SCREENMANCER CANADA: VIFF 2025 RECAP

by Zoran Dragelj, Screenmancer Canada 

As seen from the perspective of Screenmancer Canada, Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) which ran from Oct. 2 to Oct. 12, 2025, had some spectacular highlights this year. The notables drew from the majors to the indies. Here’s our coverage from Producer Zoran Dragelj.

Vancouver Office Report — October 2025
Screenmancer Canada was thrilled to cover an array of premieres and screenings over the 10 days of the 44th Vancouver International Film Festival, which ran October 2–12, 2025. Spanning 172 features, 97 shorts, and more than 128 premieres, VIFF 2025 brought together films, live performances, industry talks, and interactive experiences to connect audiences with bold stories and visionary creators from around the world. Below is our exclusive roundup: curated reviews, reflections, and festival moments that defined VIFF 2025.

1. Reflections on Family and Stillness: Sentimental Value and Sirât
At this year’s VIFF, two films, Sentimental Value (Denmark, Joachim Trier) and Sirât (Spain, Óliver Laxe) both stood out as meditative reflections on family, time, and emotional restraint. Though distinct in setting and tone, both share an intuitive understanding of stillness as a cinematic language. Trier’s Sentimental Value lingers on the unspoken: glances, silences, unfinished conversations. Laxe’s Sirât extends that tenderness to the spiritual, where family becomes both anchor and horizon. With slow, deliberate camerawork and unhurried rhythm, both filmmakers trust the audience’s patience — allowing emotion to breathe and time to do the storytelling. Together, they remind us that cinema’s greatest power lies not in spectacle but in quiet reflection.

2. A Private Life (Vie privée)
Dir. Rebecca Zlotowski | France
Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life is a sharply observed and elegantly twisted comic psychodrama that showcases Jodie Foster in one of her most nuanced performances to date, delivered almost entirely in French. As Paris-based psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, Foster balances analytical brilliance and emotional collapse with masterful precision.
When a patient’s overdose hints at something darker, Zlotowski turns a whodunit into a study of guilt, perception, and reason’s fragility. Supported by an exceptional ensemble: Mathieu Amalric, Luàna Bajrami-Rahmani, Daniel Auteuil, and Virginie Efira; the film hums with intellectual wit and psychological suspense. It’s an artful blend of satire and tension that lingers long after the final frame.

3. La Salsa Vive
Dir. Juan Carvajal | Colombia / USA
A vibrant entry in VIFF’s Portraits program, Juan Carvajal’s La Salsa Vive is a joyous, rhythmic celebration of music as cultural lifeblood. Tracing salsa’s evolution from 1970s New York to modern-day Cali, the film radiates the same irresistible pulse as the genre itself. With rare archival footage and interviews with legends like Rubén Blades and Willie Rosario, Carvajal captures more than history, he captures heartbeat. Lush visuals and intoxicating sound mix turn this documentary into a living, breathing dance floor. La Salsa Vive reminds us that salsa is not just music; it’s a spirit that unites, heals, and endures.

4. Kafka
Dir. Agnieszka Holland | Poland
Poland’s Oscar entry Kafka marks Agnieszka Holland’s most daring work in years. Blurring the line between biography and fever dream, the film dives deep into the absurd, tragic, and prophetic world of Franz Kafka. A revelatory newcomer, Idan Weiss, embodies the writer’s torment and dark humour in equal measure. Holland seamlessly intertwines Kafka’s real life with dramatizations of his fiction, transforming the film into a meditation on alienation, language, and bureaucracy, themes that still haunt our modern age. Both intellectually rigorous and visually hypnotic, Kafka is a haunting masterpiece of poetic disquiet.

5. Moral Shadows and Quiet Failures
Double Bill: Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident / Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind
In It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi crafts a taut, morally charged thriller where a simple act of kindness spirals into confrontation and reckoning. Blending irony and empathy, Panahi probes guilt, trauma, and justice within a society shaped by fear. Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind offers a tonal counterpoint: a meandering 1970s caper about a hapless art thief adrift in post-Vietnam malaise. Where Panahi burns with fury, Reichardt hums with melancholy. Together, these films reveal the delicate balance between conviction and folly, and how easily either can crumble under pressure.

