THE 30th Vancouver International Film Festival kicks off this week and runs through Oct. 14.
This year more than 300 films from 75 countries will be screened at Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, the Vogue Theatre, Vancity Theatre and Pacific Cinémathèque. Here's just a taste of what's in store at VIFF. For a complete schedule visit www.viff.org/festival.
- My Little Princess (Director: Eva Ionesco, France, 2011) French actress Eva Ionesco makes her directorial debut with My Little Princess an autobiographical tale based on her relationship with her mother, Franco-Romanian photographer Irina Ionesco. Her childhood also inspired the Brooke Shields character in Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby. The brilliant, tight-rope walking Isabelle Huppert, in her best Mommie Dearest/ Grand Guignol persona, plays Ionesco's mother. Anamaria Vartolomei is Eva.
- Goodbye (Director: Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2011) Mohammad Rasoulof's tale of a desperate lawyer who has had her right to practice law in Tehran suspended cuts close to the bone. The story has many parallels with Rasoulof's own life and other filmmakers who have run afoul of the fundamentalist regime. Choosing a woman as the main character, Noura (played by Leyla Zareh), adds an entirely different level to the storyline.
- Inside Lara Roxx (Director: Mia Donovan, Canada, 2011) In 2004 Montrealer Lara Roxx moved to L.A. to make a quick killing in the porn industry. After only a few months in Hollywood she contracted the most virulent form of HIV and was forced to return home. Mia Donovan begins her documentary in a psychiatric ward as Lara attempts to pick up the pieces of her life.
- Cinema Komunisto (Director: Mila Turajlic, Montenegro/Serbia, 2010) Yugoslavia's post-World War Two strongman Josip Broz Tito was a movie fanatic of the first order. He was instrumental in building a formidable film industry under Soviet rule and Mila Turajlic's new documentary shows us how it all played out at the Avala Film Studios.
- My Back Page (Director: Yamashita Nobuhiro, Japan, 2011) Period-piece noir thriller, named after a Dylan song, is based on an autobiographical novel by Kawamoto Saburo about a young journalist caught up in the radical student protest movement of the late '60s.
- Khodorkovsky (Director: Cyril Tuschi, France/Germany, 2011) Cyril Tuschi gives us the backstory of longimprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his no-win ideological battle with Russian despot Vladimir Putin.
- The Other California (Director: César Talamantes, Mexico, 2010) César Talamantes introduces us to the "rancheros" who carve out a hardscrabble existence in the remote deserts of Mexico's Baja California.
- Lost Bohemia (Director: Josef "Birdman" Astor, USA, 2010) In 1895, 165 artists lofts and spaces were built above New York City's Carnegie Hall creating a bohemian environment that lasted for nearly a century. Mark Twain and Paddy Chayefsky wrote there, Enrico Caruso recorded there, Isadora Duncan danced there, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe rehearsed there. Filmmaker Josef "Birdman" Astor, who lived in Studio 845 for several decades, documents the life and times of the historic Carnegie Studios complex.
- The Artist
(Director: Michel Hazanavicius, France, 2011) Cannes Film Festival b&w favourite (Jean Dujardin won Best Actor Award) is set in Hollywood between the crucial years of 1927 and 1931 as "the talkies" overtake silent cinema.
- La folie Almayer/Almayer's Folly (Director: Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France, 2011)
Known for her early feminist, formalist masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman adapts Joseph Conrad's 1895 debut novel, Almayer's Folly, into something completely different.
