VTIFF Program Guide 2025 - Flipbook - Page 23
FILMS A TO Z
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RESURRECTION
THE SECRET AGENT
Directed by Bi Gan
China, France | 2025 | Fiction | 160 min | Chinese w/subtitles
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands | 2025 | Fiction | 158 min | Portuguese w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Jennifer Rangnow
Sponsored by: Todd Lockwood
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21 | 1:15 PM | FH
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 | 7 PM | FH
Who among us isn’t moved by a love letter to capital-C Cinema? Told in six wildly
different chapters—from a silent-era monster movie to a shadowy atomic-age noir to a
supernatural parable to a story about an unlikely pair of schemers to a punk-rock
vampire romance, plus a wraparound story with the great Shu Qi—the film is a feast for
the senses. The main story is glorious gobbledygook but making sense of its premise
hardly matters, because it’s really just an excuse for Bi to have fantastic fun with our
suspended disbelief. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the ecstasy of his filmmaking,
to marvel at his incredible mastery of so many styles and genres as he celebrates the
miracle of movies over the span of a century. The highs of this omnibus are exceptionally
high because of the sheer technical brilliance on display, culminating in a staggering
single-shot finale that surpasses Bi’s hour-long oner in Long Day’s Journey into Night. As
New York Times critic Manohla Dargis summarized, this is a “cinephile’s delight.” ~OO
Jaws turned 50 this summer, and no one is celebrating harder than Kleber Mendonça
Filho. Spielberg’s classic is all over Filho’s Cannes-fêted smash-in-the-making. It’s 1977
in Recife, Brazil, and everyone is whispering about the shark that was caught with a
human leg in its stomach. But beyond the allusions to hungry man-eaters, Filho (Best
Director winner at Cannes) is telling an expansive espionage potboiler through masterful
restraint, sustained tension, crackerjack set pieces, and unabashed eccentricity, while
embracing and subverting the genre in all kinds of clever ways. At the heart of this
grandiose thriller lies a heartfelt story about broken families and the bond between a
father and son. Wagner Moura smolders in the lead role as Marcelo (or is it Armando?),
an academic on the run (Moura picked up Best Actor at Cannes this year). He reunites
with his son while trying to start a new life, but soon realizes the city is not the refuge
he’d hoped for, and apex predators are circling. ~OO
SHORTS, PROGRAM I
SHORTS, PROGRAM II
Directed by Chheangkea, Jason Adam Maselle, Lucia G. Romero, Bill Morrison, and
Aditya Joshi
South Africa, Cambodia, Spain, U.S. | 2025 | Fiction | 70 min
Directed by Fran Zayas, Jan Saska, Joan Iyiola, Nelson Yeo, and Aisling Byrne
Puerto Rico, Slovakia, UK/France, Singapore, Ireland | 2025 | Fiction | 75 min
Sponsored by: Vida Drungilaite
Sponsored by: Vida Drungilaite
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 | 8 PM | SR
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 | 12:30 PM | SR
VTIFF celebrates the international short film with five
magical works. Jason Adam Maselle’s Punter is a South
African tale of a wayward father and the son who’s trying
to steer him right. Chheangkea’s witty and knowing
Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites, set in Cambodia,
follows a young man coming clean to his potential
fiancée, thanks to support from his dead grandmother.
Lucia G. Romero’s intense Cura Sana finds two young
sisters using love as an antidote to a cycle of poverty and
domestic violence. Bill Morrison’s Ghost of the Past
adapts an incomplete 1924 short to create something
new, with the help of guitarist Bill Frisell. And in Aditya
Joshi’s West Side Story Story, opening night stirs some
emotions for its young director. ~SM
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 | 8 PM | SR
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 | 2:30 PM | SR
VTIFF’s second installment of international short films is
equal to the first. In Fran Zayas’ Entra Tormentas (with
Spike Lee and Cory Fukunaga as co-producers), a
grieving man breaks into an off-limits cemetery after a
hurricane. Jan Saskia’s hilarious animated marvel,
Hurikan, follows the only anthropomorphic pig in Prague
as he tries to find a keg of beer for the barmaid of his
dreams. Joan Iyiola’s Mango subverts body horror into
social critique. Nelson Yeo’s Through Your Eyes takes
you to the strangest disco in Singapore, where four lives
intertwine in a search for connection amid pulsating
beats, And Aisling Byrne’s touching Turnaround follows
a struggling West Cork cleaner who faces both a tightly
held secret and a crisis of conscience. ~SM
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