New filmmakers under 30 are encouraged to visit the Vancity Theatre on Saturday (December 14) for a strong double-header of screenings followed by 45-minute artist talks. The event starts at 10:30 a.m. with Antoine Bourges’s Fail to Appear, a film that moved the Georgia Straight to declare, when it first played at VIFF: “Behold transcendental cinema, 2017!”

Following Bourges, director Kazik Radwanski presents Anne at 13,000 ft, which won accolades this year at both the Toronto and Vancouver international film festivals, and was included today (December 11) in TIFF's annual list of the year's top 10 Canadian films. Actor Deragh Campbell was meanwhile singled out for special praise by Guardian critic Wendy Ide in her roundup of TIFF’s best.

Campbell, who also takes the lead in Fail to Appear, graced the cover of the Georgia Straight during this year’s VIFF, while filmmakers Radwanski and Bourges both belong to Toronto’s insurgent community of young artists making microbudgeted work on the margins of the mainstream film industry, and winning critical hosannas along the way. In that spirit, Saturday’s event is free. Sign up now at viff.org/.