VTIFF Program Guide 2025 - Flipbook - Page 13
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FILMS A TO Z
HOME IS THE OCEAN
Directed by Livia Vonaesch
Switzerland | 2025 | Documentary | 94 min | Swiss German, German, English,
Portuguese, Norwegian w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Deborah Schapiro and Lou Polish
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 | 7:15 PM | BB
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 4:15 PM | BB
Filmmaker Livia Vonaesch spent seven years at sea with the Swiss family Schwörers, but
it’s hard to imagine how they made space for her. The parents, Dario and Sabine, set sail
25 years ago to conduct field research in the world’s most remote regions. Along the
way, their six children were born, each in a different corner of the world. Vonaesch films
this like the adventure tale that it is, capturing the majesty and unpredictability of nature
as well as the joys and thrills of life at sea. But what sets Home Is the Ocean apart is her
eye for the contradictions at the heart of their little collective. Though their lifestyle may
be unconventional, the challenges the family faces, and the way they pull together in
difficult times, is deeply relatable and heartening. ~OO
HOUSEHOLD SAINTS
Directed by Nancy Savoca
U.S. | 1993 | Fiction | 124 min | English
Sponsored by: Rena Koopman
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 4 PM | FH
The screening is followed by a Q&A with director Nancy Savoca and producer Richard
Guay.
A masterpiece of 1990s American independent cinema, Nancy Savoca’s Household
Saints is also really hard to summarize, as it packs a universe or two into its small section
of New York City. It’s there that Italian-American butcher Joseph (Vincent D’Onofrio, in
one of his best roles) wins his wife Catherine (Tracey Ullman) in a card game, much to
the chagrin of his ever-disapproving mother (Judith Malina). The movie gradually
becomes about the couple’s deeply spiritual, thoroughly Catholic daughter (Lili Taylor).
Based on Francine Prose’s novel, and written by Savoca and Richard Guay, the film’s
expansive worldview takes in romantic love, parental devotion, religious commitment,
and community life, always with a darkly comic undertow. Savoca and Taylor definitely
connected on a filmmaking level, creating this film and Dogfight back-to-back, two of the
brightest gems of the ’90s. ~SM
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
Directed by Jafar Panahi
Iran, France, Luxembourg | 2025 | Fiction | 105 min | Persian w/subtitles
HOW MOVIES GO MISSING
A Conversation with Nancy Savoca and Richard Guay
Sponsored by: Janet Biehl
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 12 PM | FH
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 | 7 PM | FH
This event is free. Advanced registration is recommended.
In It Was Just an Accident, his Palme d’Or-winning triumph, Jafar Panahi is as piercingly
political as ever while also embracing white-knuckle genre filmmaking. Shot in secret
without permits—often inside cars and without lights to avoid detection—Panahi’s
resourceful approach makes this thriller all the more taut in its telling. In this morality
play, a group of former prisoners—a brilliant cross-section of Iranian society—think they
have captured the intelligence officer who tortured them while incarcerated. But none of
them is absolutely certain. What’s remarkable is that this revenge fantasy is animated
not by rage but by the group’s enduring humanity. Panahi is even able to maintain his
signature sense of humor as the temperature rises. ~OO
“Movie audiences are being told that streaming has made the entire history of cinema
available for a simple subscription fee... This is not true.” So reads the opening line of
the Missing Movies manifesto. This invaluable organization, started by a group of
independent filmmakers who experienced their own works getting buried, is dedicated
to digging up and restoring lost gems from the ’80s, ’90s, and into the 21st century. Two
founders of the organization—writer-director Nancy Savoca (Dogfight, Household
Saints) and writer-producer Richard Guay (Household Saints, Ghost Dog: The Way of the
Samurai)—talk about how movies disappear and the detective work it takes to find
them. ~OO
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025
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