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2026 FESTIVAL PREVIEW
This year’s Vermont International Film Festival—AKA the best 10 days of fall—is right around the corner. Join us on Wednesday, October 7 in the Film House at Main Street Landing for the unveiling of the lineup of buzzworthy cinema from around the world. We’ll host a reception in the Film House lobby beforehand with light bites from Bramble and a cash bar from Foam/Deep City followed by the presentation of trailers and highlights for this year’s festival films. It’s time to get excited for another Vermont International Film Festival! We can’t wait to share what’s in store.
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COOKIE QUEENS
It’s Girl Scout cookie season and Ara, Olive, Nikki, and Shannon Elizabeth are vying for coveted title bestowed to the top-selling scout: Cookie Queen. Whether you're into Thin Mints, Samoas, or Tagalongs, you'll enjoy this sweet and sincere celebration of girl power.
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FJORD
Inspired by the true case of the Bodnariu family, whose children were forcibly taken from them by the state, the film is a beguiling Rorschach test that poses thorny and uncomfortable questions about well-intentioned progressivism in a world grappling with vicious right-wing opportunism.
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IRON BOY
In an animation ecosystem where everything seems to adhere to a formula that’s more Pavlovian than pleasurable, Iron Boy is the perfect antidote. The story follows 10-year-old Christophe, a rambunctious boy living on a struggling farm.
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AMAZOMANIA
This labyrinthine documentary interrogates the 1996 expedition of Sydney Possuelo, an enterprising adventurer who led a journey deep into the Brazilian Amazon in search of the elusive and much-mythologized Korubo tribe.
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NUISANCE BEAR
Nuisance Bear, Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman’s expansion of their acclaimed 2021 short film, which was shortlisted for that year’s Academy Awards, documents this unsustainable situation and its unintended fallout, including how the bears are tainted by their proximity to human society.
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JAIL TIME RECORDS
A huge winner at this year’s Tribeca Festival and one of the best music documentaries in memory, Jail Time Records documents a one-of-a-kind record label housed inside Douala’s New Bell Prison in Cameroon, a space built for 800 men that now houses more than 6,000.
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COWARD
Though Lukas Dhont’s staggering Coward has the wartime horrors and gory scenes that are to be expected, it’s probably the most tender movie ever made about World War I, countering its time in the trenches with the growing attraction between two soldiers.
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THE GYMNASTS OF FISHERMAN COLONY
Directed by investigative journalist Habiba Nosheen (Peabody Award winner and three-time Emmy winner) and executive produced by Mariska Hargitay, Trish Adlesic, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony embeds with a community of undocumented girls in Machar Colony, Pakistan.
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MINOTAUR
Russia, 2022. Word has come down straight from the Kremlin that every Russian district needs to siphon eligible young men for military service in Ukraine. Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), head of the largest division of a faceless corporation, is tasked with selecting a set number of employees to send to war.
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BEN’IMANA
The atrocities perpetrated in Rwanda in 1994, when almost a million Tutsis were murdered by their Hutu countrymen over the course of 100 days, remain almost unimaginable. But for her first feature film, which is also the first Rwandan film to ever screen at the Cannes Film Festival, Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo takes the nightmare head-on.
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MIKEY AND NICKEY
The third film by eternally underrated genius Elaine May, Mikey and Nicky is an unclassifiable masterpiece of the 1970s, though it’s safe to say that very few people knew it at the time.
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ADAM'S APPLE
As Adam grows up and courageously navigates bureaucracy, doctor’s appointments, and his own teenage wasteland, this diaristic trans story gently expands into a textured and relatable portrait of a modern New England family.
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CROCODILE
A testament to the power of imagination and storytelling, Crocodile follows a group of young Nigerians, dubbed The Critics, who, armed with a single cell phone, begin making sci-fi films in their backyards, creating movies that were heavily influenced by mainstream American fare but decidedly African.
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COTTON QUEEN
In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonizers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the center of a power play to determine the future of the village.
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EVERYTHING ELSE IS NOISE
Over the course of an afternoon, the two-man crew incidentally documents the invisible bond between these three impressive women. Their almost telepathic running commentary quietly skewers the parade of peacocking men whose presence they briefly abide, predictable types who inflate the creative process for reasons entirely unrelated to art and fully in service of ego.
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THE LAST CRITIC
This lively documentary is a time capsule for a bygone era of print publishing as well as a valentine to good old-fashioned pithy/snarky writing.
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A FOX UNDER A PINK MOON
Over the course of six years, Soraya sends footage to her uncle (director Mehrdad Oskouei) taken on her iPhone. She films escape attempts, her defeated return to Iran, her abusive relationship, and her continued efforts to make it to Austria by any means necessary.
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ELEPHANTS IN THE FOG
Elephants in the Fog—the first-ever Nepali feature film officially selected at Cannes, where it won the Prix du Jury in Un Certain Regard—stars Kinnar activist Pushpa Thing Lama as Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar community deep in a forest inhabited by dangerous wild elephants.
