Film festival season has been in full swing with Cannes, Sundance, Vancouver and Toronto international film festivals now over, and eyes are now turning toward the Oscars (Academy Awards).
qathet International Film Festival will run from March 1 to 9, 2024, at the Patricia Theatre, showcasing festival favourites and winners from Canada and around the world. qathet Film Society executive director Gary Shilling and education director Peg Campbell have been busy watching films and organizing for nine days of features, shorts and special movie events.
"There will be 16 feature films at the 2024 festival," said Shilling. "In the past, we used to do 14 films, and then repeat two of them as matinees."
Shilling added that the festival will include important Indigenous filmmakers, LGBTQS+ themes and some serious topics, but will also be a little lighter this year. Meaning, the chosen films explore drama, comedy, romance, documentary and a plethora of international stories.
Winning the Prix de la Mise en Scène at Cannes Film Festival, La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (The Taste of Things) is a French favourite chosen to compete at the Oscars and will play as a matinee feature film on March 3.
"There are festivals all over the world, quite frankly, and we try to keep abreast of the buzz on different films," said Shilling. "We begin compiling what we call our long list, which is sort of our wish list, and this year we had somewhere around 50 films on that list."
The programming committee consists of filmmakers, local community members, volunteers and qathet Film Society members, including Laura Wilson, who manages the theater. The committee meets and decides on films they want to see at the festival; however, accessing the films is another matter.
"I have the job of trying to find out who the distributor is and if we can get the film," said Shilling. "That becomes its own little research project. We hunt down all the distributors and do outreach, and quite frankly, get mixed results. Some people I never hear back from, other people want too much money."
Shilling emphasized that the committee always tries to have a good mix of films and acquire what it can afford.
"Quite frankly, a lot of modern popular media these days is based on superheroes," said Shilling. "What we try to do is connect local stories with stories from around the world, and we think people can connect that way."
Shilling and Campbell are pleased with the offerings for International Women's Day on March 8. WaaPaKe (Tomorrow), is a National Film Board of Canada production and documentary by Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin, about residential school survivors; Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World is another Canadian documentary featured on March 8. Romantic French-Canadian film, Solo, looks into the vibrant drag queen scene in Montreal. Drag performer Conni Smudge will be performing preceding the film on March 9.
"The festival is a community gathering,”said Shilling. “I like to talk about the difference between watching something that's perhaps funny on the couch, by yourself, and watching in a theater, full of people. Yes, it's different. People kind of get swept up in every emotion that is being felt.”
A film salon will also take place at the Patricia Theatre’s upstairs media lounge, hosted by local author and film society member Jason Scheurs. Festival early-bird passes are available until December 31.
qathet International Film Festival trailers and information can be at qathetfilm.ca/film-festival-2024.
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