REEL | Tony Leung Makes A 'Silent Friend' x SIFF 2026

"I want to find out what plants sense."

1-2 Special / Films We Like

Silent Friend (aka Stille Freundin), a strange but affecting historical tale by visionary Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, follows Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung as a Chinese neuroscientist studying a beguiling gingko tree on the grounds of a medieval German university town in 2020. It's a uniquely engrossing two-and-a-half-hour film essentially about a professor befriending an old tree through science.

SCREEN | Touring the 'Islands' – A Sunshine Noir

"I'm not running away from anything."

Greenwich Entertainment / Vortex Media

Brit actors Sam Riley and Stacy Martin star in German director Jan-Ole Gerster's seductively sun-soaked, Hitchcockian tennis noir thriller, the appropriately titled Islands. Set on the eponymous Canary Islands, Riley's burned-out hotel resort tennis pro, Tom, gets entangled with a troubled English tourist couple's unhappy marriage to uneasy consequences.

GENRE | Nesting Horror – Hunter Schafer Goes 'Cuckoo' x Fantasia 2024

"I expect her to come for you again."

Fantasia International Film Festival

Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer stars in German filmmaker Tilman Singer's stylish sophomore body horror thriller, Cuckoo. She stars as a knife-wielding teenage brat of a final girl, Gretchen, stranded somewhere in rural Germany. Its experimental nature at first toys with unknown supernatural killer tendencies before heading down a more conventional slasher genre path to its thrills.

SCREEN | Digitizing the Afterlife – 'Eternal You' x DOXA 2024

"It's able to hijack the things that we love the most."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck delve into the deeply troubling world of a "digital afterlife" created by artificial intelligence to extend the lives of deceased loved ones in Eternal You. This very real technology allows startups to effectively digitize those who have passed away by generating simulated versions of them in order to comfort grieving survivors.

VIFF 2023 | Evil Lurks Beyond 'The Zone of Interest'

"This is our living space."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2023—British auteur Jonathan Glazer directs his first film in seven years. Loosely inspired by the premise of the fictional WWII novel of the same name by English writer Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest explores the sheer banality of evil through his Poland-set domestic drama set just outside the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp during the height of Nazi Germany's extermination of European Jews.

REEL | A Difficult Woman – Cate Blanchett Orchestrates 'Tár'

"Our only home is the podium."

Focus Features

Acclaimed filmmaker Todd Field returns after a sixteen-year cinematic absence in the highly provocative Tár, starring Cate Blanchett, as the eponymous fictional, celebrated orchestra conductor and composer in a masterfully chilling psychological character drama about a difficult woman representing our current "cancel culture" climate of outing predators who exploit their corrosive cocktail of power and influence like social currency.

GENRE | Charlize Theron Detonates 'Atomic Blonde'

John Wick co-director David Leitch, also a former stuntman and coordinator, brings his brand of hard-boiled action to 1989 Berlin just days before the fall of the Wall with Charlize Theron (also a producer) starring as one kick-ass MI6 British agent in the exhilarating but incomprehensible Atomic Blonde. Based on Antony Johnston's graphic novel, The Coldest City, the film is a retro-style remix of contemporary action films with plenty of flash to spare.

GATHER | Bauhaus Restaurant x 2nd Anniversary x Gastown

"I'm not going to sell out and open Nightingale."

Gastown—(June 12, 2017) From notorious (and now retired) German schlock filmmaker turned successful restaurateur Uwe Boll (pronounced "OO-vah"), the acclaimed Bauhaus Restaurant celebrated its second anniversary this week while also unveiling brand new co-executive chefs Tim Schulte and David Mueller.

VIFF 2016 | 'Toni Erdmann' Has A Laugh

VIFF 2016—Toni Erdmann is an audacious and ambitious farce of a film exploring a particularly unique and bizarre father/daughter relationship. Written and directed by Maren Ade, the German-English language film is genuinely funny throughout and a nearly three-hour journey into strange comic premises.

From Sausage to Fries x Bestie Currywurst x Chinatown

Late night eats at Bestie Currywurst in Chinatown on May 30, 2014.



I've been meaning to revisit Chinatown's new destination for late night eats long since its opening last year.

Eurotrip 2013: Another Brick in the Wall x Berlin Revisited

Eurotrip 2013: Touring and sightseeing around Berlin, Germany from April 12 to 15, 2013.

"Berlin combines the culture of New York, the traffic system of Tokyo, the nature of Seattle, and the historical treasures of, well, Berlin." – Hiroshi Motomura

From Sausage to Sauerkraut x Bestie Currywurst x Chinatown

Bestie Currywurst's grand opening in Chinatown on June 19, 2013. Published in Vancouver Is Awesome.



Chinatown's new sausage parlour, inspired by German street food culture, has finally opened after much anticipation. I tried currywurst for the first time a couple months ago on the mean streets of Recklinghausen in Germany and was thoroughly delighted. The dish is a 1949 Berlin invention born from having an abundance of leftover curry powder from British soldiers after WWII.

Eurotrip 2013: 1 Day in Munich x BMW Welt x Bavaria

Eurotrip 2013: Walking around Munich and touring BMW Headquarters in Bavaria, Germany on April 16, 2013.



This is the end. Our last stop... Hello, Munich. Goodbye, Europe. See you soon, Canada.

Eurotrip 2013: Achtung Baby x From Berlin with Love

Eurotrip 2013: Walking the streets of Berlin, Germany from April 12 to 15, 2013.

"The greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine." – David Bowie

Eurotrip 2013: Augustiner x German Beer Hall x Berlin

Eurotrip 2013: Dinner at Augustiner am Gendarmenmarkt beer hall in Berlin, Germany on April 13, 2013.



There are some meals that nearly kill you. This was one of those. In search for some authentic German dining, we went to one of Augustiner's many locations for a meal of pork, sausage, and potatoes at this German beer hall.

Eurotrip 2013: Willkommen in Berlin x The Wall

Eurotrip 2013: Sightseeing and exploring the City of Berlin, Germany from April 12 to 15, 2013.

"Ich bin ein Berliner." – President John F. Kennedy

Review: 'Inglourious Basterds' Trips the Light Fantastique!

"I don't see me tripping the light fantastiqueup a red carpet anytime soon."

Sometimes you watch a movie, and sometimes, just sometimes, you are rewarded for years of dedication to the art of cinema by witnessing an unabashed love letter to all things film, like with Inglourious Basterds [sic]. Prominent video store clerk turned acclaimed Oscar-winning writer and director Quentin Tarantino returns behind the camera with his long-gestating, Jewish wish-fulfillment revenge fantasy that has been a decade in the making.