10 TO WATCH AT TIFF

By the time the Toronto International Film Festival opens on Thursday night, most critics will have seen a score or more of films, whether through pre-festival screenings or at other events. We are sometimes beholden to secrecy until the first public screening, but here are four I can recommend, and six I’m excited to see.

1.

Burning

The winner of the international critics’ prize at Cannes, Korean director Chang-dong Lee’s newest is a nail-biting thriller. A young man looks after a cat for an old acquaintance, and starts falling for her. But a new man in her life raises complications and then questions.

2.

The Wild Pear Tree

Another Palme d’Or contender, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest clocks in at three hours and eight minutes, with subtitles. If that doesn’t scare you, enjoy this story of a young man trying to make a go of being a writer.

3.

Free Solo

Directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi follow Alex Honnold as he attempts to become the first person to climb El Capitan, a 3,000-foot sheer granite cliff, with no safety gear.

4.

Endzeit

Translated as Ever After, this German zombie film imagines two scrappy female survivors caught outside the barricades that protect the last remnants of civilization. But what they find in the wilds isn’t just flesh-eating killers.

5.

First Man

How has astronaut Neil Armstrong not had the big-budget biopic treatment until now? Not sure, but reactions from the world première in Venice suggest this film, from director Damien Chazelle and his La La Land star Ryan Gosling, has been worth the wait.

6.

Meeting Gorbachev

As the final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev occupies a unique place in history. So too it could be argued does filmmaker Werner Herzog, the only man to have been shot with an air rifle during an interview. Watching the latter interview the former? Count me in.

7.

Peterloo

Writer-director Mike Leigh tells the story of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, in which British soldiers attacked a pro-democracy rally in Manchester, killing 15 and injuring hundreds.

8.

Widows

Director Steve McQueen’s newest is a heist thriller, based on an ’80s crime drama and starring Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson.

9.

ROMA

Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s latest is a very personal story about a year in the life of a middleclass family in 1970s Mexico City.

10.

High Life

French filmmaker Claire Denis’s English-language debut, starring Robert Pattinson as the caretaker on a ship hurtling toward a black hole, seems intriguing, to say the least.