Village Gamer

The Whistler Film Festival is proud to announce its 2014 film lineup featuring original films from around the world and more feature premieres than ever before. Under WFF’s Director of Programming, Paul Gratton, the festival’s programming team has curated a stimulating lineup that honours establishing program areas, while revealing emerging trends that broaden the Festival’s reach and appeal to a wide variety of tastes.

This year festival goers can look forward to 87 films, from 18 countries, selected from over 700 submissions, including 41 features and 46 shorts, exhibited on 6 screens in 5 theatre venues over 5 days. The feature program includes:

• 22 World Premieres
• 8 Canadian Premiers
• 1 English Canadian Premieres
• 33 Western Canadian Premieres
• 11 British Columbia Premieres
• 10 Whistler Premieres

“We are very excited about this year’s lineup of titles, which represent a measurable evolution in our programming mix on a number of fronts” says WFF’s Director of Programming Paul Gratton, “In terms of international films, we believe that we are presenting more potential Oscar nominees and award winners than ever before. We are particularly excited to be presenting the Canadian Premiere of J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year, with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, along with such acclaimed titles as The Imitation Game, The Theory Of Everything and Still Alice, which received great acclaim at other festivals.”

“We are also excited to be presenting a number of films that have won awards previously, such as The Backward Class, the audience favourite at this year’s Hot Docs, “continued Gratton. ” Other films include What We Do In The Shadows, which won the Audience Award at TIFF’s Midnight Madness, and Point And Shoot, winner of the Best Doc Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, and Felix and Meira, named Best Canadian Film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. That said, Whistler is not just a ‘festival of festivals’ for local audiences. We are fast positioning ourselves as a sort of Canadian Sundance Festival, with over 11 world premieres and 22 Canadian feature films in the mix. Unveiling quality Canadian films to the world is a mission that Whistler takes great pride in, and Canadian filmmakers from across the country have responded by offering us many world premiere selections, which attests to our growing importance as a major stop on the Canadian film festival circuit.”

The Imitation Game (Western Canadian Premiere) and Audience Award winner atthe 2014 Toronto International Film Festival is this year’s Opening Night Gala Presentation. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing and focuses on his efforts to break the Nazi’s Enigma Code during World War II at Britain’s top secret Bletchley Park. WFF’s Closing Night Gala film is the World Premiere of Snowman by Whistler filmmaker and ‘godfather of free skiing’ Mike Douglas, following avalanche controller Kevin Foglin’s close call with the mountains in Douglas’ tribute to mountain culture lifestyle and living in Whistler.

Please visit the Festival’s website to view all of this year’s featured titles.