VIFF 2015 Wish List

Paul is preparing to leave Tajikistan, while thinking back on his adolescent years. His childhood, his mother's madness, the parties, the trip to the USSR where he lost his virginity, the friend who betrayed him and the love of his life.

Pierre and Manon are a pair of poor documentary makers, who scrape by with odd jobs. When Pierre meets young trainee Elisabeth, he falls for her, but wants to keep Manon at the same time. But the new girl in his life finds out that Manon has a lover. When she tells Pierre, the time comes for difficult decisions all round.

A juvenile judge and a special educator are convinced that they can save the young delinquent Malony from himself and his violent ways.

EVER THE LAND explores the sublime bond between people and their land through a landmark architectural undertaking by one of New Zealand's most passionately independent Maori tribes, Ngai Tuhoe.

Over the last ten years, a series of leaks of financial data have made politicians and public opinion in many Western democracies increasingly concerned about the tax optimisation practices of the wealthiest members of their society. In the shadow of the financial crisis, public opinion has been calling for reform of banking privacy and international tax agreements. The subject has created diplomatic crises between nations and tensions in financial markets. One of the figures at the centre of the debate is the Franco-Italian banking IT technician Hervé Falciani. In 2008, Hervé Falciani left his job at the Swiss branch of HSBC, taking with him - without authorisation - a hard-drive containing a database of 130,000 named bank accounts, held by citizens from 180 countries. This database found its way into the hands of many world governments. The purpose of this film is to examine the tax debate in a critical and engaging but also a balanced way.

As Afghanistan teeters on an unpredictable future, A FLICKERING TRUTH unwraps the world of three dreamers, the dust of 100 years of war and the restoration of 8000 hours of film archive. What surprises will emerge from the cloak of time?

Made entirely of Scottish film archive, 'From Scotland With Love' is a 75-minute film by award-winning Director Virginia Heath with a transcendent score by Scottish musician and composer King Creosote. A journey into our collective past, the film explores universal themes of love, loss, resistance, migration, work and play. Ordinary people, some long since dead, their names and identities largely forgotten, appear shimmering from the depth of the vaults to take a starring role. Brilliantly edited together, these silent individuals become composite characters, who emerge to tell us their stories, given voice by King Creosote's poetic music and lyrics.

HOMME LESS is about the underbelly of the American Dream, the hidden backyard of our society.

Journey into the hearts and minds of passengers aboard the Empire Builder, America's busiest long-distance train route.

A human-rights lawyer conducts conversations with two men whose fathers were indicted as war criminals for their roles in WWII - Nazi Governors and consultants to Adolf Hitler himself.

Twice a year the Italian city of Siena goes crazy for the oldest horse race in the world: the Palio. Not your average race: strategy, bribery and corruption play as much a part as the skill of the riders. Horses are allocated by lot four days prior to the race. This is when the madness truly begins. In the eye of the storm stand the jockeys. Loved and loathed by the districts they represent, they forge alliances and make deals promising large cash sums to try and get the best start. Legendary rider Gigi Bruschelli has won 13 Palios in 16 years and is accused by his critics of monopolizing the race. He works the system, paying off younger jockeys and fixing the race with average horses. Two races away from beating the world record, Bruschelli will do anything to win. But one jockey stands in his way, his former trainee, a handsome young Sardinian, Giovanni Atzeni, who is quietly determined to challenge his old mentor. Less interested in bribes and collusion, he rides for the love of the race. PALIO is the thrilling story of a young 'outsider' keen to break in to the dangerous but lucrative race and the corrupt 'insider' who has manipulated the city of Siena for a decade. Their passionate and dramatic battle is an epic and cinematic tale of Italian life in microcosm.

Renowned academic and author Noam Chomsky elucidates 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power that have led to unprecedented inequality and the hollowing out of the American middle class.

A cinematic essay in defense of remembering, The Royal Road offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity, the pursuit of unavailable women and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes, and featuring a voiceover cameo by Tony Kushner. Deceptively simple California urban landscapes serve as the framework for the film's lyrically written voiceover which combines rigorous historical research with a stream-of-consciousness personal monologue and relates these seemingly disparate stories from an intimate, colloquial perspective to tell a one-of-a-kind California tale. Shot on 16mm film and contemplatively crafted of long takes, The Royal Road is a film about landscapes and desire, memory and history - and the stories we tell.

A documentary that follows undercover activists trying to stave off a man-made mass extinction.

HD. Meet the cartooning legends and hopefuls who create the iconic single-panel cartoons for readers of the New Yorker.

Filmed over 5 years, A Syrian Love Story charts an incredible odyssey to political freedom. For Raghda and Amer, it is a journey of hope, dreams and despair: for the revolution, their homeland and each other.

After 2000 years of history, the Arena of Verona is celebrating the Centenary of its Opera Festival with Verdi's AIDA by La Fura dels Baus. From rehearsals to the opening night, we follow the workers and artists who created the most famous operatic festival in the world.

A portrait of a patron of the arts extraordinaire who transformed a modest fortune and impeccable taste into one of the premiere collections of twentieth century art.

On the rainy night of October 2, 1968, eight characters waiting on a remote bus station for a bus heading to Mexico City start experiencing a strange phenomenon.

In 1961, famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of radical behavior experiments that tested ordinary humans' willingness to obey authority.

James, a twenty-something New Yorker, struggles to take control of his self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges.

A love letter to early Italian cinema, Love Among the Ruins is a faux documentary about the miraculous discovery and restoration of a long-lost Italian silent film. The genius of the Lumini brothers, two cinematic visionaries almost overlooked in the history of cinema, ignites the imagination of a contemporary filmmaker who makes the discovery of a lifetime. In 2012, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck northern Italy, severely affecting the historic city of Ferrara and surrounding areas and causing significant damage to the region's Medieval and Renaissance architecture. However, a cracked wall in Ferrara's municipal building revealed a hidden treasure: several cans of old film. Could this be the long-lost silent romance written and directed by the Lumini brothers of Ferrara in the early 1920s? Can the deteriorated film be repaired so new audiences around the world can enjoy this moving story of lovers caught in the events of World War I? Scholars speculate, experts and archivists hypothesize, and finally, the 90-year old film is restored and set to a new musical score. The talents of actors long passed away (or maybe not!) and the beauty of Ferrara in the 1920s (as well as today) are once again seen on the screen with a tale as striking and poignant for today's viewers as it was nearly a century ago.

A history of the Louvre during the Nazi occupation and a meditation on the meaning and timelessness of art.

Maria is a caring young nurse who wants to break free. Niels is an incurable patient who wants to travel to Switzerland to commit assisted suicide. Together they embark on an intense journey that will bring them closer to their dreams--and to each other.

An attraction forms when a Chinese American girl visiting Hong Kong for the first time meets an American expat who shows her the way, but timing may not quite be on their side. A walk-and-talk romance set in the beautiful city of Hong Kong, the film asks the question - what happens when you meet the right person at the wrong time?