High School Programming from the Vancouver International Film Festival (#VIFFHigh )

Films for November & December
PROGRAMMING
Environmentally Focused Films
Shakespeare on Screen
French Focus 
Vancity Favourites


CONTACT 
If you are interested in attending or discussing these events further, please contact morgaine.jennings@viff.org at your earliest convenience.

Great cinema has the power to educate, inspire and foster empathy across cultures. However, getting a chance to see independent films is often a challenge. Year-round, at the Vancity Theatre, we screen some of the world's best cinema and we are thrilled to offer student-focused matinees with flexible booking times. 

Unless otherwise specified, screenings dates and times are relatively flexible and can be booked any time during the week provided there are no rentals in the theatre and the group size is 50+. The dates currently listed on the website are for public screenings and does not include the VIFF High screenings. In the event that you do not have 50 students interested in a screening, please send through a couple date requests, and we would be happy to combine you with another school at a time which works well for you both. 

Tickets are $8/student, and we can offer complimentary tickets for up to 4 teachers and supervisors

Environmentally Focused Films

This Changes Everything
Avi Lewis, Canada/usa, 2015, 89 min.
INFO | WEBSITE & TRAILER | INTERVIEW

Naomi Klein (Shock Doctrine) has risen to prominence around the world as one of Canada's most forceful and relevant public intellectuals. Her cogent call to direct action has inspired youth and helped chart roadmaps for social progressives and environmentalists. Yet, it's also worried those who believe that her critique of capitalism plays into the hands of right-wingers who think climate change is a socialist plot. Join us, Naomi Klein and director Avi Lewis for this special presentation of This Changes Everything.

What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we'll ever get to build a better world? Filmed over 211 days in nine countries on five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. Inspired by Klein's international nonfiction bestseller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana's Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein's narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.

Provocative, compelling and accessible to even the most climate-fatigued viewers, This Changes Everything will leave you refreshed and inspired, reflecting on the ties between us, the kind of lives we really want, and why the climate crisis is at the centre of it all.
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Fractured Land
CANADA | DIR: DAMIEN GILLIS, FIONA RAYHER 

INFO | WEBSITE & TRAILER

What would it be like to live alongside one of the shapers of human events, in their youth, before they've transformed history? In Fiona Rayher and Damien Gillis' documentary, we follow Caleb Behn, a young Dene lawyer locked in a battle with the oil and gas industry. He may become one of this generation's great leaders—if he can discover how to reconcile the fractures within himself, his community and the world around him through the blending of the modern tools of law with ancient wisdom. 

Winner, VIFF Impact: Canadian Audience Award 

**Possibility of Filmmakers in attendance.

Hadwin's Judgement
CANADA/UK | DIR: SASHA SNOW 

INFO | OFFICIAL SITE | TRAILER
In his compelling drama/documentary hybrid, Sasha Snow explores the complexities of Grant Hadwin, a logging engineer who chainsawed down a 300-year-old sacred tree on Haida Gwaii as a protest against rampant logging in the area. Inspired by John Vaillant's Governor General's Award-winning book, The Golden Spruce, Snow focusses on the more mysterious elements of Hadwin's story and fate, crafting "[a] gorgeously photographed, compulsively watchable, sympathetic doc..." — Globe & Mail

How to Change the World
JERRY ROTHWELL, CANADA/UK, 2015, 112 MIN.

INFO | OFFICIAL SITE | TRAILER 
In 1971, a group of friends sail from Vancouver into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world's imagination. The Greenpeace story is vividly and dramatically told in Jerry Rothwell's riveting documentary, a movie that reminds us of the central role Vancouver played in the foundation of the modern environmental movement, as well as the often difficult path that movement has followed over the years. Featuring candid interviews with Paul Watson, Patrick Moore and Rex Wyler, never-before-seen archival footage, and the music of Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Brigitte Bardot, Country Joe Mcdonald & The Fish and Can.