VTIFF Program Guide 2025 - Flipbook - Page 19
FILMS A TO Z
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MIROIRS NO. 3
Directed by Christian Petzold
Germany | 2025 | Fiction | 86 min | German w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Jennifer Rangnow | Goethe-Institut Boston
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 | 4:30 PM | FH
Like a man possessed, German filmmaker Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Barbara, Transit)
keeps remaking Vertigo. His latest cracked fairy tale, Miroirs No. 3, continues his fruitful
partnership with his enigmatic middle-period muse, Paula Beer. She stars as a young
woman who miraculously survives a car crash, is taken in by a local woman, and forms a
mysterious bond with the woman, as well as her husband and son. With this bare-bones
setup, Petzold embraces his appetites for high art and low, creating a psychodrama that
plays like pulp Robert Bresson. How thrilling to watch a filmmaker pare back their style
to its essential elements and ruminate on the images that haunt them! Are there scenes
of women riding bicycles through the countryside? Absolutely. Is the film shot through
with noirish intrigue? Certainly, Preminger’s Laura being most pronounced. Does the
story turn on a tense, revealing piano recital? Count on it. ~OO
NEXT LIFE
Directed by Tenzin Phuntsog
U.S. | 2025 | Fiction | 73 min | English, Tibetan w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Brianne Chase
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 12 PM | BB
A slow-moving, delicately paced gem of a film. A Buddhist family, long exiled to
California, must make preparations for the father’s journey to the next life as he slowly
dies. The religious practices and customs—and the visiting monks—provide both
contrast and a strange harmony for the very middle-class American lifestyle the family
has come to inhabit. The family’s desire to return to Tibet seems in many ways
unachievable, so they root themselves in Buddhist teachings about death and rebirth,
finding solace in the belief that in his next life he will be reborn as a bird in Tibet. ~SM
MY FATHER’S SHADOW
Directed by Akinola Davies Jr.
UK, Nigeria | 2025 | Fiction | 94 min | English, Naija, Yoruba
w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Lisa Schamberg and Pat Robins
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17 | 7 PM | FH
Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow, the first-ever
Nigerian film officially selected at Cannes, was developed
over a decade, as Davies and his co-writer/brother, Wale,
drew inspiration from memories of their late father, as well as
their firsthand experience of the pivotal 1993 presidential
election. Sopé Dìrísù is magnetic as Folarin, an absent father
who suddenly takes his sons, Aki and Remi (real-life siblings
Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo) on a
day trip to the city. On a single sweltering day in Lagos, while
the country nervously awaits the election results, the two
young boys try to make sense of the whirlwind around them
and the man they see before them. Davies cut his teeth
filming music videos, and he injects a kinetic sensibility into
this magical realist tale, bringing the bustling, buzzing city
from his childhood to life. “That’s Lagos,” says Davies. “It’s
so chaotic, but just magical at the same time.” ~OO
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025
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