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TIFF adds films from Brie Larson, Louis C.K. and Aaron Sorkin to lineup

The 2017 Toronto International Film Festiva willl host the world premieres of Brie Larson’s directorial debut Unicorn Store, and Louis C.K.’s secret production I Love You, Daddy.

Both films will screen in the Special Presentations program, alongside the world premieres of The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin’s first feature Molly’s Game (a thriller starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba and Kevin Costner) and Dominic Cooke’s On Chesil Beach (an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel starring Saoirse Ronan and Emily Watson), and the North American bow of John Woo’s Manhunt, starring Zhang Hanyu as a prosecutor turned fugitive.

The updated 3D version of Michael Jackson’s iconic Thriller video will also have its North American premiere in the Special Presentations program, and screen alongside Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, a documentary that aired on MTV when the John Landis-directed video first premiered in 1983.

TIFF tucked those titles in among dozens of films revealed today in the Contemporary World Cinema, Masters, Wavelengths and Primetime programs. In all, 38 titles have joined the Gala and Special Presentations lineups.

Among the features making their world premiere in the Gala program are John Curran’s Chappaquiddick, starring Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy and Kate Mara as his doomed colleague Mary Jo Kopechne Bille August’s docudrama 55 Steps, starring Hilary Swank, Helena Bonham Carter and Jeffrey Tambor, about the fight to recognize the rights of psychiatric patients Hochelaga, Terre Des Âmes, a historical drama from François Girard, director of Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and The Red Violin and Jon Avnet’s Three Christs, starring Richard Gere as a doctor treating three patients who all claim to be the Son of God.

The Masters program will welcome Michael Haneke’s curiously titled Happy End, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Third Murder, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Hong Sang-soo’s The Day After, Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Agnes Varda’s Faces Places and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, among others.

The Primetime program will host the first two episodes of David Simon’s new series The Deuce (starring James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Zoe Kazan in a drama about the porn industry in 70s New York) and the first four episodes of the second season of The Girlfriend Experience (which introduces an entirely new cast led by Carmen Ejogo, Anna Friel and Louisa Krause), as well as two episodes each of Dark, a German series about four families torn apart by the disappearance of their children, and Under Pressure, a Brazilian series set in a public hospital.

TIFF also clarified that it will only screen the first two episodes of the previously announced Alias Grace, rather than the entire six-part miniseries.

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Courtesy of TIFF

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

Wavelengths returns with a wide-ranging lineup of features and shorts, including the North American premieres of Wang Bing’s Mrs. Fang, Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes, Bruno Dumont’s Jeannette, The Childhood Of Joan Of Arc and Caniba, the new project from avant-garde documentarians Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, which appears to be about the Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa.

And the wide-ranging Contemporary World Cinema program will host the world premieres of Breath, an adaptation of an Australian best-seller that marks the directorial debut of actor Simon Baker (The Mentalist) A Sort Of Family, from Argentine director Diego Lerman Euthanizer, a thriller from Finnish director Teemu Nikki Life And Nothing More, a drama about a Black family living in Florida from Spanish-born filmmaker Antonio Méndez Esparza, and Motorrad, a new thriller from Brazilian director Vicente Amorim.

The festival schedule will be released August 22. Still not announced, and apparently not coming, is Xavier Dolan’s first English-language feature The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan, which was expected to make its world premiere at TIFF. It hasn’t been announced as playing Venice, either, which is really quite strange.

The 2017 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7-17. For full details, visit www.tiff.net/tiff.

movies@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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