VIFF 2026: Reviews and Rankings
Our reviews and rankings from the 45th Vancouver International Film Festival, which ran October 1 to 11, 2026, in Vancouver.
For the first time this year, Reviews on Reels had the pleasure of covering the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF).
Taking place just a few weeks after TIFF, VIFF has impressed me in recent years with how comprehensive its lineup is. TIFF is great, but there are always a few films from Venice or NYFF that you wish had made it to Toronto. Vancouver, somehow, seems to have everything. If you’ve heard great things about a film at another festival, chances are you’ll find it at VIFF. It may not attract the same celebrities as TIFF, but that often makes for better Q&As and a far more welcoming atmosphere for cinephiles.
This year, I was particularly excited to finally catch Rose, Everytime (which I missed at Cannes), Behemoth!, and Mouse. I also watched a few Canadian films (Smudge the Blades [review coming soon], Send the Rain), and revisited a few films I had already watched on other festivals.
Bellow you will find all our reviews for the films that played in the Festival ranked, with a new updated comment.
The Full Ranking
Updated November 1, 2026
1.
Everytime
(2026)
★★★★
Everytime is a profound and deeply touching film about the emptiness that remains after losing someone unexpectedly. Sandra Wollner approaches grief with tenderness and empathy, building toward a devastating final act that will stay with you for a long time.
View Review →
2.
Minotaur
(2026)
★★★★
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur is a precise, oppressive, and emotionally brutal drama that uses one family to expose the machinery of a broken state.
View Review →
3.
Wild Horse Nine
(2026)
★★★★
Martin McDonagh sends John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell to Easter Island as two longtime CIA partners confronting death, friendship, and decades of moral compromise. Wild Horse Nine may often feel like a spiritual redo of In Bruges, but McDonagh’s more mature approach to loneliness and politics makes those familiar steps well worth retracing.
View Review →
4.
Wicker
(2026)
★★★★
Wicker is a charming romance centered on a fisherwoman in a critical village who, after ridicule, requests a magician to create a husband. A month later, she meets a sweet, kind wicker figure bound to challenge village norms. Adapted from Ursula Wills-Jones’s fable, the film humorously critiques social traditions and hypocrisy while showcasing strong performances, especially from Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, and impressive makeup effects.
Where to watch: In Theaters
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5.
La Gradiva
(2026)
★★★★
La Gradiva is an impactful film that dramatizes the transition to adulthood through a school trip in Naples. Exquisitely directed and beautifully shot, Marine Atlan’s remarkable debut takes its time observing these teenagers, finding enormous emotional weight in the uncertainty of youth and the frightening question of how much control we really have over who we become.
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6.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
(2026)
★★★★
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is a modern-day Trainspotting, kinder in tone but just as tragic in its view of friendship, class, and lost possibility.
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7.
Rose
(2026)
★★★★
Sandra Hüller gives one of her best performances in Rose, but Markus Schleinzer surrounds her with a strong cast, striking black-and-white cinematography, and a story that grows increasingly painful. It is concise, surprisingly funny, and ultimately devastating.
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8.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
(2026)
★★★★
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a charming, old-fashioned crime thriller that makes the most of its simple premise, with plenty of surprises along the way. John Turturro is terrific as an aging thief struggling to keep up with a changing city, while the cinematography, jazzy score and nostalgic atmosphere give the film a comforting familiarity.
Where to watch: In Theaters
View Review →
9.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
(2026)
★★★★
Once Upon a Time in Harlem brings together the voices of the artists and intellectuals who lived through and helped shape the Harlem Renaissance, creating an intimate firsthand account of an extraordinary period in American history. It is a remarkable historical document, preserving painful memories of discrimination while also celebrating the extraordinary Black artists and intellectuals who helped transform American culture.
Where to watch: In Theaters
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10.
Possible Love
(2026)
★★★
Possible Love finds complex ways to explore class, envy, and the desire to possess what others have. Lee Chang-dong’s patient approach eventually pays off, although a repetitive first half keeps the film from reaching its intended impact.
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11.
La Bola Negra
(2026)
★★★
Ambitious and impeccably crafted, La Bola Negra is a rare Cannes epic that moves you in the moment and thins out the longer you sit with it.
Where to watch: In Theaters
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12.
