The 2014 edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival features more than 350 films from 70 countries over 16 days, plus post-screening Q&A sessions with actors, directors and writers. Each weekday and on the weekend, we'll provide highlights of the day ahead and One to Watch: a review of a film we recommend highly.
One to Watch: Phoenix (4/4 stars)
- Directed by: Christian Petzold
- Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 2014
- Country: Germany
- Language: German
- Showtime: 4 p.m., SFU Woodwards
The script for Christian Petzold’s thriller is dizzyingly brilliant, as if the movie had a case of Vertigo. Alfred Hitchcock’s classic looms large over this story of a concentration-camp survivor (Nina Hoss) who emerges from the rubble of the Second World War with a new face (shades of another classic noir, Dark Passage), and is mistaken by her husband for another woman – one he hopes to make over into his wife’s image for seriously nefarious reasons. It’s a pure potboiler, but with powerful themes about war and identity simmering just under the surface. – Adam Nayman
Filmmakers who take risks featured in Altered States program
It’s not on the schedule, but the 1980 film debut of William Hurt has had a major impact on the Altered States program playing at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.
Altered States is the title of the intense film featuring Hurt as a scientist who finds himself in a hell of a fix after experimenting with isolation tanks – a mind-blowing movie directed by Ken Russell that left VIFF programmer Curtis Woloschuk with a sense of wonder he says he likes to bring to viewers with the namesake program.
To that end, there’s a lot of science fiction and horror in the mix. Woloschuk culled to nine films from about 50 or 60 he watched looking for gems that would dazzle Vancouver audiences.
He has programmed an Iranian vampire movie (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), an Australian romantic comedy about a guy who uses time travel to try to fix his love life (The Infinite Man), It Follows, about a malevolent spirit, and a locally produced horror comedy about a cartoonist whose amputated hand becomes a defender of free speech (Bloody Knuckles).
In particular, he said, Bloody Knuckles and The Editor, a film made in Winnipeg and Kenora about a film editor suspected in a series of murders, have gone over well with VIFF audiences this year. “All the filmmakers have taken risks – either narratively or technically,” he said. “Narratively they’re trying to do something different, completely out of left field. They’re toying with the form, the way stories are told.”
Tuesday’s Altered State film screening is The Well, at 4 p.m. at The Rio. Woloschuk described The Well as a sci-fi riff on a Western, set in Oregon. The film features a teenage girl in the near future intent on protecting her well during a major drought. The film previously screened at the Los Angeles film festival, but this week’s Vancouver showings – it also has an Oct. 10 showing – are its first outside the United States.
Woloschuk appreciated the Pacific Northwest setting, and rookie director Tom Hammock’s world-building skills. “He has created a world that is very fully realized. You understand the principles of the characters and the rules that govern them,” he said.
They are not, overall, films for the Netflix audience, watching their movies in solitude on their iPads. “These are films that really connect with audiences who want to watch films with other people – kind of like a shared experience with people,” he said.