The Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival is back for its 33rd year with a hybrid-style experience to comply with public health guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The festival is integrating both an in- theatre experience and a virtual one that people can enjoy from home until Sept. 26.
Cinéfest kicked off its opening night on Sept. 18 showcasing the film, All My Puny Sorrows, a Canadian feature that was filmed in North Bay and written, directed and produced by Michael McGowan.
It’s not McGowan’s first film with Cinéfest. McGowan had five other films featured with the Northern Ontario film festival prior to this year.
“This is the only film festival that’s shown all six of my films,” McGowan told Sudbury.com in an interview. “It’s so nice that they (Cinéfest) showcase Canadian film in the way that they do and they’ve been so supportive over the years. It means everything.”
All My Puny Sorrows is a drama that adapts Miriam Toews' 2014 novel of the same name. Film lovers in Sudbury will surely appreciate the Northern Ontario landscape that is featured in the film.
Cinéfest aims to play a diverse range of movies, from domestic Canadian films to foreign language films. Festival executive director Tammy Frick said that Cinéfest's mission after 33 years remains satisfying Sudbury’s appetite for film.
“We’re really all about bringing really high quality, Canadian, so domestic film and foreign language film to an audience base. And some people might think, wow, a city like Sudbury really has an appetite for that and there truly is. The way the festival has grown over the years has really proven that,” Frick said.
Frick has been with Cinéfest for 27 years and has seen the positive impacts that the festival had on the community.
“So it’s a celebration of film, it’s a celebration of cinema -- it allows people to just get out and see different aspects of social, economic and various issues that are presented through the medium of film and present it from different countries. And it makes us realize that we’re not all that different.”
To find out more about the festival, visit the Cinéfest website here.
