Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn to open Whistler Film Festival, as full program reveals
Event also announces 16 Canadian contenders in the Borsos Competition, and big-name features like Rose, The Debut, and Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story
Ray Gunn (left); The Lightkeeper.
THE WHISTLER FILM FESTIVAL has unveiled its full lineup, running December 2 to 6, with a total of 103 films, 70 percent of them Canadian.
Opening the event is the retro-futuristic animated film Ray Gunn, directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) and featuring the voices of Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson in a sci-fi noir story of aliens, flying cars, and corruption.
The previously announced closing-night film marks the Canadian premiere of Partition director Vic Sarin’s The Lightkeeper, starring Dominic Cooper and Sarah Gadon in a love story set on Ireland’s windswept coast, where a mysterious American breaks a reclusive lighthouse keeper’s isolation.
The Lightkeeper joins 16 Canadian features competing for a total of $40,000 in the fest’s Borsos Competition, including Chris Carter’s previously announced Queens for a Day, Nyla Innuksuk’s In the Heart of the South, Angus Silver’s Insectasy, Arnold Lim’s The Bryce Lee Story, Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts, Marie Clements’s How We Stand, Cody Lightning’s Smudge the Blades, Justin Ducharme’s Seventeen, and Aisha Evelyna’s Seahorse.
Other highlights in the fest’s Special Presentations include Ron Murphy’s Back in Black, a dark comedy starring Christopher Walken and Jane Curtin; Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen’s Jim Queen, a camp animated satire about a Parisian influencer who catches a virus that turns gay men straight; Beth de Araújo’s Josephine, featuring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan as parents trying to restore their eight-year-old daughter’s sense of safety after she witnesses a violent crime; Adrian Buitenhuis’s Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story, a documentary about the 26-month, 40,000-kilometre journey (with Hansen appearing in person for a Signature Series Talent Talk on December 3); Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, starring Sandra Hüller as a mysterious soldier who claims an abandoned farm in 17th-century Germany; Orlando von Einsiedel’s The Cycle Of Love, the true story of a young Indian artist who cycled 6,000 miles from Delhi to Sweden in 1977; and Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, boasting Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, and Halle Bailey in a comedy about a shy housewife who turns zealous method actor for a bit part in community theatre.
And it wouldn’t be the Whistler Film Festival without its Mountain Culture series: Daniel Sharp’s High Ground, exploring a mysterious 1976 plane crash in Yosemite’s wilderness; Edward Drake, Scott Veltri, and Francis Cronin’s The Ascent, about double amputee Mandy Horvath tackling Mount Kilimanjaro; Todd Jones and Steve Jones’s The Lost Cache, a real-life treasure hunt in the Yukon wilderness; and Mila Aung-Thwin’s The Ultra Runner, following Romanian ultramarathoner Tibi Useriu.
Elsewhere, a strong international documentary program includes Nuisance Bear, Back to the Fire, Tzinquaw Opera, and more.
There are shorts programs, morning programs, and much more, with ticket packs and passes available today, and single tickets on hand November 4. Find the full lineup and more information here. 
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