Canada
2022
In English and Spanish with English subtitles
Violence
Featured in:
VIFF Short Forum: Program 1
What kind of alchemy occurs to transform hardship into fortune? Here, the extraordinary burn brightly.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Memory of Princess Mumbi
In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.
Credits
Producer
Sarah Shamash, Sonia Medel
Screenwriter
Sarah Shamash, Sonia Medel
Cinematography
Angie Rico
Editor
Sarah Shamash
Directors
Sonia Medel
Sonia Medel is currently a PhD Candidate in Education at the University of British Columbia and working as a lead on diverse curatorial and publishing projects. She has been promoting decolonial and intersectional feminist engagement with arts, culture, and education across the Americas for over a decade. A visibly racialized Indigenous-Afro-European descendant, Chilean-Peruvian Latina, Medel is grateful to the Coast Salish peoples and lands on which she was born and primarily develops her practices.
Sarah Shamash
Sarah Shamash is an artist, educator, and media scholar living and raising her son on unsurrendered Indigenous lands in Vancouver. Her works have been shown in curated exhibitions and film festivals internationally. She currently teaches film studies and studio-based practices at the University of British Columbia and Emily Carr University of Art + Design.



