This year's cinematic cornucopia at the Vancouver International Film Festival features a selection of films related to food or farming that may interest foodies or farm-fanatics.

Some of the titles included below simply use food or farming as a backdrop for drama. Ixcanul, for example, is a drama set on a Guatemalan coffee plantation.

Despite its title, The Dinner isn't necessarily a foodie film but uses fine dining as a backdrop to its story.l

It's based on Dutch author Herman Koch's bestseller of the same name. Koch's novel is structured in chapters based on the courses at a high-class restaurant where two sets of parents meet to discuss the horrific act that their children committed.

The film had previously been adapted to the big screen by director Menno Meyjes as a 2013 Dutch drama (Het Diner). Cate Blanchett is reported to be making her directorial debut with her big-screen adaptation of the novel.

In the Italian version screening at VIFF, the drama is relocated from the Netherlands to Italy.

On the other hand, The Sandwich Nazi may make you lose your lunch—or just bust a gut laughing. The local documentary profiles Salam Kahil, the outrageous owner of a Surrey deli who is as willing to hand out 200 sandwiches to homeless people as he is to share stories of his sexual adventures.

Elsewhere in the lineup, City of Gold is more of a foodie film, with a profile of Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold.

Also, the Japanese documentary Oyster Factory is basically what it describes, as it examines how a labour shortage is affecting oyster factories in Japanese villages.

Although Steak (R)evolution won't appeal to vegetarians, it provides an indepth look at the cattle industry in favour of the most humane livestock-raising techniques.

Meanwhile, the documentary Rams takes a look at Icelandic siblings who run adjacent rival ram-breeding farms. They face a harrowing decision as an incurable virus takes hold of their sheep and the brothers are advised to kill all of the animals. 

Here are a few brief descriptions of the films (full descriptions can be found at the VIFF website).

City of Gold (USA)

Winner of the first—and only—Pulitzer Prize for writing on cuisine, Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold is a beloved and imminently quotable cultural icon in that city. Laura Gabbert’s entertaining profile gives equal weight to the man and his métier. More than any other, Gold—whose portly, long-haired appearance put paid to the idea of the "anonymous" food critic—has done the legwork to uncover the different culinary wonder spots throughout the city’s vast, largely immigrant suburbs and environs, and then done his best to contextualize his experiences. In so doing, has turned the restaurant review into serious—and seriously fun—cultural criticism.

The Dinner (I nostri ragazzi, Italy)

Based on Herman Koch’s international bestseller, this film tells the story of Paolo (Luigi Lo Sascio) and Massimo (Alessandro Gassman), two brothers with little in common. Their weekly dinner dates are tense affairs, with idealistic doctor Paolo often facing off with his colder sibling, a criminal defense attorney. Their children are much closer, and it is that relationship that gives the film its true darkness. Together, cousins Michele (Jacopo Lo Cascio) and Benni (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) will have an encounter that will put their fathers’ core beliefs to the test.

The movie opens with a traffic dispute turned deadly, and when grainy surveillance video appears to capture a heinous crime committed by the kids, the brothers and their wives hold a summit at an upscale restaurant in order to debate what to do next. From here on in director Ivano De Matteo has us in the palm of his hand. He offers us a thriller, a character study and a portrait of the discontent that lurks beneath the surface of middle-class comfort. The brothers begin the movie as strong, settled characters, each confident that they’re right about the world. As everything they took for granted is lost, we’re left to wonder both what they will do and who they really are after all. This is a journey into darkness that’s as moving as it is suspenseful.

Ixcanul (France/Guatemala)

At the foot of a Guatemalan volcano, 17-year-old María (a transfixing María Mercedes Coroy) and her parents, Indigenous Mayans, scratch out a living by working on a coffee plantation overseen by the widowed foreman Ignacio (Justo Lorenzo). Her parents are content that María—who wants to exchange the plantation for life in the city—has been promised to the older overseer, but María has thoughts of her own on the subject: she’s in love with Pepe, a boy her own age who is determined to make it to the US. When María offers herself to Pepe, the consequences change her life forever…

Jayro Bustamente’s gorgeous film belies its straightforward narrative with subtle political points that underscore the near indentured nature of María and her family’s labours. One example: the Mayans are reliant on the canny Ignacio to translate between Spanish and their native Kaqchikel, giving the boss a decided advantage, and revealing their ultimate vulnerability…

Oyster Factory (Kaki Kouba, Japan)

Documentarist Soda Kazuhiro looks more and more like a Japanese answer to Frederick Wiseman. He’s a little more engaged than Wiseman (you’ll hear him asking the occasional question from off-screen) but his generally self-effacing approach is similarly designed to reveal how systems function and where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The sixth in his excellent “Observational” series shows us everything there is to know about catching, shucking and selling oysters, but its interest goes beyond molluscs.

