Violent, a film made on a shoestring in Norway by a first-time director and filmed mostly in Norwegian – a language the director and the film's other creators do not speak – has won the awards for best Canadian film and best B.C. film at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Andrew Huculiak, Violent's 24-year-old director (and also the drummer for the band We Are The City) says the film was a collaboration between himself and three others, and filmed by the four of them along with a sound man over about 12 shooting days in Bergen, Norway.
"It was crazy," he said of the shooting schedule, in an interview with The Globe and Mail. "And halfway through I remember thinking: I'm loving this, I'm having a great time, but I don't know if I can wake up tomorrow and do this again. I think everybody felt like that where it was a marathon definitely and we all I think got really stressed out. I mean it's beautiful to make a film and to be doing it with friends and family and it was nothing but positivity, but at the same time there's that underlying 'I have no idea if this is going to work. Is this a waste of time?' "
Other award winners announced over the weekend include Grant Baldwin's documentary Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story, which received the VIFF Impact Award.
Ana Valine's debut feature Sitting on the Edge of Marlene won the B.C. Emerging Filmmaker Award. Julia Kwan's documentary Everything Will Be won an honourable mention for the B.C. Spotlight. And Geneviève Dulude-Decelles's The Cut won the award for most promising director of a Canadian short film.
VIFF continues until Oct. 10.
Marsha Lederman