I Play Rocky
(2026)
★★★
Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky follows Sylvester Stallone from struggling actor to the stubborn force who refused to let anyone else play Rocky. The film can be sanitized and by-the-numbers, but Anthony Ippolito is so convincing, and the familiar story is told with such earnestness, that it becomes genuinely rousing in its own right.
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13.
Bitter Christmas
(2026)
★★★
Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas is uneven by design, with a rough first half that eventually gives way to a witty and affecting reflection on legacy, and creative doubt.
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14.
Tangles
(2026)
★★★
Tangles uses animation beautifully to capture the cruelty of Alzheimer’s, even when its uneven humor and broad supporting characters keep it from becoming the devastating film it could have been.
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15.
Look Back
(2026)
★★★
Hirokazu Kore-eda adapts Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga about Fujino and Kyomoto, two lonely young artists whose shared obsession with drawing develops into a friendship and creative partnership spanning thirteen years. Extremely faithful to the source while still unmistakably a Kore-eda film, Look Back is warm, delicate, and beautifully observed, despite its needlessly extreme tragic turn.
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16.
The Beloved
(2026)
★★★
Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved is a direct, well-acted father-daughter drama, elevated by Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo, and its sharp film-set sequences.
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17.
Mouse
(2026)
★★★
Mouse is a sincere and emotionally engaging drama with wonderfully flawed characters and several memorable performances. It occasionally loses momentum, but its authentic approach to grief and complicated relationships makes it quite rewarding.
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18.
Tender Loving Care
(2026)
★★★
Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care finds warmth in friendship and the simple act of being there for others, but its exploration of dementia and social work feels surprisingly slight and emotionally distant.
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19.
Paper Tiger
(2026)
★★★
Paper Tiger extends James Gray’s familiar family tensions into mob territory, with Adam Driver shining in a film that remains at arm’s length.
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20.
Frank & Louis
(2026)
★★★
Frank & Louis tells the story of Frank, a life-sentenced inmate working in a prison elder care unit, assigned to Louis, a former violent prisoner now suffering from dementia. The film explores aging in prison and addresses themes of justice and humanity. While it maintains familiar storytelling elements and a slow-moving plot, the powerful performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan bring depth, making it resonate emotionally through their evolving relationship and shared humanity.
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21.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
(2026)
★★
Mahershala Ali plays a Muslim hitman suddenly left to raise three children after the death of his wife, forcing him to question his faith and work. Bassam Tariq’s film is highly ambitious, raising fascinating questions, but ultimately struggling to tie them into an emotionally engaging whole.
Where to watch: In Theaters
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22.
Fatherland
(2026)
★★
Sandra Hüller brings the only warmth Pawlikowski’s Fatherland allows. A beautifully shot, intellectually distant third pass through divided Europe.
Where to watch: In Theaters
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23.
A Long Winter
(2026)
★★
Andrew Haigh follows a young man searching for his missing mother through the Colorado Rockies while uncovering years of family resentment, guilt, and unspoken desire. The larger scale produces some of the director’s most ambitious filmmaking, but the characters and performances remain so muted that the emotions rarely break through.
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24.
The Debut
(2026)
★★
Jesse Eisenberg returns to his community theater roots in a comedy about a shy housewife who discovers freedom onstage. In its best moments, The Debut is hilarious and unpredictable, with Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti in terrific form, but its carefully constructed emotions keep the film from fully capturing the transformative power of theater.
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25.
Behemoth!
(2026)
★★
An irresistible premise becomes a surprisingly hollow and gimmicky exercise in Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!. Despite some inspired moments, the film struggles to find any emotional substance beneath its clever concept.
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26.
Send the Rain
(2026)
★★
Send the Rain feels sincere and personal, with moments that clearly draw from real experiences. Unfortunately, its tendency to emphasize the characters’ worst qualities makes an already familiar family drama increasingly frustrating to sit through.
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27.
Nagi Notes
(2026)
★★
In Nagi Notes, Koji Fukada turns a rural Japanese town into a gentle study of solitude, though the film often feels way too delicate.
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28.
Fjord
(2026)
★★
Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord has the formal precision of his best work, but a stacked-deck script reduces a genuinely complex moral conflict into a self-satisfied Oscar wannabe.
Where to watch: In Theaters
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29.
Gentle Monster
(2026)
★
Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster wastes Léa Seydoux’s strong performance on a wretched drama that takes on one of cinema’s hardest subjects and responds with evasions, clumsy parallels, and toothless filmmaking.
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