EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL GO-TO FOR FOREIGN MOVIES
Toronto will be abuzz with international screenings from France, Armenia and South Korea
European Union Film Festival: What with the abundance of free screenings at the European Union Film Festival at the Royal in the next two weeks, moviegoers are bound to find something that suits their tastes.
Nevertheless, it can be a challenge to determine where to start amid the many sensitively wrought dramas from the Balkans, intergenerational family stories from Scandinavia and crowd-pleasers that hit big with local audiences but remain woefully obscure in other lands. Here are three Canadian premieres in this week’s slate worth taking a chance on.
Irreplaceable (France): This rural-set drama pairs the promising young director Thomas Lilti with one of France’s biggest stars, François Cluzet — the Intouchables actor plays a country doctor coping with his own ailing health. It plays Saturday.
The First, The Last (Belgium): Belgian actor and director Bouli Lanners stars opposite Albert Dupontel in an offbeat crime story as shaggy, sad sack bounty hunters who get in a heap of trouble while searching for a rich guy’s stolen cellphone — the winner of two big prizes at the Berlin festival last year, it plays Sunday.
Remainder (UK): This year’s most intriguing offering at the EUFF — at least for viewers who’ve read the film’s brilliant source novel by Tom McCarthy — is this enigmatic British
effort about a strange young man with memory problems who obsessively recreates a fragment of his past. Video artist Omer Fast’s debut feature plays Thursday.
The EUFF continues to Nov. 24. Pomegranate and Hungarian film
fests: The roster of international film events continues with two more this week.
Established in 2006 as a showcase of Armenian film and culture, the Pomegranate Film Festival opens Wednesday at the SilverCity Fairview Mall with Earthquake, a drama about the country’s devastating quake in 1988, and Remember, followed by a Q&A with director Atom Egoyan.
On Nov. 19, the Hamazkayin Theatre hosts the fest’s gala night presentation of the road comedy 3 Weeks in
Yerevan, followed by a performance by two of its stars: Vahe Berberian and Vahik Pirhamzei. The program continues to Nov. 20.
Meanwhile at TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Freedom First — Hungary 1956 Film Festival celebrates 60 years of freedom in Hungary with special events like a Nov. 18 screening of Sunshine with a Q&A by producer Robert Lantos, who’ll be presented with one
of Hungary’s highest state honours. The festival runs Nov. 17 to 20. More at Reel Asian + Rendezvous
with Madness: Whether your primary cinematic obsession is Japanese sushi chefs or Korean zombies (and really, who can choose?), Reel Asian is eager to cater to your tastes with many more screenings in Toronto and Richmond Hill this week.
Highlights include the Toronto premiere of Tsukiji Wonderland, a doc about Tokyo’s legendary fish and seafood market and customers like Jiro Ono, the chef made famous by
Jiro Dreams of Sushi — it screens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Fans of the superb Korean thriller Train to
Busan can also catch Seoul Station, an animated prequel about the beginnings of a particularly pesky zombie outbreak — like its hit live-action companion piece, it comes from the fevered imagination of animator and filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho and it plays AGO’s Jackman Hall on Saturday.
This is also the last weekend for Rendezvous With Madness, which wraps up its program of mentalhealth-and-addiction-themed films with Canadian premieres for a pair of audacious new German films — Wild and 4 Kings — at Jackman Hall on Friday and a closing-night presentation of the enjoyably quirky pinball doc Wizard Mode at Workman Theatre on Saturday. An Eye for an Eye: The subject of a new doc by Ilan Ziv that opens in Toronto this weekend, Mark Stroman was a young Texan whose obsession with avenging the 9/11 attacks led to a shooting spree that left two South Asian immigrants dead and another partially blinded. Stroman — who also had plans for a larger massacre in a Dallas mosque — was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002.
In the course of researching the killer’s case and interviewing him many times on death row, the director discovered the equally extraordinary story of his one surviving victim’s path to forgiveness. Viewers can discover more when An Eye for An
Eye opens Friday, at Cineplex Cinemas Canada Square.