VTIFF Program Guide 2025 - Flipbook - Page 18
FILMS A TO Z
FH: FILM HOUSE | BB: BLACK BOX THEATER | SR: SCREENING ROOM • All at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington
THE LOVE THAT REMAINS
Directed by Hlynur Pálmason
Iceland, Denmark, France, Finland, Sweden | 2025 | Fiction | 109 min | Icelandic
w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Monika Jaeckle and Lou Slanina
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 | 4:15 PM | FH
Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason returns to the present after his superb epic Godland.
With The Love that Remains, he crafts a smaller, more intimate story and he’s not afraid
to get a little weird with it. The film is a snapshot of a year in the life of a recently
separated couple, Anna and Magnús, and their three precocious kids—played by
Pálmason’s own brood. He’s a commercial fisherman, often away at sea, and she’s an
artist who collaborates with the elements to create large-scale, rust-covered canvases.
What could have been a bitter domestic drama is instead playful and wryly funny, full of
surreal episodes that puncture the coziness. Pálmason lets sight gags and whimsical
asides fly—a giant vengeful rooster, a straw knight come to life, an aircraft plunging into
the ocean. In its own peculiar way, the film conveys the disorientation of a relationship’s
end: the world keeps turning, but it feels like it’s off its axis. ~OO
MAGELLAN
Directed by Lav Diaz
Portugal, Spain, Philippines, France, Taiwan | 2025 | Fiction | 160 min | Portuguese,
Spanish, Tagalog, French w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Coffee Enterprises
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22 | 12:45 PM | FH
The screening is followed by a Q&A with director Martina Savoca-Guay.
Filipino director Lav Diaz, the creator of some of the longest-ever narrative films, is a
master minimalist-maximalist storyteller who uses extreme length to unravel complex
social issues tracing back to his archipelago homeland. Now, his crossover moment is
here. Magellan is certainly the most accessible film he’s made, but Diaz’s artistry is
undiminished. He has crafted an epic anti-epic for the ages. Gael García Bernal plays the
doomed explorer and gives a brilliant performance in a film that refuses to showcase its
star. Diaz conjures a sensorial experience akin to Terrence Malick, eschewing a score in
favor of the hypnotic rhythms of jungle canopies, lapping waves, and creaking galleons.
This is a Filipino artist taking stock of brutal colonialism, but it’s also the work of a
supremely confident filmmaker equally capable of conjuring breathtaking beauty and
ugliness. Magellan takes its place in the lineage of psychedelic conquests from Aguirre to
Zama. ~OO
MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL, 2025 FAVORITES
Directed by Chantal Caron, Alexandre Isabelle, Meredith Holch, Samuel LaPointe,
Virgile Ratelle, and Alexia Roc
Quebec, Vermont | 2025 | Fiction | 80 min | English, French w/subtitles
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23 | 8 PM | SR
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 4:45 PM | SR
VTIFF celebrates its regional spring festival, offering six short films from our 2025
edition, focusing on Vermont and Quebec, presented in partnership with Vermont
Public. In Chantal Caron’s Somber Tides, two avian creatures battle the elements, while
in Alexandre Isabelle’s À toi les oreilles, a young man battles family history through
music. Meredith Holch’s tissue-paper animated Brother Bird tells three tales of loved
ones who visit from the afterlife. Samuel LaPointe’s witty We Could Be Nemeses focuses
on a lovelorn supervillain who falls for a headstrong superhero. Virgil Ratelle’s Summer
Love eavesdrops on various couples before they go for a swim. And Alexia Roc’s Three
Screaming Vaginas offers a triptych of stories that reveal the challenges and splendors
of the vaginal experience. ~SM
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THE MANY MIRACLES OF HOUSEHOLD SAINTS
Directed by Martina Savoca-Guay
U.S. | 2023 | Documentary | 58 min | English
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 2:30 PM | SR
The screening is followed by a Q&A with director Martina Savoca-Guay.
In keeping with the intergenerational magic of Household Saints, filmmaker Martina
Savoca-Guay has crafted a compelling documentary, The Many Miracles of Household
Saints, revealing the improbable story behind the making of the film. It’s a fitting work,
since director Nancy Savoca was pregnant during the shoot and Savoca-Guay was the
baby she carried. Combining behind-the-scenes footage from the set as well as
contemporary interviews with Savoca, author Francine Prose, and producer Rich Guay
(her dad), Savoca-Guay has created an homage to a remarkable American independent
film and to her own filmmaking heritage. ~SM
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025
