Screen International previews the Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery and Centrepiece strands. TIFF runs September 10-20.
Discovery
Discovery opener Stuffed (sold by Cornerstone Film) is one of the section’s three films from the UK and Ireland with characters searching for meaning in unconventional places. Love, death and taxidermy collide in Theo Rhys’s musical. David Turpin’s Ireland-UK drama Ancestors (Mister Smith) explores the Aids epidemic in 1980s London, and Tom Nicoll’s Salvation (Lane Films) takes on male influencer culture.
Discovery’s five US titles include two with pop subculture backdrops: Drifter is a car racing story directed by Fast And Furious franchise star Sung Kang, and Deanté Gray’s Voices is a Motown-inspired musical thriller having its international premiere at TIFF.
Women filmmakers are behind more than half the films in the section, with a number telling female-centric stories touching on topical issues. Satire Head To Head (DreamLab Films), from Iran’s Ghasideh Golmakani, has a female director making male actors wear skirts and headscarves. The Daughters Of Abraham (Les Films du Losange) from France’s Hanaël El Yousfi centres on the relationship between two women, one Muslim and the other Jewish. US filmmaker Alexandra Pechman’s Magazine (Global Constellation) is set in an eroticised workplace, while Ione Hernandez’s Spanish drama Sisters (Be For Films) turns on a sexual assault allegation.
Women struggling to survive are the central characters of Helena Giron and Samuel Delgado’s Spain-Greece historical drama The Fortunate Isles (Bendita Film Sales) and Christine Boateng and Hajara Musah Chambas’s contemporary Zjili: A Story Of Sisterhood And The Burdens Of Excess, from Ghana.
Familial relationships are at the core of a number of Discovery titles. Ian Bawa’s Canadian entry Strong Son is about a South Asian bodybuilder who cares for his elderly father. Katharina Rabl’s Germany-Austria co-pro Memories Of A Forest has a doctoral student dealing with tension between her family’s legacy and her own path. Amalie Naesby Fick’s What Lies Between Us (TrustNordisk) is a Danish tale about the boundaries a parent can cross to protect a child.
From Canada and the US, Lindsay Lanzillotta’s Purgatory (Gersh) is a coming-of-age comedy drama with a girl trying to hold her family together. And from Hong Kong, Yeung Leung Chuen’s We Are Born Good (Edko Films) has two characters forming a family bond after feuding over a dining mishap.
Gender and sexuality help drive the narratives of Joaquin Ruano’s Guatemala-Mexico romance Nosotros (FiGa Films), where a security guard forms a forbidden bond with a trans woman, and Justin Ducharme’s Canadian drama Seventeen, about the overlapping lives of three queer Indigenous people.
Smalltown life is the milieu for Ulrike Tony Vahl’s Poland-Germany Second World War drama Krux (Global Constellation) and Lars Vega’s Swedish sci-fi comedy drama Arne Goes To Space (TrustNordisk).
Others getting international premieres in Discover are Cannes Critics’ Week animation In Waves (Charades), Sundance’s Korean American drama Bedford Park (Cornerstone), Anna Foglietta’s Venice Horizons premiere A Common Story (True Colours) and Mexican transgender tale I Am Mario (Habanero Film Sales), a Guadalajara debut.
Centrepiece
Toronto’s sprawling Centrepiece section takes in 54 films from 50 countries, with 24 titles getting their world premieres. Among the global debuts are films from three English-speaking territories featuring big name talent. Lemonade, from Ireland and the UK, has Barry Keoghan in Kim Bartley’s drama about a teen and his social worker. Thriller The Surgeon (sold by 193), from Canada-born Roshan Sethi and shot in Ireland, stars Michelle Yeoh as the kidnapped title character. And Ron Murphy’s Canadian satire Back In Black (Embankment Films) features Christopher Walken playing a struggling mortician.
Asia, particularly South Asia, makes a diverse showing. Inherit (Barunson E&A), from Thailand’s Banjong Pisanthanakun, is a psychological thriller about a wealthy family infiltrated by an ancient spirit. Indonesia’s Kamila Andini returns to TIFF with Four Seasons In Java (Goodfellas) centred on a sexual assault survivor just out of prison. Kollywood action drama Dorothy (Sikhya Entertainment) from Karthik Subbaraj plays out against the backdrop of early 1990s rural India, while South Korean animation Long Long Night (Finecut) is the tale of an unlikely bond between a rhino and a penguin.
Also figuring in the section are four premieres from Latin America. Where The River Begins (H264), from Colombian Canadian filmmaker Juan Andres Arango, follows an Indigenous woman on a journey to find a better life for herself and her daughter. The Bovine With The Curved Horns, from Omar E Ospina Giraldo, mixes magical realism with Colombian history. Love Is The Monster (Bendita) is a dystopian thriller from Costa Rica’s Neto Villalobos Brenes, and After Elena (Meikincine Entertainment) from Chile’s Shawn Barry plies family dramedy as relatives gather after the death of a matriarch.
Africa makes its mark with elevated Nollywood romantic comedy The Secret Lives Of Baba Segi’s Wives by Daniel Oriahi, and Future Tense (Visit Films), a sci-fi drama from South Africa’s Jenna Cato Bass. The Israel-Palestine conflict is the backdrop for Avi Nesher’s Our Loves, in which lives intersect during the October 7 attack on Israel, and Hosam Abu Dan’s Thirteen In Gaza, a portrait of a father and daughter navigating life in a refugee camp.
The section’s only world premiere from the US is Kris Rey’s Trash Mountain, a comedy about a young gay man who returns to his hometown following the death of his hoarder father.
Indigenous characters from different corners of the world figure in satire God Bless You, Mr Kopu (Radiant), from Tongan Kiwi filmmaker Alex Lui; How We Stand (Myriad Pictures), Marie Clements’ drama about three Native American sisters; and Smudge The Blades (UTA), Cody Lightning’s Canadian ice hockey comedy.
Other Canadian films getting world premieres are The Betrayers, a political thriller from David Bezmozgis; Neverman, Rodrigo Barriuso’s drama about a transgender activist with Alzheimer’s disease; Rémi St-Michel’s crime story Toy Gun Bandit (H264); Alexandre Franchi’s comedic thriller L’Autre; and Serville Poblete’s heatwave comedy Sunburn.
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