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THE RED HANGAR
The Red Hangar is the first Latin American thriller to explore the inner workings of the military during the dictatorships of the 1970s.
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SHORTS, PROGRAM I
VTIFF celebrates the international short film with six incredible works from around the world.
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LA GRADIVA
The film follows a group of French teenagers on a field trip to Naples and Pompeii. An acclaimed cinematographer, Atlan has a practiced eye for photographing the city, presenting its sun-dappled beauty, its mundanity, and its instability simultaneously.
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A BIT OF LIGHT
In this deeply moving film, director Ali Asgari (Terrestrial Verses) explores that place between utter despair and those glimmers of joy and hope that make life worth living
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UNION TOWN
Two-time Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple is back on the front lines of the U.S. labor movement, looking at three crucial labor battles in New York City, involving workers from UPS, Amazon, and deliveristas for DoorDash and GrubHub.
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SOY MARIO
Transgender taxi driver Mario has it pretty good in Mexico City—a steady job, a relatively even-keel relationship with his family, a circle of friends.
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ALL OF A SUDDEN
All of a Sudden is a poignant snapshot of this moment in time, but what makes this towering film so essential, even radical, is that it is not despairing; even as it diagrams the no-win proposition of capitalism and its current death-spiral, this poetic and philosophical movie is brimming with optimism and hope.
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AGNUS DEI
Without a doubt the most adorable bit of Vatican arcana: Dating back to the sixth century, newborn lambs are selected, blessed on the feast of Saint Agnes, raised, pampered, and cared for by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth at at the Monastery of Saint Cecilia, then shorn.
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CLARISSA
In this remarkable update from Nigerian brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri, Virginia Woolf’s classic English novel Mrs. Dalloway is recast in Lagos, where its titular heroine—now on a first-name basis and played with remarkable feeling and soulfulness by Sophie Okonedo—is still buying flowers herself for the big party that evening.
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ZWEITLAND (A LAND WITHIN)
Drawing on a European conflict little-known to most Americans, first-time feature director Michael Kofler dramatizes the violent separatist movements that rocked South Tyrol, the northern Italian region that borders Austria, in the early 1960s.
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SHORTS, PROGRAM II
The second installment of VTIFF Shorts is still 88 minutes long, but it has an extra film and a couple of actual celebrities.
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LABRADOR - AUTOPSY OF SILENCE
Though Labrador - Autopsy of Silence has a murder mystery as its hook—on board a freighter in the North Atlantic, the ship’s cook is stabbed to death—Rodrigue Jean’s beautifully constructed, deliberately paced marvel has a lot more to say than just “whodunnit.”
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM
Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a crucial reclamation of the Harlem Renaissance, an increasingly neglected period of African American history, but also of the legacy of the film’s director.
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MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE
Master of the Flying Guillotine is a classic martial-arts death match that pits two wuxia icons against each other—the famed One-Armed Boxer (Hong Kong superstar Jimmy Wang Yu) versus a blind assassin (Kam Kong) and his legendary Flying Guillotine.
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A GIRL UNKNOWN
The protagonist of A Girl Unknown cannot be referred to by name simply because she is given so many throughout this film. The crucial years of her adolescence, though, are spent as Juanjuan, the name given to her by the foster parents who take her in from ages six through 18.
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SIX MONTHS IN A PINK AND BLUE BUILDING
Set in Mexico City in the early ’90s, the film follows 11-year-old Bruno as he comes to grips with his burgeoning sexuality, as well as his father’s sudden HIV diagnosis.
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LAND: I SAW AND I DIDN'T SEE
Born into a family of influential Zionist thinkers and archaeologists whose work helped shape the ideology of early Israel, filmmaker Orly Yadin sets out to examine the foundations of the worldview that defined her upbringing.
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EVERYTIME
Everytime contains the shot of the year: a heart-stopping telephoto long take that dreamily fuses Psycho, Rear Window, The Birds, and, tragically, Vertigo.
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A PAGE OF MADNESS
It’s a film-festival version of our ongoing Screening Room program, Musical Silents, in which the intrepid musician Matt Hagen (usually with a friend) improvises a live score over a great silent film.
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DAO
In this sprawling, wildly ambitious film, director Alain Gomis makes an audacious cinematic statement, weaving three separate throughlines—a wedding in southern France, a funeral in rural Nigeria, and various people, either in-character or not, just talking to the camera.
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HER GAME IS HARDBALL
Her Game Is Hardball explores the hidden history and modern struggles of women trying to play hardball—that’s baseball, not softball—at the professional level.
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UNLESS SOMETHING GOES TERRIBLY WRONG
A buddy comedy about poop and the thankless pursuit of making a better world, Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong will make you rethink sewage and wastewater.
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ROSE
In the 17th century, somewhere in war-ravaged central Europe, a disfigured soldier rides into a village and offers proof of his inheritance, a small abandoned farmstead nearby.
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CARRIE
The world is currently overrun by unaccountable bullies, so what a perfect time to revisit Brian De Palma’s classic adaptation of Carrie, where every last person who tormented poor Carrie White (an iconic Sissy Spacek) gets theirs in diabolical, merciless fashion.
