Didn’t have a chance to catch many of the year’s Oscar nominated films? No worries, the Vernon Film Society is bringing in both award-winning, nominated and other Canadian and international films for its 17th annual Vernon International Film Festival.
The 11 films are once again being provided by the Film Circuit, a division of the Toronto International Film Festival, and will all be shown at the Town Cinema.
The festival opens at 5 p.m. Friday, March 11 with U.K.-Canada production Nowhere Boy, which follows John Lennon’s late teen years in Liverpool just before he found fame with The Beatles.
The film features stunning performances by Kristin Scott Thomas (I’ve Loved You So Long) as Lennon’s indomitable aunt Mimi, and Annie-Marie Duff (The Last Station) as his profoundly unreliable mother Julia. Newcomer Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) plays Lennon as an angry and rebellious young man, desperate for approval and affection, and convinced of his own genius.
(Nowhere Boy will screen again on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.)
On Friday at 7:30 p.m. is Canadian director Carl Bessai’s Fathers & Sons, winner of the Vancouver Film Critics Circle’s best B.C. film award for 2010.
The follow-up to his hugely successful 2008 feature Mothers and Daughters, Bessai continues his acute exploration of family dynamics in this acerbic celebration of the father-son bond.
Germany’s Soul Kitchen, Saturday at 5 p.m., is a loose-limbed house party of a comedy and an audience favourite at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.
The film follows Zinos Kazantzakis (Adam Bousdoukos), the proprietor of Soul Kitchen, a vast warehouse diner restaurant in a scruffy neighborhood of Hamburg where the food might be spectacularly bad, but it’s edible.
Film Circuit favourite Nigel Cole (Saving Grace, Calendar Girls) directs a supremely talented ensemble cast led by Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) in U.K. film Made in Dagenham.
A dramatization of the 1968 strike at Britain’s Ford Dagenham car plant where female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination, the film screens Sunday, March 13 at 5 p.m. and Monday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Locals will be able to catch Jennifer Lawrence’s best actress Oscar-nominated turn as a teenager trying to raise her poor family in the Ozarks in Winter’s Bone, showing March 13 at 7:30 p.m.
To save her family home, Lawrence’s character goes on a search for her meth cooking father (John Hawkins, also nominated for best supporting actor) to devastating results.
New York auteur Woody Allen returns to London for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, showing March 14 at 5 p.m.
The beautifully realized ensemble piece affectionately skewers the foibles and fears of a group of individuals, each caught up in their own life crises.
Tuesday, March 15 at 5 p.m., The Way Back is an epic set in Stalin’s Russia, where during a nighttime blizzard, seven prisoners escape a Soviet Gulag in 1940.
Although free, the men’s lives remain at risk as they make their impending trek to safety, defying any reasonable chance of success across an unforgiving landscape.
Documentary The Tillman Story is finally coming to the local screen March 15 at 7:30 p.m.
A riveting account of the U.S. Army’s misrepresentation of facts surrounding the 2004 combat death of Corp. Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, The Tillman Story is a sobering examination of one family’s dogged search for answers.
Fans of boxing, but more importantly, good acting, will want to check out The Fighter, which follows real-life half-brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, Wednesday, March 16 at 5 p.m.
The film features Oscar winning roles for best supporting actor, Christian Bale as Eklund, who was once known as “The Pride of Lowell”, but who hits hard times while his brother, Micky, is on the rise, and actress Melissa Leo as the brothers’ tough-as-nails mother.
Also screening March 16 at 7:30 p.m. is House of Branching Love, which follows the breakup of a 30-something professional couple.
Think of it as Finland’s version of Blue Valentine, but with ample proof that there’s nothing funnier, or scarier, than matters of the heart.
The festival wraps up Thursday, March 17 at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. with Quebec director Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar nominated film for best foreign language feature, Incendies.
The film follows two siblings as they attempt to unravel the mystery of their mother’s life in Lebanon. Set against the bloody Lebanese civil war, the film is expertly told through the use of chapters and flashbacks.
Advance tickets for individual films ($7) and passes ($30 for five films) are now on sale at the Town Cinema and The Bean Scene. Pass holders should be in the theatre at least 15 minutes before the film starts to guarantee a seat. Doors open at 4:15 p.m. each day of the festival.
