Vancouver International Film Festival presents:
The Club
(Chile, 2015, 98 mins, DCP)
Director: Pablo Larrain
Cast: Alfredo Castro, Roberto Farías, Antonia Zegers, Jaime Vadell, Alejandro Goic, Alejandro Sieveking, Marcelo Alonso
Classification: 19+
In Spanish with English subtitles
March 4, 5, and 7, 2016
March 14, 2016, 8:50pm and
March 15, 2016, 8:50pm
If the townsfolk stopped to think about it, they might find it strange: four priests and a nun sharing a modest house in a desolate backwater like this. But the clergy keep to themselves, only venturing out to train their prized greyhound. It’s only when a stranger comes and makes a nuisance of himself, yelling obscenities from the street – and the most recent addition to their number reacts with unequivocal violence – that this carefully cultivated sanctuary threatens to unravel.
Writer-director Pablo Larrain, an Academy Award-nominee for his previous film, No, makes little attempt to conceal his anger towards the Catholic Church’s “tolerance” for errant priests in this bitter, misanthropic chamber drama. Even the reformist-minded priest who comes to audit the home is tainted with compromise and cynicism; there are no heroes here, only abusers and victims. It’s not an edifying schema, but an intense, dirty, disturbing movie that lets no one off the hook.
Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente)
(Colombia, 2015, 124 mins, DCP)
Director: Ciro Guerra
Cast: Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar, Salvado Yangiama, Miguel Dionisio Ramos, Brionne Davis
In Spanish with English subtitles
March 2 – 7, 2016 and
March 14, 2016 6:30pm
Vancity Theatre | Website and Trailer | BUY TICKETS
This visually bewitching black-and-white Colombian odyssey charts two parallel incursions by Western explorers deep into the Amazon jungle. In the 1900s Theo and his guide Manduca beseech a native shaman named Karamakate to help them find the mythical yakuna plant that may cure the ailing anthropologist’s illness. Persuaded that Theo can reunite him with other survivors of his tribe, Karamakate reluctantly agrees, and comes to believe there is a higher purpose in this quest. Yet as they canoe down river, tensions are never far from the surface. Some four decades later Karamakate will retrace his steps with an American explorer, a ghost journey into a culture on the verge of extinction.
Inspired by two historical anthropological accounts, but shot largely from the shaman’s point of view, Embrace of the Serpent is a potent, poetic, political film with some of the visionary force of Werner Herzog’s Amazonian adventures, Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo.
“Somewhere between a rebel yell and a lullaby, a primal scream and a Homeric lament… An absorbing, even thrilling head trip.” Jessica Kiang, Indiewire
“A visually mesmerizing exploration of man, nature and the destructive powers of colonialism.” Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter