VANCOUVER — The 28th annual Vancouver International Film Festival opened Thursday night with a gala screening of local director Vic Sarin’s feel-good family film A Shine of Rainbows.
‘It is so wonderful to see a homegrown film open a festival,’ said Sarin of his Canada/Ireland coproduction, and asked anyone in the packed house who worked on the project to stand for applause.
‘Filmmaking is a lot of work and stress — just look at my grey hair,’ joked Sarin (Partition), who is also an Emmy Award-winning cinematographer.
A Shine of Rainbows is the tale of an introverted orphan (John Bell) adopted by an extraordinary woman Maire (Connie Nielsen) and her curmudgeonly husband Alec (Aidan Quinn). Maire teaches the young boy how to find color and magic in the world — no matter how dark the day may seem.
‘This film is very close to my heart,’ said Nielsen. ‘At the basis of everything is love and the film shows this in so many different ways.’
A Shine of Rainbows has already screened in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Atlantic Film Festival. E1 Entertainment is distributing domestically and handling international sales.
The producers are Tina Pehme and Kim Roberts of Vancouver’s Sepia Films and James Flynn of Ireland’s Octagon Films.
VIFF runs through to Oct. 16 and will screen over 370 films from 70 countries to over 150,000 attendees. It’s among the five largest film festivals in North America.
Tonight the Canadian Images program gets underway with the gala screening of another Vancouver-based project — Bruce Sweeney’s comedy/drama Excited, about a golf-course owner who hasn’t had a date in eight years.