6. Miroirs No. 3
Dir. Christian Petzold | Germany
Christian Petzold returns with Miroirs No. 3, a refined and unsettling meditation on grief, identity, and the specters of the self. Paula Beer delivers a hypnotic performance as Laura, a pianist whose near-death experience draws her into an eerie domestic world between empathy and obsession.
Channeling Hitchcock’s classic, Vertigo through his own restrained lens, Petzold composes a haunting symphony of memory and desire. With Ravel’s score echoing through its silences, Miroirs No. 3 lingers like a dream half-remembered; mysterious, fragile, profoundly human.

7. Solomamma
Dir. Janicke Askevold | Norway
In Solomamma, Norwegian director Janicke Askevold offers a quietly piercing exploration of modern motherhood and autonomy. Lisa Loven Kongsli is mesmerizing as Edith, a woman whose search for control leads her into moral uncertainty after tracking down her sperm donor.
Askevold balances humour and heartache with surgical precision. Subtle, smart, and profoundly human, Solomamma transforms an intimate story into a universal meditation on love, independence, and the costs of self-reliance.

Canadian Selections at VIFF 2025

8. Mile End Kicks
Dir. Chandler Levack | Canada
Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks is a witty, tender portrait of creative ambition, desire, and ego set amid Montreal’s indie music scene circa 2011. Barbie Ferreira shines as Grace, a music critic caught between love and self-definition.
Levack captures youthful chaos and artistic longing with humour and insight. The film’s original songs by TOPS and its lively post-screening Q&A confirmed Mile End Kicks as a heartfelt love letter to messy creativity and growing up.

9. Akashi
Dir. Mayumi Yoshida | Canada
At its world premiere, Akashi enveloped audiences in an atmosphere of poetic remembrance. Shot in black and white, Mayumi Yoshida’s film drifts between memory and mourning, blurring past and present until they merge in a single emotional continuum.
When colour finally enters the frame, it does so like a heartbeat returning. Deeply personal yet universal, Akashi is a testament to love’s endurance and the beauty of rediscovery.

10. Steal Away
Dir. Clement Virgo | Canada
Clement Virgo returns with Steal Away, a haunting psychological thriller suffused with sensual dread. Blending historical trauma with surreal beauty, the film follows young Cécile’s journey toward freedom — and its devastating cost.
Virgo’s meticulous direction, Mallori Johnson’s raw performance, and Lauren Lee Smith’s enigmatic poise combine to create a hypnotic and morally complex vision. In the post-screening Q&A, Virgo reflected on the film’s origins, noting that “memory and guilt are inseparable — and that’s where the ghosts live.”

11. Follies / Folichonneries
Dir. Eric K. Boulianne | Canada
In his feature debut, Eric K. Boulianne turns midlife chaos into comedy gold. Follies (or Folichonneries) is a witty, painfully honest take on love, lust, and the fragile architecture of open relationships.
Co-starring Catherine Chabot, the film blends cheeky humour with empathy, reviving the sex comedy for a modern age — smart, self-aware, and surprisingly tender. As Boulianne quipped during his Q&A: “Desire is easy. Listening, that’s the real adventure.” [Editor’s note: complete list of films can be found here.]

Closing Note
From meditative European dramas to daring Canadian premieres, VIFF 2025 reaffirmed its place as one of the world’s most artistically rich and globally conscious festivals. Stay tuned for more highlights coming soon from Screenmancer Canada. Eh!

ZORAN DRAGELJ – SCREENMANCER CANADA

Born in Split, Croatia, Zoran Dragelj is an award-winning producer/director based in Vancouver, Canada, Zoran’s films have screened in Berlin, Stockholm, London, Yangon, and Madrid, as well as Canada and the US. His 2019 feature, Friends Like These, is now streaming on Amazon Prime and won three top awards (Cinematography, Producer and Director) at The MMXXI Foreman Empire Productions International Film Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. The film features some amazing original Canadian independent music from Harlequin Gold, Jenny Banai, Daev and The Little Coyote (who were to be featured at The SXSW festival this year). In 2017, Zoran was Associate Producer on Dark Harvest, a successful independent Canadian feature film starring Cheech Marin, James Hutson, Tygh Runyan, AC Peterson and Hugh Dillon. The feature received nine top awards at a dozen international film festivals and is available on all major VOD platforms.

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