The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) has revealed a 12-project lineup for its B.C.-focused Spotlight program, with five features set to make world premieres including Ana Valine’s Once There Was a Winter and Melanie Wood’s Shut Up and Say Something.

The other Canadian films making world premieres in the program are Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ The City Before the City, Boris Ivanov’s On Putin’s Blacklist and LaTiesha Ti’si’tla Fazakas and Natalie Boll’s Meet Beau Dick: Maker of Monsters.

Now in its fifth year, the Spotlight program highlights feature films from B.C. filmmakers.

As well, a number of features named to the TIFF ’17 lineup earlier this week will screen at the festival, with Kathleen Hepburn’s Never Steady, Never Still Wayne Wapeemukwa’s Luk’Luk’I and Kyle Rideout’s Public Schooled all taking their place on the Spotlight roster. Also screening is Jason James’ Entanglement, Peter Ricq’s Dead Shack, Scooter Corkle’s Hollow in the Land and Cody Bown’s Gregoire.

The winners in last year’s Spotlight category included Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses, which won both the Best BC Film Award and Best Canadian Film prize. Elsewhere, Kevan Funk’s Hello Destroyer won the BC Emerging Filmmaker Award and was nominated for best film at the CSAs and Sofia Bohdanowicz won the Emerging Canadian Director prize for Never Eat Alone.

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