Toronto Film Festival Preview – Part 1
For the 40th year in a row, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will be kicking off on Thursday, September 10, for eleven days of the finest films that the world can offer as it takes over downtown Toronto for its milestone anniversary.
The festival will start on Thursday with Jean-Marc Vallee’s follow-up to last year’s Wild, the thriller Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and there will be many other returning Canadian filmmakers showing their latest movies, including Denis Villeneuve with Sicario and Atom Egoyan with Remember (both which premiered at Cannes earlier this year), as well as Deepa Mehta with Beeba Boys.
I’m super-excited to be attending for the eighth straight year and I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out my scheduling so I can catch as many of these movies as possible–I’ll be lucky if I can fit 30 to 35 in my ten days–but I’ll also be talking to a lot of filmmakers and actors who will also be there for their movies, and that stuff will be rolling out over the next couple months.
There are so many movies this year that I had to once again split my Toronto Film Festival preview into two parts so that we can talk about a mere fraction of the movies being offered. Basically, I picked roughly 50 films that probably will get the most attention. But don’t worry, there’s still hundreds of other movies that will probably trickle out over the next couple of years and if I’m hearing any buzz while up there, I’ll make sure to catch those movies first.
Anyway, enjoy Part 1 of the Toronto Film Festival preview in pictures and look for Part 2 in a couple of days and then regular diary updates and reviews after that.
On a desktop, click Full Screen to reach each entry.
TIFF40 Preview in Pictures 1
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45 Years
Director: Andrew Haigh
One of the low-key films that premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year is the latest from the Weekend director, starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as an elderly couple whose marriage is shaken up when the body of his ex-girlfriend, missing for 50 years, is found. The performances of both actors in the film have already been receiving raves.
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About Ray
Director: Gaby Dellal
The director of On a Clear Day and Angel's Crest returns with a timely drama about a New York teen (Elle Fanning) suffering from gender dysphoria and wanting to get gender realignment but needing to get the signatures of his parents to go through it. Her divorced mother (Naomi Watts) is unsure and her father (Tate Donovan) wants nothing to do with it while her lesbian grandmother (Susan Sarandon) is stuck in the middle.
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Anomalisa
Director: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson
Kaufman returns to the directing chair following 2008's Synecdoche, New York, with a stop-motion animated adaptation of his play that has David Thewlis playing a motivational speaker who meets Jennifer Jason Leigh in Cincinnati as the two begin an awkward romance.
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Baskin
Director: Can Evrenol
One of the many great movies in the "Midnight Madness" section, this one being a Turkish thriller about a group of police who go through a trapdoor into Hell. Sounds awesome!
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Beasts of No Nations
Director: Cary Fukunaga
The Emmy-winning "True Detective" director returns to feature films with this film about an African boy who becomes a child soldier to a brutal military leader, played by Idris Elba. Based on the novel by Uzodinma Iweala.
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Beeba Boys
Director: Deepa Mehta
Another TIFF regular, Mehta's latest is a crime thriller about a Sikh mobster who gets involved in a turf war with his arms and drug rackets.
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Being Charlie
Director: Rob Reiner
Jurassic World's Nick Robinson stars in this new dramedy from filmmaking vet Rob Reiner in which he plays a troubled teen named Charlie who escapes from rehab, potentially damaging his father's political campaign.
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Black Mass
Director: Scott Cooper
Already getting rave reviews out of Venice and Telluride, this true crime thriller tells the story of Boston's notorious criminal "Whitey" Bulger, played by Johnny Depp, who was the basis for Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed.
Like so many movies at TIFF, this will open theatrically shortly after its premiere on September 18, hoping to take advantage of festival buzz.
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Born to be Blue
Director: Robert Bureau
Ethan Hawke returns to TIFF playing legendary trumpet player Chet Baker who fought against drug addiction during the height of his fame. (One of two movies about jazz trumpeters this festival season, the other being Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead which will premiere at the NY Film Festival.)
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The Clan
Director: Pablo Trapero
This Argentine true crime thriller is about the Puccios, a middle class family who kidnap wealthy people for ransom.
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The Danish Girl
Director: Tom Hooper
Possibly one of the most anticipated movies of this year's TIFF is Eddie Redmayne's first major role since winning the Oscar for last year's Theory of Everything, which also premiered at TIFF. He plays Lili Elbe, the Danish artist who in the 1920s became the very first recipient of sexual reassignment surgery, making the film very timely and relevant. 2015 It Girl Alicia Vikander is already getting Oscar chatter for her performance.
