B.C. on Screen at VIFF 2025

The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is back for it’s 44th year between October 2-12, 2025, at theatres around the city. Driven by passion and curatorial excellence, VIFF encourages understanding of the world’s cultures through the art of cinema. VIFF’s spectacular roster includes some of the best cinema from around the globe, one-of-a-kind live performances, talks, industry sessions, and other unique events celebrating film and film culture.

Every fall, the magic of VIFF energizes the city of Vancouver with exceptional stories, insightful conversations, and endless opportunities to connect with the local film community. The love for film is all around, from the dedicated staff and volunteers, to the filmmakers and panelists, and the 100,000+ attendees that fill seats each year.

In preparation for the festival, here are the B.C. films screened at the festival this year. From impactful family dramas, to coming-of-age horror, riveting documentaries, and more, catch these twelve features and eight shorts this October at VIFF.

Feature Films:

A WELCOME DISTRACTION

A WELCOME DISTRACTION | Dir. Brian Daniel Johnson
Ernest (Simon Farrell) is a wayward twentysomething living in Vancouver. Stuck in a rut after a breakup and grieving a recent family tragedy, he does whatever he can to avoid reconnecting with his family. He visits his dealer, who is concerned he’s self-medicating. His sister drops in, begging him to call his mom. Then, while hiking, he meets Mallory (Madison Isolina), who persuades him to join her group, led by a spiritual leader who claims to hear sounds from the Earth. A cult in the Pacific Northwest makes for a great place to hide from your problems, but as the seasons change, Ernest finds space within himself to heal.

THE ART OF ADVENTURE | Dir. Alison Reid
Between 1957 and 1958, Robert Bateman and Bristol Foster undertook the adventure of a lifetime — driving a Land Rover dubbed “the Grizzly Torque” 14,000 kilometres across Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia. More than just an adrenaline-pumping adventure story of two young men crossing half the planet, The Art of Adventure maps out how Bateman and Foster’s trip inspired a love of nature that would last a lifetime. The film interweaves an account of their travels with a look their lives through the decades that followed: Bateman became a beloved Canadian wildlife painter and Foster a prominent biologist and the first director of BC’s Ecological Reserves program

THANKS TO THE HARD WORK OF THE ELEPHANTS | Dir. Bryce Hodgson
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.

AKASHI | Dir. Mayumi Yoshida ​吉田真由美
Ten years after moving to Vancouver, struggling visual artist Kana Yamamoto returns to Tokyo to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother. Arriving in Japan, she rekindles a tentative flame with her bashful ex-boyfriend, Hiro, an aspiring thespian who vanished from her life a decade prior. As Kana digs deeper into her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a family secret that prompts her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, duty, and belonging.

CLAN OF THE PAINTED LADY

CLAN OF THE PAINTED LADY | Dir. Jennifer Chiu
In this engrossing documentary, director Jennifer Chiu reaches into her family’s history to explore the Hakka — a people, a language, and a culture. Thought to hail from the north of China, the Hakka settled in the south of the country, where they were known as the “guest people”. In the face of social marginalization, many of them dispersed to places such as Mauritius, India, Jamaica, and Canada — including BC’s Lower Mainland, where Chiu spent much of her childhood.

BLUE HERON | Dir. Sophy Romvari
In the late 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha and her Hungarian immigrant family relocate to a new home on Vancouver Island. As they settle in, the younger siblings are equally enchanted with the surrounding nature and the rudimentary paint programs on their father’s PC. But Jeremy, the oldest child, grows increasingly withdrawn as he busies himself hand-drawing elaborate maps of fantasy realms. As his erratic behaviour escalates, his family are gripped by a sense of powerlessness.

EVEREST DARK

EVEREST DARK | Dir. Jereme Watt
Every year, hundreds of climbers chase glory atop the world’s highest peak, but few stop to ask what Mount Everest has become. In Everest Dark, filmmaker Jereme Watt shifts the lens toward the Sherpa people, whose spiritual ties to the mountain run much deeper than the ambitions of tourists. At the center is Mingma Tsiri Sherpa, a national hero and devout Buddhist, who returns from retirement to carry out a perilous mission: to recover the bodies of fallen climbers, complete sacred rites, and restore harmony to Chomolungma, the “Mother Goddess of the World”.

THE PAINTED LIFE OF E.J. HUGHES | Dir. Jenn Strom
Since his death in 2007, the renown of Canadian painter E.J. Hughes has only continued to grow. For decades, his extraordinary works highlighting the landscapes of British Columbia have captivated the public, but his personal life is less well known. A solitary man dedicated to his art, Hughes led a fascinating life, struggling to make ends meet until a discovery of his work led to its acclaim. Having attempted to work as a fisherman during the Depression, he became a war artist during the Second World War and never gave up his passion for painting, even when devotedly caring for his ailing wife.

FOREIGNER

FOREIGNER | Dir. Ava Maria Safai
Set in 2004, Yasamin is an Iranian teenager who has recently immigrated to Canada with her family. Desperate to fit in, she practices her English by studying sitcoms and succeeds in befriending three popular girls at school — mean girls with permanent smiles and soulless eyes. When her new friends convince Yasamin she needs to dye her hair blonde to be accepted, she takes their advice, but gets more than she bargained for when her new hair colour awakens a demon lurking inside her.

MEADOWLARKS | Dir. Tasha Hubbard
Fifty years after being separated during the Sixties Scoop, four Cree siblings reunite for the first time on a long weekend trip to Banff. Connie frets over planning the perfect sight-seeing itinerary, while down-to-earth-but-guarded Gwen laments feeling like a tourist in her own country. Marianne, who grew up in Belgium, experiences the bittersweet joy of discovering her Indigenous culture in midlife, while Anthony  grapples with a history of assimilation and his role as a grandfather-to-be.

IN THE ROOM

IN THE ROOM | Dir. Brishkay Ahmed
A visually stunning, informative, and deeply personal exploration of cultural identity and resilience. Told from Ahmed’s perspective as an Afghan expat, the film traces her journey from rejecting her heritage — which she initially connected with victimhood — to embracing it in a celebration of the heroism of Afghan women.

THE TRACK | Dir. Ryan Sidhoo
In the middle of a mountain forest above Sarajevo, an Olympic luge track lies abandoned and neglected since the Soviet era, covered with graffiti and riddled with bullet holes from the Yugoslav Wars. It’s here that three teenage boys dream of competing in luge as a way out of a country still suffering from old wounds. Their devoted coach volunteers his time to maintain the track and train the boys, but the pursuit of their Olympic dreams is challenged by a lack of institutional and financial support, and as time passes, the boys’ lives begin to diverge.

TREASURE OF THE RICE TERRACES | Dir. Kent Donguines
Filipino Canadian filmmaker Kent Donguines travels back to the Philippines to reconnect with his roots. In a nation with over 134,000 years of history and centuries of colonization — under Spanish, American, and Japanese rule — Donguines notes a shared feeling of weakened traditional identity among many Filipinos he knows and meets. A vital part of their heritage, the centuries-old practice of tattooing, was banned by colonizers and even shunned by Filipinos.

Short Films:

MY DAD IS AN ASTRONAUT

The full programing for the 2025 festival is available on the VIFF website. Tickets are now available for purchase.