World premieres, indie gems, and films on the road to Oscar are all on the schedule for the 2014 Whistler Film Festival (WFF).
More than 12,000 winter-loving cinephiles will descend on Whistler Village for WFF, which will screen 87 films from 18 countries, including 41 features. There’ll be 22 world premieres, eight Canadian premieres, and 33 Western Canada premieres.
The popular destination film fest kicks off with The Imitation Game, starring Oscar contender Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing as he strives to break the Nazi’s Enigma Code during the Second World War.
The closing night gala film is Snowman, by Whistler filmmaker Mike Douglas. Talk about appropriate for the venue: the feature spotlights the work of avalanche controller Kevin Foglin.
Film fare from Vancouver filmmakers includes After Film School, a mockumentary about a group of recent film school grads making a movie entitled High School Shooting: The Musical; Bad City, in which director Carl Bessai uses all of the tropes we’ve come to associate with Blaxploitation films to make a “Canuxploitation” period piece; What an Idiot, a rom-com written by, and starring, married Vancouverites Peter and Julia Benson (Peter directs); and Mountain Men, a dramedy about estranged brothers (Chace Crawford and Tyler Labine) who journey to a remote cabin to evict a squatter.
There’s also a jam-packed industry summit, awards, pitch sessions, and Q&As.
WFF runs Dec. 3-7 at locations around Whistler. Watch for in-depth WFF coverage in future issues. WhistlerFilmFestival.org.
