Vancouver's sixth Black Film Festival opens December 11 with 42 films
The Vancouver International Black Film Festival runs December 11 to 15 at the VIFF Centre and online, with 42 films from across Africa, the Caribbean and Canada.
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Tickets start at $12 for the sixth Vancouver International Black Film Festival, which runs December 11 to 15 with 42 films at the VIFF Centre and online.
The program connects stories from Africa, the Caribbean and the West, including local, national and international productions. Panels, workshops and community events run alongside the screenings.
The opening-night film is Laundry (Uhlanjululo), screening in person, by South African director Zamo Mkhwanazi. Khuthala's world begins to unravel in the film, and the laundry at its centre becomes a place where memory, identity and loss meet.
Other in-person highlights include Diya, directed by Achille Romainou, which explores resilience, identity and personal transformation. The Eyes of Ghana, a documentary by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot, follows 93-year-old filmmaker Chris Hesse, who was cinematographer to Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah. As his eyesight fades, Hesse sets out to recover more than 1,000 films documenting the country's independence movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
The online-only Canadian Spotlight features 14 films, including Coaching While Black, Cypher, Wave Rider and The Night Watches Us (Profilage nocturne). The Fabienne Colas Foundation's Being Black in Canada short-film series, which supported 30 Black Canadian filmmakers aged 18 to 30 in making their first documentary shorts, also screens, with professional coaching throughout production.
On December 12, the free VIBFF Black Market industry series covers independent documentary production, creative careers and short-form storytelling, with a Vancouver Black Filmmaker Spotlight hosted by Dean Redman and a networking session. An online discussion on barriers facing BIPOC people in film and the arts is set for December 15.