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THE ONLY LIVING PICKPOCKET IN NEW YORK
A conscious throwback to the gritty New York films of the 1970s, Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York oozes cinematic nostalgia from every frame.
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YESTERDAY THE EYE DIDN’T SLEEP
The Bekaa Valley lies between Lebanon and Syria, a place where Bedouin tribes subscribe to ancient customs, even with the sound of modern warfare all around them.
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TEST
Test still has the doses of body horror that are a staple of these musclebound flicks, with plenty of fetishy shots of skin stretched over muscle, but it’s the rare sports movie that is as much an internal journey as a quest for physical perfection.
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JOSEPHINE
Through expressive visuals and tactful formal conceits, de Araújo crafts a humanistic gut-punch of a movie, a harrowing crucible that illustrates the fragility and resilience of developing minds.
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LOOK BACK
The story concerns two young girls—Fujino, a popular and outgoing student, and Kyomoto, a shut-in with severe social anxiety—who bond over their shared love of manga.
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9 TEMPLES TO HEAVEN
9 Temples to Heaven is a natural extension of the Thai slow-cinema god’s technique, but even more, it’s a beautiful showcase of Sompot’s distinct artistry, as well as his wry sense of humor.
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QUEEN AT SEA
Queen at Sea begins at this heightened dramatic register and then expertly compounds through cascading points of no return.
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THE SEOUL GUARDIANS
A riveting feat of editing and journalism, The Seoul Guardians takes you through that night as it unfolded on the streets and inside the National Assembly chamber, with citizens, soldiers, journalists, and parliamentarians navigating a volatile situation as the entire country teetered on the brink of chaos.
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FATHERLAND
Fatherland follows famed German writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), who is ending his 16-year exile to return to Germany and accept the Goethe Prize.
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NEWS FROM HOME
The year after she made Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the great Chantal Akerman made this gem of a film.
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THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
In honor of the late great Tim Curry, who passed away on August 25, VTIFF is delighted to present The Rocky Horror Picture Show in partnership with Queen City Ghostwalk.
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ANIMATION WORKSHOP WITH STEVE WOLOSHEN
Internationally renowned animator Steven Woloshen returns to VTIFF with his much-loved animation workshop! Woloshen is an award-winning Canadian film animator and a pioneer of drawn-on-film animation techniques.
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WHISPERS IN MAY
Many coming-of-age tales take on the archetype of the road movie, and Whispers in May does, too. But as a story about a teen thrust into the daunting world of adulthood and as a winding odyssey, Dongnan Chen’s hybrid documentary is unique and special.
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LITTLE KID FLICKS
Little Kid Flicks returns to VTIFF! This popular and charming selection of family-friendly short films from around the world is the perfect way for kids to discover the magic of the big screen.
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MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL, BEST OF 2026
VTIFF’s Made Here Film Festival celebrates the work of filmmakers in all six New England states and Quebec, making it a truly international affair.
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CAR WASH
On paper, it might not seem like much—the frenzied goings-on over the course of a day at a car wash in Los Angeles—but Michael Schultz’s Car Wash pulls everything it can from its premise, delivering a remarkably sunny, human comedy.
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REHEARSALS FOR A REVOLUTION
The film is an elegy for Iran, the Iran that could have been, and the Iranian people who, as the film's conclusion states, are now caught between internal oppression and a forced war
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MOUSE
When tragedy strikes on the eve of their senior year, Minnie is completely lost and forms an uneasy bond with Callie’s mother, Helen (Academy Award nominee Sophie Okonedo).
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THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL
Ti West is now best known for his X Trilogy—X, Pearl, and MaXXXine-and, bizarrely, this Thanksgiving he'll drop his Gothic take on A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer. But his breakout was The House of the Devil, and it still rips nearly two decades on. Sometimes lumped into the so-called "mumblegore" microgenre, alongside up-and-comers like Adam Wingard (You're Next, Godzilla Vs. Kong), David Bruckner (The Ritual), and Joe Swanberg (V/H/S), what sets this satanic panic revival film apart is its fully realized throwback swagger (in name it even references arguably the first ever horror film, Georges Méliès' three-minute magic show from 1896).
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GHOSTWATCH
Well before audiences were accustomed to found-footage movies—thanks in large part to The Blair Witch Project giving away the game—Ghostwatch set the template for how to catch viewers completely unawares, and it worked smashingly. Featuring real BBC personalities and reporters investigating “the most haunted house in Britain,” Ghostwatch adopted the format of a genuine live broadcast, War of the Worlds-style—taking place in more or less real time, expert parapsychologists on hand to unpack the goings on, and operators standing by to take your calls. But what starts out as a cheeky Halloween edition of the similarly titled Crimewatch goes terribly wrong, leaving shocked BBC viewers wondering what to believe.
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NAZA
Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, NAZA was shot covertly at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv and focuses on conversations with the people involved in the calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
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