directors Guild of Canada’s Discovery Award and was awarded 40 Under 40 by DOC NYC.
Living Together (original French title: Cohabiter) by Halima Elkhatabi (75 min) |
BC PREMIERE
Producer: Nathalie Cloutier
Awards and Festivals
Official Selection
TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival, Canada (2024)
Official Selection
VIFF - Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada (2024)
Young people looking for the ideal roommate open up about themselves in Halima Elkhatabi’s debut feature doc Living Together. In scenes filmed in 15 Montreal apartments, Elkhatabi paints a complex and engaging picture of a generation accustomed to playing all their identity cards to find their place in the world. Fifty-two people were filmed to create Living Together, featuring a diverse wealth of multicultural, multiethnic, multigenerational, and multigender encounters.
Insights + Ignite High School Program
WORLD PREMIERE
Producers: Mélanie Brière, Nathalie Cloutier and Colette Loumède
Ninan Auassat: We the Children is an immersive documentary celebrating the power and vitality of Indigenous youth. Shot over more than six years, Ninan Auassat: We the Children brings us the moving stories of three groups of children from three different Indigenous nations—Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree and Innu—revealing the dreams of a new generation poised to take flight.
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| Saige Mukash, Rain Iserhoff, Legend Iserhoff, Jade Mukash, Cree from Whapmagoostui. Photo credit: Image from the film - Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada. |
Kim O’Bomsawin is an award-winning Abenaki documentary filmmaker and sociologist who’s deeply passionate about sharing the stories of Indigenous Peoples. Her recent credits include Ce silence qui tue, winner of the Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary at the 2019 Canadian Screen Awards, and her series Telling Our Story, shown in TIFF’s Primetime program in 2023.
Inkwo for When the Starving Return by Amanda Strong (18 min 27 s)
Awards and Festivals
Official Selection---Toronto International Film Festival (2024)
Official Selection--Ottawa International Animation Festival - Panorama (2024)
Official Selection--Atlantic International Film Festival, Halifax, Nova Scotia (2024)
Official Selection---Vancouver International Film Festival (2024)
Official Selection--Edmonton International Film Festival (2024)
Producers: Amanda Strong (Spotted Fawn Productions), Maral Mohammadian (NFB), Nina Werewka (Spotted Fawn Productions)
In Inkwo for When the Starving Return, a gender-shifting warrior uses their Indigenous medicine (Inkwo) to protect their community from a swarm of terrifying creatures. A stop-motion animated adaptation of the short story “Wheetago War” by award-winning Tlicho Dene storyteller Richard Van Camp, Inkwo includes the voice talents of Victoria’s Art Napoleon, former chief of the Saulteau First Nation.
Amanda Strong is a Michif/Métis artist, writer, producer, director, filmmaker and mother. As the owner and executive producer of Spotted Fawn Productions Inc., her collaborative creations serve to amplify Indigenous storytelling and ideologies. With films that include Biidaaban and Four Faces of the Moon, Strong’s work has received Canadian Screen Award and Emmy nominations and has been shown worldwide.
Short Forum
Producers: Christine Noël and Julie Roy
Awards and Festivals
Official Selection – Short Films in Competition L'officielle Annecy International Animation Film Festival, France (2024)
Official Selection – Time For The Masters program Animafest Zagreb – World Festival of Animated Film, Croatia (2024)
Official Selection – Canadian Competition Sommets du cinéma d'animation, Montréal, Canada (2024)
Official Selection---Ottawa International Animation Festival, Canada (2024)
Official Selection---Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival, U.S.A. (2024)
Official Selection – International Competition CINANIMA – International Animated Film Festival, Espinho, Portugal (2024)
Official Selection---Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada (2024)
Animated on the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen, this film revisits the tragic fate of Queen Mariana of Austria and her 1652 portrait by painter Velázquez. Demonstrating incredible mastery of the pinscreen, this poem of a film is a meditation on the brutality of institutionalized incest and art’s power to capture the soul.
Michèle Lemieux is an illustrator and animation filmmaker who has taught at UQAM’s school of design for over 30 years. During a 2006 workshop given by Jacques Drouin, Lemieux was introduced to the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen, subsequently becoming the artistic heir to this unique animation technique.
Alanis Obomsawin & Amanda Strong | VIFF Talk | VIFF Centre, October 5 at 4 p.m.
Alanis Obomsawin and Amanda Strong will join a VIFF Talk panel discussion about their work. The event will include an industry screening of Strong’s Inkwo for When the Starving Return and a sneak peek at Obomsawin’s new short documentary My Friend the Green Horse.
My Friend the Green Horse by Alanis Obomsawin (11 min)
Producers: Rohan Fernando, Annette Clarke and Nathalie Cloutier
Blending live-action footage and stop-motion animation, My Friend the Green Horse shares the remarkable true story of the childhood of Alanis Obomsawin, one of the world’s great documentary filmmakers. Often feeling lost and alone, the young Alanis found solace and companionship in the Animal World.
This gem of a film is interspersed with stop-motion puppets built and animated by celebrated filmmaker Terril Calder (Meneath), creating a visual treat that complements the documentary’s storybook feel.
Live performance
Jeremy Dutcher & Alanis Obomsawin | VIFF Live | Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, October 4 at 8:00 p.m.
In addition to VIFF’s official programming lineup, legendary NFB filmmaker and artist Alanis Obomsawin will join award-winning Wolastoqiyik tenor and composer Jeremy Dutcher for a night of music.
Accompanied by an ensemble led by Montreal’s Radwan Moumneh, Obomsawin will be giving just her third performance of her 1988 album, Bush Lady, since it was remastered and re-released by Constellation Records in 2018.
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