Winner of the Cinema Fan Award at the 2020 PIA Film Festival at the National Film Archive of Japan, Luginsky is an incredibly unique animated film replete with early and modern computer graphics, still photography and a collage of cut-outs, which are dizzyingly utilized to maximum effect to tell a story which seems as delirious as the protagonist. The main character of the film is named Deerman, whose head is a deer and who recently endured an accident resulting in chronic hallucinations. Deerman has recently lost his job, and in a series of events that led him to become reliant on alcohol, frequently is beaten up as a result of his drunken behaviours. His addiction takes an even worse turn when he stumbles upon a panther-barmanpriest who creates a forbidden cocktail for Deerman designed by an ex-boxer named Luginsky that alters his life even further with so-called reality and fantasy dancing in unprecedented ways. A most unique film of fantastical visions you won’t soon forget.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH DIRECTOR HAIENA
Please join film artist Haiena for a virtual Q&A to discuss his experience creating the unique
animated reality of Luginsky. The discussion will be moderated by animator animator Jeff Chiba
Stearns with Japanese to English interpretation, ASL interpretation and captioning.

Keywords: Addictions | Alcoholism | Animation | Class | Surrealism

Few challenges are harder for a first-time filmmaker than the one Carolina Moscoso set for herself: to make a film based on the rape she was the victim of eight years before, when she was a film school student. The title Visión Nocturna refers to a function that allows digital cameras to film at night, to see in the dark, by enhancing their sensitivity. In order to give form to this darkness, Moscoso coordinates two kinds of contrasting materials and narrative modes. A silent linear account, via a text printed on shots or on a dark background, establishes the naked facts of the rape and its violence, prolonged by a legal process that failed to acknowledge it and to see justice through. In the background or in the gaps of this account, the editing arranges disparate fragments out of the raw footage that she has been shooting for the past fifteen years, as a kind of diary. Joyful, carefree scenes with friends, or solitary impressions; no comment, no explanation that reveals the secret. Only by delving into the silence, and cultivating this secret, does Visión Nocturna pull off the impossible feat of sharing the unshareable. (description courtesy FIDMarseille Festival)

SCREENING WITH JULIETA Y LA LUNA / JULIETA AND THE MOON
Milena Castro Etcheberry | 2020 | Chile | 8 min | Spanish with English subtitles
Julieta’s voice tries to reconstruct the family history of sexual abuse from her childhood, traveling
through the house in which it occurred. The place seems empty; however, she comes to life with the
projection on the walls of the family archive material of the protagonist.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH Carolina Moscoso and Milena Castro Etcheberry
Please join Directors Carolina Moscoso and Milena Castro Etcheberry for a virtual Q&A to discuss
the experience of creating their haunting films. The discussion will be moderated by Tamara
Toledo, a curator and writer from Latin American-Canadian Art Projects.

Keywords: Gender | Rape | Sexual violence | Trauma

Every now and then, a film comes along that rips out your heart and shreds it to pieces. Director Jessica Nilsson’s staggering documentary The Testament of Oliver chronicles her friendship with Oliver Juvonen-Peel. Oliver has schizophrenia and struggles with alcohol use disorder. He drinks to cope with his psychiatric issues, but his dual diagnosis makes it challenging to find effective treatment. He reveals
to the camera that mental health facilities reject him due to his alcohol abuse, and he’s involuntarily discharged from outpatient clinics because he’s mentally ill.

The Testament of Oliver reveals what happens to the people who fall through the cracks of the healthcare system. Nilsson’s documentary offers a raw and hardhitting account of a man in dire need
of specialized treatment and support systems. Nilsson captures her dear friend’s struggles with an unflinching eye, sharing Oliver’s soaring highs and crushing lows on his arduous road to recovery.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH JESSICA NILSSIN & OLIVER JUVONEN-PEEL
Join us for a virtual conversation with the director and subject of the film The Testament Of Oliver. Discussion moderated by Victor Stiff member of the Toronto Film Critics Association and Rendezvous’ film programming committee.

Keywords: Addiction | Schizophrenia | Recovery

Death holds a paradoxical place for us: we understand our own death is inevitable, at the same time as it feels utterly inconceivable. Recently, death has felt closer than ever as millions of people have died of COVID-19 and the deadly effects of global warming accelerated in earnest. This collection of films explores dying in relation to ritual, spectacle, care, love and the traces we leave behind.

As included in this program, Thanadoula and Season of Goodbyes intimately grapple with the loss of a loved one, and engage on a journey of mourning and paying homage to the dearly departed. Digital Traces explores the circulation of death in digital spaces, informing contemporary practices of mourning, and expressing grief. Similarly, She’s Not Gonna Get More Dead consists of excerpts of Black women vampires appearing in commercial media, and highlights Black femininity being constrained within therealms of invisibility and hypervisibility. Three Metres and a Few Centimetres portrays the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ahvaz, Iran, as “dead-washers” volunteer at a cemetery to cleanse and prepare the corpses of deceased persons for burial in accordance to Islamic customs and ritual. You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born is a fictional portrait that tenderly balances loss, grief and humour, and embraces the definite truths of life (such as death) as what makes a life worth living.

DIGITAL TRACES (April Lin | 2019 | United Kingdom | English with English subtitles | 18 min)

SHE’S NOT GONNA GET MORE DEAD (Ariella Tai | 2018 | Canada | English | 6 min)

THANADOULA (Robin McKenna | 2020 | Canada | English | 6 min)

THREE METRES AND A FEW CENTIMETRES (Mostafa Salehi Nezhad | 2020 | Iran |
Persian with English Subtitles | 18 min)

SEASON OF GOODBYES (Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann | 2018 | Kenya | English | 14 min)

YOU WERE AN AMAZEMENT ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN
(Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby | 2019 | USA | English | 33 min)

Keywords: BIPOC Experience | Death | Existentialism | Grief | Healing

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:
WHAT EVERYONE GETS

Please join the filmmakers for a conversation where the prompt is death and all the grief
that comes with less life; moderated by Lee Henderson, a Toronto-based artist and educator who’s practice investigates association networks of human intellectual-emotional investment, more commonly known as “meaning”.