Director Dianne Whelan’s documentary 500 Days in the Wild (pictured) is set to make its world premiere at the Whistler Film Festival (WFF).

WFF announced its full lineup on Wednesday (Nov. 1) with a total of 35 features and 62 shorts from 14 countries curated into 12 program strands.

The Paramount+ original doc 500 Days in the Wild, which follows Whelan’s epic 28,000 kilometre journey across Canada, is produced by Betsy Carson. Whelan and Christine Haebler serve as executive producers and Elevation Pictures is the film’s Canadian distributor.

500 Days in the Wild joins four previously announced Canadian titles that will be making their world bow at the festival, including Altona (Foreshadow Films, Langer Films) by The Affolter brothers, Sean Garrity’s The Burning Season (Banana-Moon Sky Films), Bruce Sweeney’s She Talks to Strangers (Carkner Films), and Jeremy Lutter’s Zoe.mp4 (Broken Mirror Films, Bright Idea Pictures, Boyko Media).

Zoe.mp4, She Talks to Strangers and The Burning Season are among the 12 films competing for the Borsos Best Canadian Feature prize.

The other films in the competition are: Chloé Leriche’s Atikamekw Suns (Les Films de l’autre), Madison Thomas’ Finality of Dusk (Eagle Vision), Sandi Sommers’ Hailey Rose (Iylond Entertainment), and Anik Jean’s Les hommes de ma mère (Jessie Films).

Monia Chokri’s Simple comme Sylvain (Metafilms), Lyne Charlebois’ Tell Me Why These Things are so Beautiful (Max Films), Robert Vaughn’s This Time, Kim Albright’s With Love and a Major Organ (Violator Films), and Rebecca Snow’s Canada-U.S. copro The Boy in the Woods (Lumanity Productions, JoBro Productions), complete the Borsos competition lineup.

A total of 24 shorts will also be making their world premiere at the festival, including homegrown titles such as Sandbox by Riley Davis, Nessa Aref’s My Roomate Ahriman, and Michael Lawrence Bates’ Swoon.

The 2023 edition of WFF runs from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3, with the festival then moving to a virtual platform from Dec. 4 to 17.

Photo by Brandon Foreman