Opening film | Monkey Beach by Loretta Todd |
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Location | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
Festival date | September 24–October 7, 2020 |
The 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival, the 39th event in the history of the Vancouver International Film Festival, was held from September 24 to October 7, 2020. [1] On September 3, organizers announced a lineup of 180 films; due to the COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia and the associated social distancing restrictions remaining in place at movie theatres and other public venues, the festival took place primarily on the online VIFF Connect platform. [2]
Most films were geoblocked so that they were available for streaming only to viewers in British Columbia, although some of the festival's other programming, including its VIFF Talks series, was made available to viewers across Canada and internationally. [2]
Audience-voted awards were announced at the end of the festival on October 7; however, some of the juried award winners were announced during the festival, beginning with the announcement of the British Columbia film categories on September 27, as a technique to help publicize and promote the winning films. [3]
Award | Film | Filmmaker |
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Most Popular Canadian Narrative | Beans | Tracey Deer |
Most Popular Canadian Documentary | Inconvenient Indian | Michelle Latimer |
Most Popular International Narrative | My Wonderful Wanda (Wanda, mein Wunder) | Bettina Oberli |
Most Popular International Documentary | The Reason I Jump | Jerry Rothwell |
Best Canadian Film | Beans | Tracey Deer |
Best Canadian Documentary | Call Me Human (Je m'appelle humain) | Kim O'Bomsawin |
Best Canadian Short Film | Bad Omen | Salar Pashtoonyar |
Best Canadian Short Film, Honorable Mention | Moon (Lune) | Zoé Pelchat |
Emerging Canadian Director | Violation | Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli |
Best BC Film | The Curse of Willow Song | Karen Lam |
Best BC Short Film | Cake Day | Phillip Thomas |
Sea to Sky Award | Nuxalk Radio | Banchi Hanuse |
BC Emerging Filmmaker | Brother, I Cry | Jessie Anthony |
VIFF Impact Award | The Reason I Jump | Jerry Rothwell |
Rob Stewart Eco Warrior Award | The Hidden Life of Trees (Das geheime Leben der Bäume) | Peter Wohlleben (subject), Jörg Adolph (filmmaker) |
Immersed (Virtual Reality Program), Best Cinematic Live Action | Kowloon Forest | Alexey Marfin |
Immersed, Best Documentary | By the Waters of Babylon | Kristen Lauth Shaeffer, Andrew Halasz |
Immersed, Best Animation | The Book of Distance | Randall Okita |
Immersed, Honorable Mention in Animation | In the Land of the Flabby Schnook (Au pays du cancre mou) | Francis Gélinas |
Immersed, Audience Award | Ecosphere: Raja Ampat | Joseph Purdam |
The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for two weeks in late September and early October.
The Canadian Film Festival, formerly known as the Canadian Filmmakers Festival, is an annual film festival in Toronto, Ontario. Showcasing a program of Canadian independent films, it is held in March of each year and usually runs for five days.
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Elle-Máijá Apiniskim Tailfeathers is a Canadian filmmaker, actor, and producer. She has won several accolades for her film work, including multiple Canadian Screen Awards.
Karen Lam is a Canadian director, writer and producer. She is known for the horror film Evangeline (2013).
The 2018 Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) took place from September 27 to October 12, 2018.
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Monkey Beach is a 2020 Canadian drama film, directed by Loretta Todd. Her debut narrative feature, the film is an adaptation of Eden Robinson's 2000 novel Monkey Beach.
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Jesse Anthony is an Onondaga director, screenwriter, and producer from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario.
Suzanne Crocker is a Canadian documentary filmmaker from Dawson City, Yukon. She is most noted for her films All the Time in the World (2014), which won the award for Most Popular Canadian Documentary at the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival, and First We Eat, which was one of the winners of the Audience Award at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
All the Time in the World is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Suzanne Crocker and released in 2014. The film documents the decision of Crocker and her family to spend nine months away from their home in Dawson City, Yukon to live off the grid in a wilderness setting entirely without modern technological conveniences such as electricity or indoor plumbing.
Moon is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Zoé Pelchat and released in 2020. The film stars Joanie Martel as Babz, an ex-convict working as a waitress in a diner, who is set on a path to redemption when she works up the courage to ask a customer out on a date.
The 2021 Vancouver International Film Festival, the 40th event in the history of the Vancouver International Film Festival, was held from October 1 to October 11, 2021. Unlike the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival, which was staged entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 festival featured in-person screenings at the VIFF Centre and other venues, although most titles were also available on the online VIFF Connects platform.