Screen previews the key world and international premieres in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema, Discovery and Midnight Madness programmes. Toronto International Film Festival runs September 8-18.
Contemporary World Cinema selected titles
This year’s world cinema section at Toronto offers more than 50 films, including 19 world premieres.
Among the notable world premieres is The Hotel, a Hong Kong pandemic lockdown story from Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai (sales by The Match Factory).
Sparta (Coproduction Office), about a paedophile trying to escape his past, is Austrian writer/director Ulrich Seidl’s companion film to Rimini, which premiered at this year’s Berlinale.
Finland’s Klaus Härö comes to TIFF with My Sailor, My Love (Global Screen), a drama about a retired sea captain, his rejected daughter and his domestic aid.
Mexico’s Claudia Sainte-Luce brings Love And Mathematics, a comedy about a former boy-band member, which arrives six months after the filmmaker’s Berlin entry The Realm Of God.
Six years after attending TIFF with Santa & Andres, Cuban writer/director Carlos Lechuga returns to launch his third feature Vicenta B, about a woman who communicates with spirits (Habanero Film Sales).
France’s Christophe Honoré — last at TIFF with Cannes-premiering Beloved (2011) — gets a world premiere for Winter Boy, his drama about a young man reacting to unexpected tragedy (Pyramide Films).
Kazakhstan’s Emir Baigazin, whose The River was at TIFF in 2018, is back with Life, a modern fable set at a tech company.
From India comes Zwigato (Applause Entertainment), actor/writer/director Nandita Das’s latest, with comedian Kapil Sharma playing out the trials and tribulations of a food-app delivery driver. Das’s two earlier features as director — Firaaq (2008) and Manto (2018) — likewise played at Toronto.
Narrative feature debuts receiving their world premieres are the eOne and Limelight-backed Wildflower, US filmmaker Matt Smukler’s female coming-of-age story starring Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka; Alam, Palestinian writer/director Firas Khoury’s story about Israeli-Palestinian high-schoolers (MAD Distribution); and Fixation, a US-Canada-Germany thriller from Mercedes Bryce Morgan about a young woman undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
Canadian films premiering at TIFF are Marie Clements’ Bones Of Crows, Katherine Jerkovic’s Coyote, Sean Garrity’s The End Of Sex, Donald Shebib’s Nightalk, Carly Stone’s North Of Normal, Lina Rodriguez’s So Much Tenderness, Darlene Naponse’s Stellar and Lindsay MacKay’s The Swearing Jar.
Arriving in Toronto having played only in their home countries are Muru, an action drama from New Zealand’s Tearepa Kahi; South African crime comedy The Umbrella Men from John Barker; Norwegian Second World War story War Sailor from Gunnar Vikene; and We Are Still Here, an Australia-New Zealand drama comprising stories about First Nations people by 10 directors.
North American premieres include Carlos Vermut’s Spanish fantasy-drama Manticore, and Japanese contemporary drama Stonewalling from Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka.
Rounding out the world cinema line-up are nearly two dozen films that have already screened at other festivals this year. From Cannes are titles including Aftersun, EO, Godland, La Jauria, R.M.N. and The Worst Ones. And among titles arriving fresh from Venice are Amanda, Autobiography, Beyond The Wall, Love Life, The Origin Of Evil and Valeria Is Getting Married.
Discovery
Showcasing first or second features from rising talents in world cinema, Discovery has in the past featured early work by the likes of Chantal Akerman, Steve McQueen and Jean-Marc Vallée. This year’s programme comprises 24 films, all but two of them getting their world premieres at TIFF.
Higher profile entries include Australia-France coproduction Carmen (TF1 Studio), the feature directing debut of French choreographer Benjamin Millepied. The modern-day musical drama, acquired for a number of territories by Sony Pictures Classics, stars Melissa Barrera and Paul Mescal.
Malou Reymann’s Unruly (TrustNordisk), follow-up to the Danish writer/director’s Rotterdam festival prize-winner A Perfectly Normal Family, is the real-life-inspired story of a strong-minded young woman sent to an isolated institution.
Bruiser, about fathers, sons and male violence, is Miles Warren’s debut feature exploring similar terrain to his 2021 Sundance short of the same name.
