Breaking with decades of tradition, the Toronto International Film Festival rolled out all of today’s Canadian film announcements several hours before its afternoon press conference, which means you may well be reading this before the assembled media “officially” hears it from the programmers’ lips down at the Fairmont Royal York.
(John Tory’s supposed to be there, which signifies a nice change in attitude towards TIFF from our previous mayor, who liked having his picture taken on the red carpet that one time but didn’t seem to have the attention span to actually sit through a feature film.)
Star power is a factor in the Canadian titles screening as Special Presentations: Ellen Page, who’s also at TIFF in the already-announced drama Freeheld, co-stars with Evan Rachel Wood in Patricia Rozema’s Into The Forest, about two sisters who venture into the threatening woodland beyond their home after an unspecified apocalypse. Ethan Hawke plays the jazz legend Chet Baker in Robert Budreau’s Born To Be Blue, which co-stars Carmen Ejogo and Katie Boland, and Monica Bellucci and Pascale Bussières topline Guy Édoin’s multicharacter drama Ville-Marie.
Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker in Born To Be Blue.
Packing his own star power is cult filmmaker Guy Maddin, whose current festival darling The Forbidden Room makes its Canadian premiere in the Wavelengths series alongside a new project, Bring Me The Head Of Tim Horton, which purports to chronicle the making of Paul Gross’s new drama Hyena Road. Maddin’s presence will also be felt in The Forbidden Room – A Living Poster, which will be presented as a Wavelengths installation at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Maddin isn’t the only Canadian filmmaker returning to TIFF with new work. In the Contemporary World Cinema program, Kazik Radwanski, director of Tower, offers the mid-life character study How Heavy This Hammer Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar, The Good Lie) has the political satire My Internship In Canada Anne Émond (Nuit #1) brings the psychological thriller Our Loved Ones and Igor Drljaca (Krivina) drops the meta-drama The Waiting Room.
Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room.
In TIFF Docs, Mina Shum (Double Happiness, Long Life, Happiness And Prosperity) tackles the Sir George Williams riot in Ninth Floor in the Vanguard program, cinematographer-turned-director André Turpin tracks the lives of three women in Endorphine Bruce McDonald returns to the horror playground with the supernatural shocker Hellions and Nicolás Pereda (Greatest Hits) debuts Minotaur, a fantasy set within a Mexico City apartment.
The number of journalists turned documentarians at TIFF has spiked as well, with former film critics Brian D. Johnson and Katherine Monk bringing the feature-length doc Al Purdy Was Here and the short entry Rock The Box to the festival, respectively, and Toronto Star national-security reporter Michelle Shephard co-directing Guantanamo’s Child, a documentary about Omar Khadr, with Patrick Reed.
As is its mandate, the Discovery program delivers a host of new talent to TIFF. Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster unpacks a teenager’s traumatized state of mind Adam Garnet Jones’s Fire Song focuses on an aboriginal youth in Northern Ontario as he copes with his sister’s suicide. Kire Paputts’s The Rainbow Kid follows a young man with Down syndrome who sets off on a life-changing road trip. Jaimie M. Dagg’s River casts Rossif Sutherland as an American doctor who winds up a fugitive in Laos, and Andrew Cividino’s teen drama Sleeping Giant arrives in a whirl of praise from its Cannes Film Festival premiere.
And TIFF Docs will also premiere Avi Lewis’s This Changes Everything, a global study of local activism inspired by his partner Naomi Klein’s book on the subject.
Among the 44 Canadian short films announced today: new works from Don McKellar (It’s Not You), Howie Shia (BAM), Mark Slutsky (Never Happened), Denis Côté (May We Sleep Soundly), Ryan J. Noth (Beyond The Horizon), Barry Avrich (The Man Who Shot Hollywood, about still photographer Jack Pashkovsky) and actor Connor Jessup (Boy).
TIFF also unveiled its 2015 Rising Stars. They are the actors Deragh Campbell (I Used To Be Darker, Striking Heaven), Stephan James (Degrassi: The Next Generation, The Book Of Negroes), Aliocha Schneider, who appears in Closet Monster and Ville-Marie, and Karelle Tremblay, who appears in Our Loved Ones.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10 to 20, 2015. For more information visit www.tiff.net/festival.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
