Adam Beach's 'Monkey Beach' to Open Hybrid Vancouver Film Fest

The west coast festival has set a slimmed-down 39th edition with select in-cinema screenings and mostly digital screenings.

Monkey Beach, a supernatural thriller by writer-director Loretta Todd and starring Suicide Squad star Adam Beach and Grace Dove, is set to open a pandemic-era Vancouver Film Festival.

The Canadian indie, receiving a world premiere, has Dove playing a young woman with powers that foretell death and who faces the disappearance at sea of her brother, a potential Olympic swimmer.

Other indie films booked into Vancouver include Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round, Viggo Mortensen's Falling, Francois Ozon's Summer of 85 and Tracey Deer's Beans. On Thursday, Vancouver festival organizers unveiled plans for a 14-day mainly digital festival.

Only select film titles will physically screen in socially distanced movie theaters amid the coronavirus pandemic, including the opening night Monkey Beach. Vancouver will also host a new VIFF Connect streaming platform to allow province-wide streaming of most festival titles.

Also booked into Vancouver is a world premiere for Yellow Sunglasses, direcgted by Ivan Mora Manzano, the Canadian premiere of Golden Bear winner There Is No Evil from director Mohammad Rasoulof, and Merkel — Anatomy of a Crisis, director Stephan Wagner's take on Germany's response to the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015.

The 39th edition of the Vancouver Film Festival, to run Sept. 24 to Oct. 7, will showcase a slimmed-down lineup of just over 100 feature films and events.