The Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) has announced the full lineup for this year's festival taking place from October 26 to November 5.
WIFF will show 186 feature films and 38 short films with over 300 screenings over the eleven day festival.
The opening weekend of the festival will focus on the WIFF Prize in Canadian Film. The nominees for the prize were announced last month during TIFF. Over the opening weekend, all ten nominees will be shown twice, and the winner will be announced on Sunday, October 29.
Tran Anh Hung's The Pot-au-Feu, starring Juliette Binoche, will open the Festival, DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman's The Peasants will be celebrated as the Centrepiece Film and Sean Menard's 299 Queen Street West will close out the 11 days.
Speaking on AM800's The Dan MacDonald Show, Vincent Georgie, Executive Director & Chief Programmer of WIFF says the festival will present a number of early screenings, including the film that won this year's Toronto International Film Festival's People Choice Award, American Fiction, a satire dramedy staring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown and Issa Rae.
"We also are going to give you a sneak speak at some of the music films we have. We've got a great new film about Carlos Santana, we've got a great new Rolling Stones film. And also the the new Sofia Coppola film, Priscilla, starring Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny, about Priscilla Presley. So that new film will have pre-release for our audience at WIFF."
Other highlights include Anatomy of a Fall directed by Justine Triet, which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, The Zone of Interest directed by Jonathan Glazer (Grand Prix Winner, Cannes 2023), Depraved Mind directed by local filmmaker Nicholas Shields, Foe directed by Garth Davis and Carlos directed by Rudy Valdez.
This year WIFF returns to Middle Earth for a Lord of the Rings marathon to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Other anniversary titles include Rosemary's Baby directed by Roman Polanski. Twilight directed by Catherine Hardwicke, The Room directed by Tommy Wisseau and more.
Georgie says the festival has partnered with a downtown venue to bring WIFF Alley to life.
"We've partnered with Meteor and Tom Lucier to activate WIFF Alley for all 11 days. There will be music and a bar set up in WIFF Alley with seating for all 11 night, all in WIFF Alley, every single night of the festival. And on the closing weekend of the festival there will be a stage there for performances and different things going on as well just to really heighten the festival just as we close out on those last four days."
He says all access passes will be available for sale.
"And there's also actually a new thing that we've got this year, one is that we've got a ten pack. So for people that want to watch in and around about ten films, we've got a coupon book of ten tickets at a discounted rate. So people can get that if they want, and we've also got a VIP pack, for people that want to do to all the red carpet screenings, all the major prime opening and closing and centrepiece screenings. We've also got a pack just for that as well."
Tickets are available online now at windsorfilmfestival.com.