Weeks after the 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival has ended, films are still being scooped up for distribution, the latest two being the Liv Ullmann period drama Miss Julie, acquired by Wrekin Hill, and Ruba (Cairo Time) Nadda’s October Gale, which went to IFC Films.
Based on the play by August Strindberg, Miss Julie stars Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton. Wrekin Hill hopes to get the film out by the end of the year, presumably for an awards push for Chastain, who already has Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar coming out November 5 and JC Chandor’s A Most Violent Year one week later, both in possible contention.
Set during the summer of 1890 in Ireland, the Oscar-nominated Scandinavian actress and filmmaker Ullmann’s first film as a director in 14 years, stars Chastain as a woman related to the aristocracy who persuades her father’s valet (Farrell), who is already engaged to marry the cook (Morton), to seduce her. Ullmann is best known for her extensive work with the late Swedish director Ingmar Berman in films like Scenes from a Marriage and Face to Face.
Meanwhile, IFC Films has once again teamed with Quebec’s Ruba Nadda for their third consecutive release, as well as her second film with actress Patricia Clarkson, who starred in her earlier film Cairo Time. In this one, Clarkson plays a doctor who takes in a mysterious man, played by Scott Speedman, who washes up on the shore of her cottage with a gunshot wound. The man’s would-be killer (Tim Roth) then shows up hoping to finish the job.
Both films had high profile premieres at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
(Photo Credit: Sean Thorton & Dominic Chan/WENN.com)
