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Shiny VIFF opening – Metro US

Shiny VIFF opening

Vancouver director Vic Sarin’s A Shine Of Rainbows will open the 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival, organizers of the annual event announced yesterday.

“Christmas just came a little early for me,” said Sarin, who has lived in Vancouver for the past 15 years.

“To me it is so wonderful to have a film open in your own hometown. You can’t get any better than that … it’s absolutely the best gift you could ever have.”

A Shine Of Rainbows, a Canadian-Irish film about an orphan who is taken to Corrie Island off Ireland’s west coast, will open VIFF with a gala screening on Oct. 1. The festival itself runs until Oct. 16.

This year, VIFF features 640 screenings of 375 films from 70 countries.

Festival Director Alan Franey, who has seen about a third of the films, said the lineup is probably the best in the festival’s history, despite the troubled economic times.

VIFF did not receive $70,000 in provincial gaming grants that it had banked on this spring.