You can watch the EIFF from home this year

Film Festival hits theatres and homes The Edmonton International Film Festival is about to hit both the big and small screens. CTV News Edmonton’s Graham Neil has the story.

EDMONTON — The Edmonton International Film Festival will be coming back to the city — right into your home.

The Landmark Cinemas theatres at City Centre will have restricted seating to keep attendees physically distant, but film fans will also be able to watch from home thanks for a partnership between the EIFF and Super Channel.

"We found out really early on in sort of our timeline for the festival that the coronavirus pandemic would be something that affected people going to movie theaters," said assistant programmer Vincent Brulotte. “We got lucky enough to know early on about restrictions that would be in place, public health measures, and so we're lucky it's been a challenging year but we feel pretty prepared for this festival even though it's not a typical one."

Content slated for the home viewing experience includes Q and As and a large part of the short programming, Brulotte said. He's especially excited about the local content still being created during the pandemic.

"We've got some great highlights from Alberta. I mean our opening night film is Jasmine Road. That's a super, super awesome film about a Syrian family that's relocated to a small town in Alberta — I believe Red River — and that's a super awesome made-in-Alberta story; a super timely story that we want to be talking about especially when we see communities kind of drifting apart because of pandemic and for other reasons. It's really nice to see a story about people coming together to support each other.”

The festival will take place between Oct. 1-10.