Vancouver Irish Film Festival (VIRFF) is Vancouver’s newest cultural event organised to celebrate the city’s vibrant Irish diaspora and showcase the best in Irish cinema.
Kicking off in Vancity Theatre, Seymour St, VIRFF will showcase the best that Irish cinema has to offer. Highlights include Carmel Winters’ ‘Float Like a Butterfly’, which won the Discovery Prize awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI); ‘Maze’, which details the biggest prison break-out in British or Irish history; and ‘A Date for Mad Mary’, which took home Best Film at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2017. In addition, there will be classic Irish movies including ‘Good Vibrations’ -the story of Good Vibrations Belfast record shop founder Terri Hooley- and children's favourite ‘War of the Buttons’.
Vancouver’s thriving creative film industry and strong Canadian/Irish co-production tradition, which includes award winning films ‘Brooklyn’, ‘Room’, ‘Maudie’ and ‘The Breadwinner’, inspired festival founder Aine Coady to create a platform to share Irish loved films.
Vancouver has a long history of welcoming people from across the island of Ireland – indeed, the Irish Ambassador to Canada, Jim Kelly, recently estimated that there are as many as 15,000 Irish-born people living in the city, with many more arriving each year under the International Canada Experience (IEC) visa. The new film festival now offers Vancouver the chance to experience Irish culture in all its forms on the big screen as part of this event.
Tickets for the event are available through the Vancity Theatre website. The event can be followed though Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. #VIRFF, #Irishfilm, #Irishabroad.
The VIRFF 2018 programme is available on the website - here.