Powerful stories from across British Columbia and beyond are featured in a selection of 10 new works at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival, September 26 to October 11.

To read the full press release, please click in the link below
PressRelease_NFB@VIFF2019

2019 | 66 min

Alanis Obomsawin’s 53rd film tells the story of how the life of Jordan River Anderson initiated a battle for the right of Indigenous children to receive the same standard of health care as the rest of the Canadian population.

A film by Alanis Obomsawin
Producer Alanis Obomsawin
Executive Producer Annette Clarke

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/JORDAN

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 11:00 AM | International Village 9
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 6:45 PM | International Village 9

2019 | 78 min

Conviction envisions alternatives to prison through the eyes of women behind bars and those fighting on the front lines of the decarceration movement. Not another ‘broken prison’ film, this collaboration is a ‘broken society’ film—an ambitious and inspired re-build of our community, from the inside out. The film compels viewers to examine why we imprison the most vulnerable among us, and at what cost.

A film by Nance Ackerman, Ariella Pahlke, Teresa MacInnes
Producers and Executive Producers Teresa MacInnes (Sea to Sea Productions), Annette Clarke (NFB)

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/CONVICTION

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 9:00 PM | International Village 8
Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 11:30 AM | Vancity Theatre

2019 | 81 min

Ever get the impression that assholes are taking over? Assholes: A Theory, a timely new doc from John Walker, investigates the breeding grounds of contemporary asshole culture and searches for signs of civility in a rude-’n-nasty universe.

A film by John Walker
Producers John Walker and Ann Bernier (John Walker Productions Ltd.), Annette Clarke (NFB)

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/ASSHOLES-A-THEORY

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 9:00 PM | International Village 9
Friday, October 4, 2019 at 4:00 PM | SFU Goldcorp

2019 | 16 min

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he was instrumental in changing the history of his people forever. With help from his grandparents, his father, and his younger brother Reg, Davidson committed to carving the first new totem pole in Old Massett in almost a century.

On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.

Resplendent with animation, emotional interviews, and original footage shot by what was then known as the NFB’s Indian Film Crew, Now Is The Time captures three generations of Eagle and Raven clan working together to raise the pole in the old way, inching it higher and higher, until it stands proud and strong against the clear blue sky.

A film by Christopher Auchter
Producer Selwyn Jacob
Associate Producer Teri Snelgrove
Executive Producer Shirley Vercruysse

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/EPK/NOW-IS-THE-TIME/

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 9:30 PM | International Village 10
Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 8:30 PM | International Village 8

2019 | 101 min

Director Mirjam Leuze’s The Whale and The Raven illuminates the many issues that have drawn whale researchers, the Gitga’at First Nation, and the Government of British Columbia into a complex conflict. As the people in the Great Bear Rainforest struggle to protect their territory against the pressure and promise of the gas industry, caught in between are the countless beings that call this place home.

A film by Mirjam Leuze
Producer Marcelo Busse (Busse & Halberschmidt), Henrik Meyer and Andrew Williamson (Cedar Island Films), Shirley Vercruysse (NFB), Sandra Brandl and Mirjam Leuze (TOPOS Film), and Christian Vizi (consulting producer, Vizion)
Executive Producers Sabine Bubeck-Paaz (ZDF/ARTE) and Shirley Vercruysse (NFB)

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/EPK/THE-WHALE-AND-THE-RAVEN

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Friday, October 4, 2019 at 9:00 PM | SFU Goldcorp
Sunday, October 6, 2019 at 4:00 PM | SFU Goldcorp

2019 | 40-60 min

East of the Rockies is an interactive narrative AR experience written by acclaimed Canadian author Joy Kogawa and told from the perspective of Yuki, a 17-year-old girl forced from her home and made to live in BC’s Slocan Japanese internment camp during the Second World War.

Created by Joy Kogawa
Producer and Executive Producer Robert McLaughlin in co-production with Jam 3

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/EPK/EOTR

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)

2019 | 17 min

2019 | 5 min

A group of Syrian women, refugees recently resettled in Canada, are negotiating life in their new home. They have some questions. Directed by Anne Marie Fleming, one of the original FFM filmmakers.

Written and Directed by Ann Marie Fleming
Producer Shirley Vercruysse
Executive Producer Shirley Vercruysse

Question Period was inspired by the following short from 1990 Edition:

New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly Five Minutes

Combining astonishing narrative shorthand with heightened visual poetics, Fleming traces the trajectory of a love affair gone bad. The romantic ballad “My Old Flame” has rarely sounded so unsettling. 

Director: Ann Marie Fleming 

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/EPK/FIVE-FEMINIST-MINUTES

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 6:15 PM | SFU Goldcorp
Friday, October 4, 2019 at 11:00 AM | International Village 9

2019 | 27 min

We are all immigrants. Some leave cities or countries, all of us leave our childhood. Like the Minotaur of mythology, we roam through personal labyrinths, carrying nothing but a suitcase of memories, a portable time capsule filled with assorted mementoes from a past we can no longer reach.

The first fully animated film made using the encaustic-painting technique, The Physics of Sorrow, inspired by the novel by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov, tracks the outlines of an unknown man’s life as he sifts through memories of circuses, bubble-gum wrappers, first crushes, army service from his youth in communist Bulgaria, and an increasingly rootless and melancholic adulthood in Canada—all the while struggling to find home, family and self.

Superbly drawn and animated by Academy Award® nominee Theodore Ushev (Blind Vaysha, Lipsett Diaries), each image in The Physics of Sorrow is a work of art, aptly evoking the mesmerizing existence of its nostalgic protagonist.

A film by Theodore Ushev
Producer Marc Bertrand
Executive Producer Julie Roy

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/EPK/THE-PHYSICS-OF-SORROW/

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Tuesday, October 1, 2019 at 9:30 PM | International Village 10
Tuesday, October 8, 2019 at 9:00 PM | International Village 8

2019 | 11 min

After Catherine’s fatal car accident, she speaks from the beyond to her grieving husband, Philip, who must endure the family ritual of the funeral. The Procession is an elegant poem in black, white, and pink that shows us how, despite the pressure to keep up appearances, love finds a way.

A film by Pascal Blanchet and Rodolphe Saint-Gelais
Producer and Executive Producer Julie Roy

ONLINE PRESS KIT
MEDIASPACE.NFB.CA/THEPROCESSION

SCREENING TIMES (tickets here)
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 9:30 PM | International Village 10
Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 8:30 PM | International Village 8