Why VIFF matters to a Vancouver film publication

This is a researched feature, separate from Nick Atwal’s personal film reviews.

The Vancouver International Film Festival, known as VIFF, leads two lives. Each fall it’s a festival. All year, it’s a cinema on Seymour Street. Think secret identity, but with subtitles. Either way, it shapes which international films reach the city’s screens, how audiences meet the people who make them, and where British Columbia filmmakers can develop their own work. For anyone writing about film from Vancouver, that makes it part of the landscape.

This is a portrait of VIFF as an organization, drawn from its own published descriptions, its charity listing and contemporary reporting. It isn’t a festival preview, a review or a report from the festival.

1. A global programme at home

   Society founded 1982 · registered Canadian charity

   Behind the four letters is the Greater Vancouver International Film Festival Society (you can see why they went with the letters), a not-for-profit cultural organization founded in 1982 and registered as a charity with the Canada Revenue Agency. The society runs both the festival and the year-round programming of the theatres at the VIFF Centre. VIFF describes its purpose as encouraging understanding of the world’s cultures through the art of cinema. Its statement of purpose argues that film can capture the complexity of being human, and that the organization should direct that influence toward meaningful change.

   The society’s charity listing describes the festival as bringing contemporary Canadian and international cinema, along with retrospective programmes, to British Columbia. That pairing matters. A Vancouver audience can see new work from other countries in the same programme as Canadian films, and judge both on a big screen, with other people in the room. Including the one unwrapping a candy very, very slowly.

   VIFF’s published values reach past the screen. It speaks of supporting local artists, hosting international visitors, reaching audiences close to home and far away, and spotlighting films from marginalized communities. It acknowledges that it works on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, and describes building relationships with Indigenous communities and supporting Indigenous artists and audiences.

2. More than festival dates

   Year-round screenings on Seymour Street since 2005

   The festival is the best-known part of VIFF. It isn’t the whole organization. In 2005 the society opened the Vancity Theatre, named for the Vancouver credit union, at what was then the Vancouver International Film Centre, with the stated purpose of screening festival films from around the world year-round. The building is now the VIFF Centre, and it reopened after a $2.8-million renovation in time for the 2020 festival.

   Between festivals, VIFF describes a programme of independent film alongside talks with filmmakers, master classes and special events. It lists its revenue sources as sponsorship, public and private grants, donations, box office and fees from groups that rent its theatres. Art is priceless. Running a cinema is not. Behind the art house is a working operation, and it depends on audiences showing up.

   That continuity matters for a city’s film culture. A festival squeezes attention into less than two weeks. A cinema that runs all year gives international, documentary and independent work somewhere to be seen after the festival has gone, and keeps audiences watching together. The festival is the event. The cinema is the habit.

3. Industry alongside audience

   New in 2026: Institute for the Moving Image and Co-Production Forum

   VIFF’s mandate has a professional side too. As set out in the society’s charity listing, it includes bringing cinema professionals from around the world together in British Columbia and stimulating the province’s motion picture industry. Talks and industry sessions put craft and business in the same conversation as watching. Art and commerce, in one room, being polite.

   For 2026, that work sits under VIFF’s Artist & Industry banner, which lists strands including Amp, Catalyst, the Composer Filmmaker Accelerator, a Co-Production Forum, labs, professional development and works-in-progress sessions. VIFF describes the Co-Production Forum, new in 2026, as an initiative to foster international collaboration on feature-length projects by bringing together Canadian and international producers, financiers and decision-makers, with 2026 sessions scheduled for October 3 and 4. Catalyst is aimed at emerging filmmakers from the Lower Mainland. VIFF says it selects 15 each year for roundtables and case studies on festival strategy, distribution and ethical filmmaking. Festival strategy, taught at a festival. Very efficient.

   In March 2026 VIFF announced the Institute for the Moving Image, a year-round artist development initiative for emerging, equity-deserving filmmakers across British Columbia and Canada. VIFF said the institute would turn development programmes that had centred on the festival into year-round work, covering mentorship, professional training, business education and international connections. Its announcement framed the institute as a response to a gap: British Columbia is one of Canada’s busiest service production centres, but long-term development support for newer filmmakers, especially those facing systemic barriers, is scarce. Much of the province’s screen economy is service production for producers based elsewhere, as this publication’s guide to B.C. production sets out. VIFF’s industry programmes are one of the places where locally owned, artist-led work gets developed.

4. How The Hollywood North covers festivals

   The Hollywood North is an independent publication, and its festival writing plays by the same rules as everything else on the site. Reviews are Nick Atwal’s own opinions. A screener, an invitation or festival access doesn’t buy a verdict, and it doesn’t promise coverage.

   Festival writing here says what it is. Each article is labelled as a preview, a review of a film actually seen, an interview or reported coverage. A preview works from published information. It isn’t a review. No reviewing films from the trailer. Tempting, but no. When a review comes from a festival screening, the review page records where the film was seen, so readers can tell a festival viewing from a regular release. Any interview is identified as one and kept separate from impressions.

   The site’s festival calendar lists dates, not coverage plans. A calendar is not a promise. Ask anyone with a gym membership. Factual corrections to any festival article can be sent through the contact page.

   This page is context, not a dispatch. It makes no claim of press accreditation, festival attendance or access. Whether any particular festival is covered depends on which films can actually be seen.

5. Close to home

   VIFF 2026: October 1–11, billed as the 45th festival

   For Vancouver readers, VIFF means international cinema on a big screen without leaving the city. No passport required. A raincoat, possibly. VIFF lists its 2026 edition, which it calls its 45th festival, as running October 1 to 11, 2026, at venues across Vancouver including the VIFF Centre.

   Close to home also means local work. Canadian cinema is part of the festival’s mandate, and some of its industry programmes, Catalyst among them, are aimed at filmmakers from the region.

   Outside festival season, the VIFF Centre’s calendar on viff.org is the place to check what’s screening. That year-round programme may matter as much as the festival itself.

Why it belongs here

VIFF matters to a Vancouver film publication for reasons that outlast any one festival. It keeps international and Canadian cinema on local screens all year. It puts audiences and filmmakers in the same rooms. And it gives British Columbia filmmakers a place to develop work they own. Lineups change. Those reasons don’t.

This is a context piece. It isn’t a claim of accreditation, attendance or access, and it doesn’t review any film in the 2026 programme.

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