HOLLYWOOD ON AN ISLAND FOR A WEEKEND: VIFF 2026 COMES TO A CLOSE
Before this year’s Vashon Island Film Festival began, I described the experience as “Hollywood on an island for a weekend.”
After spending another weekend on Vashon, I think I’ll stick with that.
The fifth annual Vashon Island Film Festival came to a close Sunday night with the presentation of its Red Bicycle Awards, putting a bow on a weekend that felt a little different from previous years. VIFF 2026 was somewhat pared down and a little more low-key, but somehow never lacking in energy. If anything, the smaller footprint reinforced something I’ve come to appreciate about this festival: Vashon Island may be close to the perfect place to hold one.
There is enough space here to disappear.
Covering a film festival means spending a surprising amount of time alone. There are screeners to watch, notes to organize and reviews to write. On Vashon, I could retreat to my hotel room, put on a film and disappear from the festival for a couple of hours. Then I could walk out to grab coffee and find myself standing near a producer, actor or director whose work was part of the weekend.
That balance between isolation and community is difficult to manufacture, and Vashon seems to provide it naturally. The island is large enough that VIFF never feels suffocating, yet small enough that filmmakers, audiences and press continually cross paths. The festival doesn’t have to force those encounters. They simply happen.
That was particularly noticeable this year. The fifth edition felt more intimate than some previous festivals, but the energy remained. People talked about movies. Filmmakers moved through the same spaces as the people watching their work. Conversations continued outside the theater. The festival existed not only on the screen but around the island.
And, of course, eventually somebody has to win something.
The weekend’s biggest winner was J.J. Gerber’s The Life We Leave, which received both the newly renamed Chai & Joy Mann Quartermaster Award for Excellence in Feature Filmmaking and the Audience Award for Best Feature.
I was especially glad to see this one take the festival’s top prize. The Life We Leave was easily one of my favorite films of the weekend, something I explored more fully in my review for Hammer to Nail.
The documentary follows an entrepreneur and two funeral directors attempting to create an environmentally conscious deathcare facility in Washington state, but what stayed with me was how human the film remained while dealing with subjects we often work very hard not to talk about.
Apparently, I wasn’t alone. Taking both the Quartermaster and Audience awards meant The Life We Leave connected with the festival’s jury and the people sitting in the theater.
Elsewhere, Myrsini Aristidou’s Hold Onto Me emerged as the weekend’s major craft winner, receiving Best Director and Best Screenplay, while cinematographer Lasse Ulvedal Tolbøll took Best Cinematography for the film.
Pranav Bhasin’s We Were Here, about three retired men confronting a technological world increasingly unfamiliar to them, received the Burton Award for Excellence in Short Filmmaking. Stephen P. Neary’s Living with a Visionary, which previously received the Animation Short Film Jury Award at Sundance 2026, took the Audience Award for Best Short.
The acting awards went to Lisa Gueneau for Silent Rebellion and Melora Walters for Crooks, while Colin Monie received Best Editing for Everybody to Kenmure Street.
Vashon native Cassie Bergman’s Sailing the Sound received the audience-selected Mickey’s Chair Award for Best shortCUTZ, presented in partnership with C’Mon Barber.
VIFF also introduced a new honor this year. The inaugural S. Gordon Tribble “Superstar” Award, created to recognize a notable LGBTQIA+-made or -focused film and carrying a $1,000 prize, went to Labrador – Autopsy of Silence. The award honors Stuart Gordon Tribble, a member of both the Vashon Island community and the broader film world who died last year.
The Vashon Island Film Fest Red Bicycle Award
Those awards provide the official record of VIFF’s fifth year. They don’t quite capture what makes attending it special.
This was my third year participating in the Vashon Island Film Festival as a writer, and it has become one of the highlights of my year. Part of that is obviously the movies. Increasingly, though, it is also the environment surrounding them.
There are much larger film festivals. There are festivals with more theaters, more screenings, bigger premieres and considerably more spectacle. VIFF’s appeal isn’t that it attempts to recreate those experiences on a smaller scale.
It works because it doesn’t.
For a few days, an island in Puget Sound becomes a place where independent movies are given room to breathe. You can watch something, walk outside, think about it, disappear for a while, come back and unexpectedly encounter someone responsible for what you just saw.
That’s what I meant by “Hollywood on an island for a weekend.” Not Hollywood’s scale or spectacle, but that peculiar feeling of being temporarily surrounded by people who make movies, people who love movies and people who can’t stop talking about them.
“We made it through year five,” Vashon Film Institute President Mark Mathias Sayre said as the festival concluded. “And we did that with the support of our sponsors, filmmakers, volunteers, our board and above all, our audiences! Tomorrow, we start on year 6.”
For one weekend each August, Vashon gets to become something slightly different.
Hollywood can have the rest of the year.
– Alan Motley (@alanmotley)
