The Victoria Film Festival (VFF) has come and gone for another year and has announced highlights of the 10-day event along with the festival winners.
From February 6th to 15th, VFF showed 91 feature length films and 40 shorts at a number of cinemas in and around Victoria.
According to the festival organizers, this 32nd edition of the festival set new records for sell out showings.
VFF recorded 47 sold-out screenings this year, which tops the previous record of 40, set in 2025.
“With such a mass of sellouts, I think audiences are saying loud and clear that it’s a wonderful experience to watch movies together in a darkened theatre and have shared experiences,” Kathy Kay, Victoria Film Festival Director.
This year, the packed schedule featured everything from a whistling competition documentary to multiple sold-out screenings of the Canadian comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.
Films from 25 countries were represented among the feature films, with 42 features from Canadian filmmakers and seven Indigenous-made films.
VFF organizers say that 45 screenings included special guests, such as directors, producers or actors who were available for a question and answer period after the film. Filmmakers came from as far away as New York City, Japan and even Italy.
Throughout the 10-day festival a panel of jurors were given the difficult task of awarding winners in several categories. Some awards came with cash prizes while some did not.
See the list of VFF winners below:
- Best Feature Film: Primavera
- Best Canadian Feature: Mildlife — by Victoria filmmaker Cory Thibert
- Best Canadian First Feature ($1,000): Lucid — by Victoria’s Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall
- Best Documentary: Modern Whore
- Best Short ($500): Send and Receive
- Cultural Currents Awards ($1,000): Foreigner
- Audience Favourite Feature: The Art of Adventure – A documentary about Victoria icon Robert Bateman and his 1957 global expedition
This year saw the festival innovate on how best to garner new audiences.
One way VFF did this was by teaming up with Destroyed Cinema to host events at pop-up cinemas in Market Square, Little Fernwood, and United Commons. These pop ups featured films accompanied by musical performances by local bands.
Destroyed Cinema’s finale on February 15th was a screening of CAMP with a performance by local punks Ghost Darling.
VFF operates as a non-profit, based out of The Vic Theatre in downtown Victoria. Supporting the local cinema is a great way of helping to support the festival year-round.
