WIFF’S WEEKEND WATCH LIST — 3/14
Check out our recommendations of what to watch this weekend.
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October 21, 2024
LiUNA People’s Choice Winners
Don’t miss out on fan-favourite programming with Midnight Madness!
Don’t miss out on fan-favourite programming with Midnight Madness!
Discover every winner of the LiUNA People’s Choice Award since its inception in 2011. See a great film for the first time, or revisit a favourite. Our audience has great taste!
Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) is a sewer worker in Nazi-occupied Lvov, Poland. When he finds a group of Jews hiding in the sewers, Leopold agrees to protect them from the Nazis in exchange for money, even though it could mean his death if they are found. Though he is solely motivated by cash at first, their experiences lead Leopold to adopt a different view of the people under his protection. When catastrophe strikes, Leopold is forced into a final act of courage.
With 36 awards and 40 nominations, this irreverent, uplifting comedy about friendship, trust and human possibility is one of the top-rated movies of all time. The Intouchables is also a perennial favourite at WIFF with sold-out screenings every year.
When a paragliding accident leaves him paralyzed from the neck down, Philippe (Francois Cluzet) requires a caregiver to assist him with his daily physical needs. With the help of his assistant Magalie (Audrey Fleurot), he interviews a number of highly qualified candidates, all of whom he subsequently rejects in favour of Driss (Omar Sy), a recently released ex-con who has only applied for the job to ensure that he keeps getting welfare payments.
Based on a true story of friendship between a handicapped millionaire and his street-smart ex-con caretaker, The Intouchables depicts an unlikely camaraderie rooted in honesty and humour between two individuals who, on the surface, would seem to have nothing in common.
Delivering on the promise of her earlier work, Louise Archambault’s Gabrielle is a stunning, tender film about a developmentally challenged young woman’s quest for independence and sexual freedom. Living in a group home, musically talented Gabrielle has found love in Martin, a fellow member of a choir for developmentally disabled adults. Gabrielle (Marion-Rivard) and Martin (Landry) want to explore their feelings for one another physically, but are not allowed. Convinced that living alone will allow her to have the intimate relationship she so desperately craves, Gabrielle tries valiantly to prove she can be independent. At the core of this film is the heartfelt performance by Marion-Rivard (who has Williams syndrome in real life). Gabrielle’s effusive giddiness is contagious, her drive unrelenting. As the choir works towards its big performance with Quebec music legend Robert Charlebois, this turbulent, moving journey is furthered by Mathieu Laverdière’s ethereal cinematography. It is a captivating film about tolerance and finding happiness, but, above all, it is a story of love.
Short Term 12 is told through the eyes of Grace (Brie Larson), a twenty-something supervisor at a foster-care facility for at-risk teenagers. Passionate and tough, Grace is a formidable caretaker of the kids in her charge – and in love with her long-term boyfriend and co-worker, Mason (John Gallagher Jr.). But Grace’s own difficult past – and the surprising future that suddenly presents itself – throw her into unforeseen confusion, made all the sharper with the arrival of a new intake at the facility: a gifted but troubled teenage girl with whom Grace has a charged connection. While the subject matter is complex, this lovingly realized film finds truth – and humor – in unexpected places.
Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is an ambitious young jazz drummer, single-minded in his pursuit to rise to the top of his elite East Coast music conservatory. Plagued by the failed writing career of his father, Andrew hungers day and night to become one of the greats. Terence Fletcher (JK Simmons), an instructor equally known for his teaching talents as for his terrifying methods, leads the top jazz ensemble in the school. Fletcher discovers Andrew and transfers the aspiring drummer into his band, forever changing the young man’s life. Andrew’s passion to achieve perfection quickly spirals into obsession, as his ruthless teacher continues to push him to the brink of both his ability—and his sanity.
A fascinating portrait of one of the most emblematic figures of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Trumbo stars Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as the prolific screenwriter who paid a terrible price for his political convictions and Helen Mirren as the notorious gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Dalton Trumbo was among the highest-paid scenarists of his time. He was also one of numerous film artists who saw their careers screech to a halt after being interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. An outspoken member of the so-called Hollywood Ten, Trumbo did in fact identify as a Communist. Nevertheless, he refused to testify and was cited for contempt of Congress, resulting in a year-long prison sentence and a prominent place on the studios’ blacklist. Unable to obtain employment under his own name, Trumbo did some of his finest work pseudonymously throughout the 1950s.
Trumbo is a gripping drama that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Hollywood history.
Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, 1937. Maud Dowley, afflicted with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, is stuck living with her unsympathetic aunt. She passes the time by creating colourful art. Desperate to break away, she responds to a local fish peddler’s call for a housekeeper. Everett Lewis is disagreeable and initially cruel to Maudie, but the two quickly acknowledge that each is in their own way a social outcast. They need and understand each other. Within weeks, they marry.
One day a summer resident comes calling. She’s a New Yorker, who wears alluring clothing and speaks like Katharine Hepburn. She sees something in Maudie’s paintings and commissions a piece. Suddenly Maudie’s pastime is recognized as having real value. People come from far and wide. Eventually, her work will hang in the White House. This is a tale of a woman asserting herself as a generator of both art and commerce. But it is also a story of the power of creativity to transform a life and touch the soul.
Loving Vincent is the world’s first fully oil-painted feature film. Vincent van Gogh is not only famous for his paintings, but also for his tortured life, notably for cutting off his ear and shooting himself while painting at his easel; painting to the bitter end of his unhappy, misunderstood life.
No other artist has attracted more legends than Vincent van Gogh. Variously labelled a martyr, a lustful satyr, a madman, a genius and a layabout, the real van Gogh is at once revealed in his letters and obscured by myth and time. He is the world’s totemic tortured artist. Loving Vincent explores van Gogh’s life and work by bringing to life some of his most inspirational paintings to tell his story.
Sports and politics clash in this compelling documentary about five Russian hockey stars who defected to America to join the Detroit Red Wings in the 1980s, leading to the team’s back-to-back Stanley Cup championships.
The team’s fans and rivals alike nicknamed the team “the Dead Wings” after enduring fifteen seasons of futility. However, newly hired general manager, Jim Devellano came up with an audacious plan to infuse new talent into the club, turning his attention toward the Russian Red Army team, one of the most dominant collections of hockey talent ever assembled. The team’s hockey players were members of the military and icons of the regime’s sports supremacy, closely watched for fear they might defect to the high-paying NHL. Through a number of covert encounters reminiscent of an espionage film, Devellano and his talent scouts enticed first Sergei Fedorov, Vladimir Konstantinov, and Viacheslav Fetisov, and later Vyacheslav Kozlov and Igor Larionov, to defect to America and join the Red Wings organization.
Winner of the audience award and a special jury prize at the Hot Docs Documentary Festival, Prey, directed by Windsor’s Matt Gallagher, tells the story of a sexual abuse survivor’s court battle with the Catholic Church.
Widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has traumatized thousands. Many have come forward to speak publicly, while others have been silenced through settlements. Father Hod Marshall, a Basilian priest and teacher in Windsor, Toronto and Sudbury, pled guilty to 17 sexual assault charges. One of his victims, Rod MacLeod, seeking closure for this traumatic part of his childhood, filed suit against the Basilian Fathers of Toronto for its role in enabling Marshall’s depravity. As the case moves through the courts—led by lawyer Rob Talach—the silence the Catholic Church fought to maintain is broken. Also featured in the film is Windsorite Patrick McMahon who also fell victim to Marshall as a boy and has been speaking out in an effort to hold those within the church accountable.
Women Talking is Sarah Polley’s poignant adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel about sexual assault in a Mennonite colony.
Women Talking tells the all-too-real story of a group of women in a Mennonite colony dealing with continued sexual and physical abuse at the hands of their husbands, brothers and male neighbours (specifically, they’re being drugged, raped and gaslit). When the men temporarily leave the colony, the women take advantage of their absence and gather in a hayloft to discuss their options: do nothing, stay and fight or leave. All who are present – ranging in age from young children to seniors – put forth their own testimonies, perspectives and answers to the problems. As the women discuss what it means to leave and what it must entail to stay and fight, it becomes clear that no solution is as straight-forward as it initially seems. Emotions and tensions run high as the women try to work fervently together to figure out the proper course of action before the men return.
Through the eyes of a strong-willed woman comes the remarkable true story of Irena Gut Opdyke and the triumphs of the human spirit over devastating tragedy. 19-year-old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help twelve Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of the basement of the German commandant’s house. Over the next two years, Irena uses her wit, humor, and courage to hide her friends until the end of the German occupation, concealing them in the midst of countless Nazi parties, a blackmail scheme, and even the birth of a child. Her story is one of the most inspiring of our time.
Check out our recommendations of what to watch this weekend.
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Check out our recommendations of what to watch this weekend.
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Check out our recommendations of what to watch this weekend.
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