World Premiere
High on LSD and eager to break from confinement, two teenage boys steal a van and make their escape from the youth treatment centre that has kept them under lock and key. Four-hundred kilometres later, broken down in the parking lot of a Valu-Mart and wracked with PTSD, the next stage of their trip begins. Laying in their dilapidated van, the boys ramble about plans to start a youth commune in the woods. They wander a big-box store, shoplifting and spitting rap verses into the display A/C units.
Thanks to the Hard Work of the Elephants attacks the multi-billion-dollar “troubled teen” industry, which preys on helpless parents and vulnerable youth. Bryce Hodgson’s film is an unsettling and delirious cri de coeur that growls with a chaotic soundscape, contrasting hushed whispers and ambient textures with harsh noise and guttural screams. Directly confronting institutional abuses, this is a challenging watch that evokes paranoia, fear, and forgiveness in its emotionally potent rendering of young minds lost to trauma.
Oct 4 & 5: Q&A
Presented by
Media Partner
Kevin Nguyen, Hunter Dillon, Fred Nguyen Khan
Canada
2024
In English and Vietnamese with English subtitles
Bullying, sexual abuse, child abuse, suicide
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Matt Kerr, Charlie Kerr, Sylvia Kerr, Jasmin Karibzhanova, Sam Sutcliffe, Kate Kempton, Mike Johnston, Abubakar Salim, Robert Montcalm, Julian Geneen, Enrico Colantoni, Martin Wojtunik, Aeschylus Poulos, Dave Alexander, Dallas Dyer
Producer
Caitlyn Sponheimer, Katia Shannon
Screenwriter
Bryce Hodgson
Cinematography
Robert Mentov
Editor
Bryce Hodgson, Ian Christison
Production Design
Bri Proke
Original Music
Lou Tides
Bryce Hodgson
Born and raised in Vancouver, Bryce Hodgson is a Toronto-based filmmaker, actor, skateboarder, and theatre artist whose multidisciplinary practice blends punk spirit, intimacy, surrealism, and emotional realism. His theatre work has been produced across Canada and the US, and he is a co-founder of the Blind Pig Theatre in Vancouver and the Blood Pact Theatre in Toronto. His short Blackbear received a Special Jury Mention from the 2022 Fantastia International Film Festival, and his debut feature, Thanks to the Hard Work of the Elephants, screened as part of Locarno’s First Look section and won a jury award.
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.