What is most striking about this year’s VIFF lineup is that all three gala screenings feature Canadian films. Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions will serve as the opening gala, Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World as the anniversary gala, and Charles Martin Smith’s The Snow Walker will close. This doesn’t necessarily reflect a trend, says Alan Franey, festival director for the last 16 years.

‘It’s just something we should do every once in awhile and this is the year to do it,’ says Franey. ‘We thought it would be a nice way to reflect the diversity of cinema in the country. If they’d all been local films it would have looked a bit provincial, frankly. We didn’t want to be patting ourselves on the back so much as opening a window to a very wide landscape of Canadian cinema.’

Franey says that while he hasn’t seen all of the Canadian films in VIFF’s popular Canadian Images program, what he has seen has been very good. He recalls a time not long ago in the festival’s history when interest in Canadian cinema was limited, while international movies were feted loudly. He worries the pendulum may have swung too far the other way.

‘If you’re having an international festival in a large Canadian city, you want to make sure that people don’t celebrate Canadian films at the expense of forgetting that a lot of these foreign films don’t return,’ says Franey. ‘I really think that one of the opportunities that an international festival represents is for Canadian filmmakers to be challenged by the best work from other countries.’

Comparisons between VIFF, Montreal’s World Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival are inevitable, and Franey says that although VIFF is dissimilar to WFF and TIFF in many ways, there is one common thread that runs through each.

‘We’re probably more similar to Montreal in that we have none of the Hollywood junkets, but what’s essentially the same about all three festivals is that we have sophisticated publics,’ Franey explains. ‘All three big international festivals in Canada are larger in terms of films and attendance – and probably more cosmopolitan in their ethnic mix – than any equivalent festival in the U.S.’

He goes on to say that what differentiates Vancouver is the Asian flavor with its Dragons and Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia program as well as the non-fiction section, which, he says, ‘is phenomenally successful.’

Franey believes there is room for all three major fests, along with the dozens and perhaps hundreds of smaller ones that are growing in stature. But he also feels that while more movies seem to be getting made, governments worldwide are investing less in promoting their countries’ films. He says that without government support for indigenous films at outside festivals and events, the results for filmmakers could be devastating.

‘The filmmakers are not making a cent back,’ says Franey. ‘With so many festivals, if that’s the only place these films are seen, that’s a serious problem for the filmmakers. I think it’s incumbent on festivals to not just take the money and run, but realize they are there to serve the films. They have to be aware of the business realities and the trust that someone who supplies a film to them has [shown]. They have to try to do more than just show a film to a local audience.’

Franey says VIFF tries to keep out of the ‘perennial conflict’ between the Montreal and Toronto festivals. While TIFF has taken exception to WFF overlapping its dates with Toronto, VIFF just worries about itself and remains neutral on the subject. It did, however, willingly move dates when it discovered that its Dragons and Tigers program conflicted with the Pusan International Film Festival.

‘We’re quite cooperative with Pusan. It’s about trying to be as practical and cooperative as you can be,’ says Franey. ‘We’re so far removed from the emotion in the conflict between Montreal and Toronto.’

Next year should provide even greater excitement for Franey and the VIFF team, as the Vancouver International Film Centre should be completed and will serve as a new home to the festival offices, as well as offer a state-of-the-art theatre, a lobby/gallery, cafe and production space.

‘It’s been almost three years from the conception of the idea to the point we’re at now, where all the decisions have been made,’ says Franey.