Small screen goes big at TIFF
The TV lineup for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival has big-screen cachet, with Amazon Studios’ upcoming series Homecoming starring Julia Roberts. Based on the podcast of the same name, Homecoming stars Roberts as a caseworker at a facility helping soldiers transition back to civilian life. Festival organizers say four episodes of the psychological thriller will be in the Primetime program, which features projects that are bound for the small screen.
The Primetime lineup has five titles in total, including Facebook Watch’s dark comedy Sorry For Your Loss, starring Elizabeth Olsen, and the French sci-fi series Ad Vitam. Other series with international appeal in the lineup are Folklore: A Mother’s Love & Pob, a multi-lingual horror anthology helmed by six Asian directors that tackles superstitions and mythologies from each director’s respective country. There’s also Stockholm, about four friends covering up the death of their Nobel Prize-nominated friend.
“Cinematic television has provided a new lane for the consumer’s experience of cinematic art,” Michael Lerman, Primetime programmer at TIFF, said in a statement. “These series not only push the boundaries of what can be presented, but also demonstrate how it can transcend culture, visual arts, and communications.”
Cinematic TV has grown in recent years as more bigscreen stars and filmmakers tackle small-screen projects, including Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallee with his acclaimed HBO series Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. Vallee made each series like a film, shooting the entire project before cutting, rather than going episode by episode as is often the case.“I don’t see any difference except that (TV) is longer and we have more time to explore and develop these characters,” Vallee said in a recent interview.
The festival, which runs Sept. 6 to 16, has also announced actress Tantoo Cardinal as well as filmmakers Taika Waititi and Werner Herzog will be among the speakers at the TIFF Industry Conference.
Cardinal will discuss her four-decade career, which includes three films at this year’s festival.
The talk heralds the new Betty-Ann Heggie Speaker Series, a Share Her Journey initiative dedicated to bringing to light the challenges women face in the screen industry. Waititi, who recently directed Thor: Ragnarok, will chat about subjects including cinematic inspiration, superheroes and portraying marginalized characters in films. Herzog will speak at the TIFF Doc Conference about his new film, Meeting Gorbachev.