Kathie Smith

Striking a poetic cord, These Birds Walk finds a symbiotic naturalism between those filming, newcomers Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq, and those being filmed, the unwanted children of Pakistan. Pakistan, more than any other country, feels like an innocent bystander...

Baltasar Kormakur's The Deep is one of those rare examples of a fictionalized true story that doesn't ooze with exaggerated melodrama for false effect. Kormakur (101 Reykjavík, the excellent Jar City, and Reykjavík-Rotterdam remake Contraband) crafts a plainspoken tale of...

There is no denying that contemporary audiences are obsessed with the on-screen fantasy of all-out social breakdown. And with the exception of the poor humanoids being innocently victimized by interplanetary sadists, most cases involve our own maligned inventions retaliating and...

Striking a poetic cord, These Birds Walk finds a symbiotic naturalism between those filming, newcomers Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq, and those being filmed, the unwanted children of Pakistan. Pakistan, more than any other country, feels like an innocent bystander...

80 Million, Poland's 2012 candidate for Best Foreign Language Film, teases of a bank heist but delivers a cerebral, dialogue driven cat-and-mouse. The dramatic retelling of the anti-communist groundswell in 1980s Poland delves head first into the politically and...

A fresh blend of romantic comedy and fluffy drama, Rox Hsu's intrinsically constructed Together makes for some serious carefree viewing. Channeled through the eyes, and occasionally the will, of 17 year-old Xiao Yang, the film leapfrogs through a neighborhood of...

The world can be a dull and sullen place. Movies of the mainstream variety offer an easy if not cathartic diversion from the humdrum with momentary distractions full of thrills, horrors and laughs where things happen for a reason. Festival...

McDull, a little pig with a big heart, comes from a long line of adorable yet pointed social commentary created by writer Brian Tse and cartoonist Alice Mak over the past 20 years. A little too plump and not too...

Who is Jo Sung-hee? Judging this young director by his first two feature film may be a lot like pinning down a psychological profile on Dr. Henry Jekyll. Jo's first feature, End of Animal (2010), was a very idiosyncratic quasi-religious...

As if making a contradictory study to the more politically motivated documentaries made in and about China, J.P. Sniadecki and Libbie Dina Cohn turn an observational eye on the more prosaic aspects of the country. The duo stakes out a...

Rarely do omnibus films work. They either have too many films to differentiate one from the other (like another VIFF entry this year 10+10) or the quality of the films is so uneven that even the good segments are not...

Park Hong-min's debut feature, modest as it might seem on the edges, boasts a striking visual presence right from the first frame. We see a stationary shot of a road with cars buzzing by as if we are standing on...

On July 1, 2008, just a mere month before the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, a 28-year-old man named Yang Jia charged into a police station in Shanghai with Molotov cocktails and a knife, killing six and wounding four...

Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Headshot is an antithetical thriller that easily morphs into a subdued, slate-grey crime noir. With a striking sense of ease and control, Ratanaruang steers his eighth feature through the paces of political, police and underworld manipulations, allowing it...