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The Daughter
Director: Simon Stone
This Australian adaptation of Ibsen's drama "The Wild Duck" stars Paul Schneider as a man who returns home to New South Wales to attend the wedding of his father (Geoffrey Rush) and gets reacquainted with his friend Oliver (Ewen Leslie) and his family.
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Demolition
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
TIFF regular Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this year's TIFF opening night selection months before it will be released by Fox Searchlight.
He plays Davis Mitchell, an investment banker who loses his wife in a car accident, sending him on a streak of causing random destruction, forming an alliance with an employee at a vending machine company, played by Naomi Watts, another TIFF vet.
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Demon
Director: Marcin Wrona
This horror film from the Polish filmmaker explores the Jewish myth of the dybbuk through Itay Tyran's Peter, who has arrived in England to marry his Polish bride only to start acting erratically during the wedding ceremony.
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Desierto
Director: Jonas Cuaron
Alfonso Cuaron's son Jonas, who co-wrote Gravity, makes his second feature, starring Gael Garcia Bernal who is trying to lead a group into the United States from Mexico only to be hindered by Jeffrey Dean Morgan's border patrol guard.
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The Dressmaker
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Kate Winslet stars in another Australian period drama, this one based on the novel by Rosalie Ham. Also about someone returning home to Australia, this one co-stars Liam Hemsworth and Judy Davis.
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Equals
Director: Drake Doremus
Kristen Stewart and Mad Max: Fury Road's Nicholas Hoult star in this futuristic tale from the director of Like Crazy, which takes place in a world where human emotion has been eradicated. They play coworkers who begin hearing of a virus that causes emotion to manifest in those infected by it.
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Eye in the Sky
Director: Gavin Hood
A year after the premiere of Andrew Niccol's Good Kill, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Tsotsi does his own thriller about terrorist-targeting drones, this one starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman and Barkhad Abdi from Captain Phillips.
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The Family Fang
Director: Jason Bateman
Two years after premiering his directorial debut Bad Words at TIFF, Bateman returns with a drama with Nicole Kidman playing his sister, the two of them being forced to move back in with their eccentric parents, played by Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett, after an accident.
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Francofonia
Director: Alexander Sokurov
The acclaimed Russian filmmaker behind the single shot exploration of Russia's Hermitage Museum takes a similar approach to this look at Paris' Louvre Museum and the evolution of the arts in France.
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Freeheld
Director: Peter Sollet
The timely true story of Laurel Hester, a New Jersey detective played by Julianne Moore, who was dying of cancer and has to fight to get her pension transferred to her domestic partner, played by Ellen Page (one of two movies she has at TIFF). It also co-stars Michael Shannon and Steve Carell.
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Green Room
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
The acclaimed director of Blue Ruin brings his latest to TIFF as the Opening Night of "Midnight Madness," following the punk band The Ain't Rights as they're terrorized by neo-Nazis in the backwoods of Oregon. Anton Yelchin and Alia Shakat are two of the band members who get into an altercation with Patrick Stewart as a club owner who leads a group of white supremacists.
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High Rise
Director: Ben Wheatley
The British genre director behind films like Kill List and A Field in England (both which played at TIFF) adapts J.G. Ballard's novel about a class war between two men in a London apartment tower, the two men played by Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons, both of whom have other movies at TIFF.
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Hyena Road
Director: Paul Gross
War movies are nothing new at TIFF, but this is a Canadian war movie about Canadian troops in Afghanistan fending off Taliban attacks.
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Into the Forest
Director:
Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood play sisters who become stranded in their isolated house in the woods when there's a massive power outage, leaving them struggling to survive in their desolate location.
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I Saw the Light
Director: Marc Abraham
Tom Hiddleston plays country legend Hank Williams in this biopic that looks at the relationship between Williams and his wife Audrey Mae Sheppard, played by Elisabeth Olsen.
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Kill Your Friends
Director: Owen Harris
Nicholas Hoult appears in his second movie at TIFF, this one being a British comedy set in the music industry that's part of this year's "City to City" section focusing on films from London.
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The Lady in the Van
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Oscar-winning actress Dame Maggie Smith stars in this adaptation of Alan Bennet's mostly true memoir and hit play as a woman who has been living in a van for 15 years, piquing the interest of the playwright who allows her to park in his driveway.
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Legend
Director: Brian Helgeland
Tom Hardy plays both of the British criminals Reggie and Ronnie Kray as it follows their rise through the ranks of the London underworld, as narrated by Reggie's wife Frances (Emily Browning).
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London Road
Director: Rufus Norris
Part of the "City to City" program, this one also stars Tom Hardy along with Olivia Colman (Hot Fuzz) in the adaptation of the stage musical about the 2005 "Suffolk Strangler" murders in Ipswich. Sounds fun.
