How many film festivals can one town accommodate? I ask myself this question year after year, and I always end up regretting it. Here’s a quick run through six of the festivals that will be competing for your attention in the next couple of weeks. There will be more after that, but I didn’t want to freak anybody out.
Ekran Toronto Polish Film Festival
ekran.ca
When: November 5-11
Where: Multiple venues, including Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles West), Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema (506 Bloor West) and the Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles)
What’s playing: The festival opened earlier this week with screenings of Pawel Pawlikowski’s post-war romantic drama Cold War and Olga Chajdas’s erotically charged drama Nina, and continues through the weekend with a selection of new Polish commercial cinema, including Agnieszka Smoczynska’s amnesia thriller Fugue (November 8, 6:30 pm, Revue) and Filip Bajon’s historical epic The Butler (November 10, 9 pm, Revue).
Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival
reelasian.com/festival
When: November 8-16
Where: Multiple venues, including Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles West), TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King West), Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema (506 Bloor West), Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex) and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (6 Garamond)
What’s playing: The 22nd edition of the festival opens with Kidding Hsu and Mag Hsu’s Dear Ex (November 8, 7:30 pm, Isabel Bader Theatre), which explores the fallout when a man dies, and his ex-wife and adult son discover he left everything to his (male) lover other worthwhile selections include House Of The Rising Sons (November 10, 5 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 3), a big, bright about 70s Hong Kong pop stars The Wynners – directed and co-written by the band’s drummer, Anthony Chan – that arrives as a kind of counter-argument to that other big 70s band history Bohemian Rhapsody Origin Story (November 12, 5:15 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 4), in which podcaster and television producer Kulap Vilaysack travels to Laos in search of her birth father, and Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut Of The Dead (November 15, 7 pm, Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre), a movie about moviemaking and zombies that’s bloody good fun.
Bloody Mary Film Festival
bloodymaryfilmfest.com
When: November 8-9
Where: Carlton Cinema (20 Carlton)
What’s playing: Now in its third year, the festival – featured this week in our special screening spotlight – showcases genre cinema made by female-identifying Canadian filmmakers. This year’s program includes two feature films, Sharon Lewis’s Brown Girl Begins (November 8, 7 pm) and Audrey Cummings’s ambitious alternate-universe thriller Darken (November 9, 7 pm), and two collections of shorts (November 8 and 9, both at 9 pm).
European Union Film Festival
euff.ca
When: November 8-22
Where: The Royal (608 College)
What’s playing: The annual showcase of feature films from nations of the European Union offers two weeks of free cinema, with tickets for each screening given out on a first-come, first-served basis. If you want to make sure you’re not turned away, advance reservations are available online for a $10 donation. Offerings include the Bulgarian surveillance drama Omnipresent (which opens the festival November 8 at 8:30 pm) the Greek biopic Kazantzakis (November 9, 8:30 pm), starring Odysseas Papaspiliopoulos as the author of Zorba The Greek and The Last Temptation Of Christ and the Lithuanian documentary Master And Tatyana (November 14, 6 pm), about the relationship between Soviet-era photographer Vitus Luckus and his most frequent subject, Tatyana Luckiene. And don’t miss what might be the EUFF’s final British offering, Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not A Witch (November 21, 6 pm), about a little girl exiled from her village in Zambia to a community of other alleged practitioners of the dark arts.
Syria Film Festival
syff.ca
When: November 9-11
Where: AGO (317 Dundas West)
What’s playing: Now in its fourth year, the SYFF continues to grapple with that nation’s collapse and the flight of its citizenry almost all the features in this year’s program deal with people trying to resituate themselves elsewhere. Amar Chebib’s Wajd: Songs Of Separation (November 9, 6 pm) looks at Syrian Sufi musicians resettled in Turkey and Holland Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste Of Cement (November 11, 3 pm) follows Syrians constructing new housing in Beirut, rebuilding one nation while their own falls apart, and Orban Wallace’s Another News Story (November 11, 6 pm) examines the Syrian refugee crisis by embedding itself with the foreign journalists trying to cover it.
Regent Park Film Festival
When: November 14-17
Where: Daniels Spectrum (585 Dundas East)
What’s playing: In its 16th year, the neighbourhood film festival returns with another strong program harvested from the festival circuit, including the terrific animated Oscar nominee The Breadwinner – this year’s Saturday morning breakfast-and-a-movie selection (November 17, 9 am) – and the festival closer, Wanuri Kahiu’s Kenyan lesbian love story Rafiki (November 17, 8 pm). As always, all screenings are free of charge with free childcare provided on site. Check out Friday night’s politically charged double-bill, with Cory Bowles’s nervy debut feature Black Cop (November 16, 6 pm) – starring Ronnie Rowe, Jr. as the eponymous lawman, who starts treating white civilians the way white cops treat Black people – followed by Assia Boundaoui’s unnerving documentary The Feeling Of Being Watched (November 16, 8:30 pm), about an FBI operation to monitor Muslim activity in her Chicago neighbourhood. The directors will be present for talkbacks after their respective films Bowles will be joined by Rowe, whom you might recognize as a member of the bridge crew on Star Trek: Discovery.