And UK-Palestine entry A Gaza Weekend (Protagonist Pictures), from UK-based writer/producer/director Basil Khalil, is a comedy starring Stephen Mangan as a British journalist trying to escape from Israel after a virus-induced travel ban.
A number of Discovery titles deal with LGBTQ+ themes. The section’s opening night film The Inspection (A24) is US director Elegance Bratton’s autobiographical story of a gay Black man who joins the Marines after being rejected by his mother. It is also set to screen on the closing night of New York Film Festival.
Similarly themed entries include Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe, a US comedy-drama from trans filmmaker Aitch Alberto, and three Canadian films: Joseph Amenta’s Pussy, Luis De Filippis’ Something You Said Last Night (Memento International) and VT Nayani’s This Place.
Other entries from Discovery’s sizeable contingent of women filmmakers are Bess Wohl’s Baby Ruby and Sophie Kargman’s Susie Searches, both from the US; Marian Mathias’s US-France-Germany project Runner (Heretic); Laura Baumeister’s Daughter Of Rage (La Hija De Todas Las Rabias), from Nicaragua; Angela Wanjiku Wamai’s Shimoni, from Kenya; and Selcen Ergun’s Turkey-Germany-Serbia project Snow And The Bear.
There is also Davit Pirtskhalava’s Georgian film A Long Break and Ehab Tarabieh’s Israel-Germany entry The Taste Of Apples Is Red (The Match Factory).
The section’s only two features previously launched elsewhere are Davy Chou’s Cannes Un Certain Regard entry Return To Seoul (mk2 Films) and Jub Clerc’s Australian feature Sweet As (Sphere Films).
Completing the Discovery line-up are another five Canadian films: Chandler Levack’s I Like Movies, Gail Maurice’s Rosie, Sophie Jarvis’s Until Branches Bend, Kelly Fyffe-Marshall’s When Morning Comes and Sheila Pye’s The Young Arsonists.
Midnight Madness
The 10 titles that make up this year’s Midnight Madness genre showcase take in topics ranging from gender identity and racial politics to Nazi soldiers and cursed apartment buildings.
Arriving fresh from its Venice world premiere is Ti West’s X prequel Pearl (A24), which explores how sweet-natured Pearl (Mia Goth) becomes the pyscho-killer octogenarian seen in X. Killers also take centre stage in Miramax’s Sick, directed by US filmmaker John Hyams and written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, which sees two friends riding out the pandemic at a lake house that may not be as isolated as they believe. And in horror comedy The Blackening, directed by Tim Story and based on a 2018 Comedy Central digital short written by star Dewayne Perkins, seven Black friends are trapped in a remote cabin by a killer with a vendetta.
Also from the US is V/H/S/99 (Shudder) the latest instalment in the popular anthology series, which sees six directors including Maggie Levin and Johannes Roberts present found-footage vignettes set at the turn of the last century. And in The People’s Joker, the crowdfunded debut from Vera Drew, an aspiring clown struggling with gender identity faces off against a caped crusader.
Daniel Radcliffe continues on his subversive post-Potter career path by taking the role of iconic parody musician Weird Al Yankovic in Eric Appel’s biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Roku), which opens the sidebar.
From Europe comes the latest from Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander, who won several festival awards for his 2010 feature Rare Exports. Set during the Second World War, Sisu (Finnish Film Foundation) sees a Finnish soldier who discovers gold in the Lapland wilderness go up against a group of brutal Nazis. It is an entirely more cosmic battle in the HP Lovecraft-inspired Venus (released by Sony in the US) from Spanish filmmaker Jaume Balaguero, which is set in a cursed apartment complex on the outskirts of Madrid.
From South Korea comes Project Wolf Hunting (Finecut), Kim Hongsun’s cargo ship chiller in which a group of hardened criminals are forced to defend themselves against the dangerous entity hidden in the hold. And closing proceedings is Filipina filmmaker Martika Ramirez Escobar’s debut feature Leonor Will Never Die (Cercamon), which sees a retired filmmaker fall into a coma where she becomes the hero of one of her own unfinished screenplays.
Toronto profiles by Nikki Baughan, Ellie Calnan, Tim Dams, Charles Gant, John Hazelton, Jeremy Kay, Lee Marshall, Jonathan Romney, Silvia Wong.
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