VIFF Centre continues screening this year's Oscar-nominated films to March 14
Offerings include features Sirât and Mr. Nobody Against Putin, plus programs for Live Action, Animated, and Documentary shorts
SPONSORED POST BY VIFF
Sirât
The 98th Academy Awards are taking place on March 15, and the VIFF Centre is celebrating with a month of nominee screenings.
Still in store at the cinema leading up to the ceremony are two full-length features and three short-film programs, each of which includes the five titles up for the Oscar in that category.
In Óliver Laxe’s Sirât (Spain/France), the nominee for Best International Feature and Best Sound, Luis treks into an unforgiving Moroccan desert in a desperate search for his missing daughter, and gets caught up in an anarchic rave backed by deafening EDM. Tagging along with a group of crusty outsiders as they head for their next hedonistic happening, he ventures offroad in a bid to evade the authorities. But as the convoy places itself at the mercy of an unimaginably perilous landscape, their ecstasy is quickly eclipsed by a feeling of damnation.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
The nominee for Best Documentary Feature, David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin, follows unlikely hero Pasha Talankin, a beloved Russian primary-school teacher known as a mentor and prankster who offers students a safe haven in his office. When Russia invades Ukraine, Pasha is reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine. Forced to promote state-sanctioned messages and horrified by the transformation of his community, he struggles with guilt and a sense of powerlessness, leading him to become an international whistleblower.
This year’s Live Action shorts make for an eclectic program. Among the titles is “Two People Exchanging Saliva” by Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata. In a world where kissing is punishable by death and slaps are currency, a compulsive shopper becomes fascinated by a playful salesgirl.
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
On the Animated short program, nominees include “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” by Canadian filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. Set in Montreal at the dawn of the 20th century, a poor boy falls in love with a girl whose tears turn into pearls. And the Documentary short program’s Canadian contender, Alison McAlpine’s “Perfectly a Strangeness”, is a cinematic exploration of three donkeys that discover an abandoned astronomical observatory.
To purchase tickets to and view a full calendar of screenings, visit VIFF.
Post sponsored by VIFF.
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