Filming in coastal villages north of Okayama, documentarist Soda Kazuhiro finds the small oyster factories imperilled. Despite a recent influx of fishermen from Fukushima (refugees from the tsunami), there’s a serious and growing shortage of labour—largely because the next generation doesn’t want to inherit or run the businesses. The solution: import labour from China. Soda’s focus gradually shifts from oysters to Sino-Japanese relations, and the final segment of his film shows the arrival and induction of two hard-working temps from China.

Rams (Hrútar, Iceland)

A sibling rivalry of biblical proportions set in the context of competitive ram-breeding farm culture may seem like an unlikely combination, but Icelandic filmmaker Grímur Hákonarson creates a compelling, understated and often quite amusing drama that deservedly took home the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

We’re introduced to estranged brothers Gummi (Sigurdur Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) in the midst of their valley’s annual competition for best ram. They run adjacent farms but do not speak, bitterly trying to outdo one another as they stubbornly uphold a grudge of mysterious origin. When an incurable virus is detected among some of the animals, the authorities determine that all of the sheep must be put down, so as to avoid it spreading. A devastating blow to each brother’s livelihood as well as the pride of their town, Gummi and Kiddi deal with this tragedy in different ways, heightening the already palpable tension between them. As winter sets in, the harshly beautiful northern landscape of this remote valley becomes a character in itself, the backdrop for an intensifying decades-long feud, articulated by the icy and bleak terrain that surrounds it.

The hardships of rural life and the tight-knit bonds between these men and their calling imbues Rams with high stakes, making it an unforgettable tale, simple in its narrative and yet complex in its emotional scope.

The Sandwich Nazi (Canada)

If you can’t take the nudity and coarse language, stay out of Salam Kahil’s deli. The moment Lewis Bennett’s fascinating documentary takes us inside the shop, the hilariously crass Salam lets fly with a barrage of profane insults and ribald anecdotes. As he rewrites his own history on a whim, we’re left to wonder how an irascible Lebanese male escort actually ended up in Surrey serving the largest sandwiches known to man. With humour and humanity, Bennett unearths the truth.

"Salam Kahil is totally inappropriate. Even before walking into his [deli] customers are greeted by a page of rules and warnings, the first of which is: “This deli contains coarse language and nudity!” Kahil delivers no less, asking to pimp out especially good-looking customers, and regaling the huddled hungry with tales of his sexual exploits…

But beyond the sexual pageantry and theatrics, Lewis Bennett’s documentary offers a complicated portrait of a fairly antipathetic subject. And this is the interesting thing about Kahil: He’s just as willing to verbally abuse a customer for not saying the word ’please’ or to pass out 200 sandwiches to Vancouver’s homeless, as he is comfortable pointing to his own jizz stains on the concrete floor. Making sense of that paradox, and the changing fortunes of the deli and its owner, is the work this documentary attempts to do."—Austin Chronicle

Steak (R)evolution (France)

What makes Angus Angus? What makes Kobe Kobe? Who’s got the best beef in the world? What’s the best way to cook it? And who’s serving it?! Can we feel less guilty about consuming all this beef? What’s in the cow’s best interest? Are our interests, the cattle’s, and the sustainability of our planet absolutely irreconcilable? We’ve got the questions, Steak (R)evolution’s got the answers. Who would’ve thought one film could embrace so much and be quite so delectable? With a tip of its hat to Michael Pollan, director Franck Ribière takes us on a highly informed world tour—and some of these cattle-grazing lands are breathtakingly beautiful—to demonstrate that "the best steaks on the planet are often those that result from the most humane livestock-raising techniques. Vegetarians beware—this mouthwatering documentary may just about convert you.”—Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter

Check out this year's film schedule and visit our guide for complete VIFF coverage.