A TIFF LIKE NO OTHER
Online screenings, drive-in and walk-in movies: Annual festival goes the social distance
In a normal year, the Toronto International Film Festival would be welcoming hundreds of celebrities and thousands of visiting journalists, not to mention shutting down a busy street in the city’s financial district to accommodate the pedestrian crowds, with all the local griping that entails.
This is not a normal year. And yet TIFF is going ahead after a fashion — slimmed down, partly virtual, and minus the traffic mayhem, celebrity rubbernecking and broken cinema escalators that usually accompany its 11-day run. It’s one day shorter this year (Sept. 10 to 19) but it’s also geographically wider, with tickets allowing you to stream films from anywhere in Canada. Following is what you can expect, with more information at tiff.net.
FILMS
Last year, TIFF played host to 245 feature films, 50 fewer than its high-water mark in 2016. This year, there are fewer than 60 titles, but they include some heavy hitters, among them Spike Lee (opening the fest with a concert documentary of David Byrne’s American Utopia), Thomas Vinterberg, Werner Herzog, François Ozon and Frederick Wiseman. There are also a number of actors-turned-directors, including Viggo Mortensen, David Oyelowo, Halle Berry and Regina King.
Oddly, there will be no Netflix titles, after the streaming service decided to sit out the festival circuit this year. Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things instead came to Netflix on Sept. 4, while Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring the recently deceased Chadwick Boseman, will debut on the service either this year or early in 2021, as will Ron Howard’s newest, Hillbilly Elegy.
STARGAZING
There’s zero chance of seeing a celebrity on the sidewalks or in a restaurant unless they already live in Toronto, and the requirements of social distancing mean asking for an autograph or selfie isn’t just crass, it’s borderline threatening. But TIFF will feature its usual share of Q&AS and interviews, albeit virtually. The festival’s “In Conversation With ...” lineup includes talks with activist and filmmaker Ava Duvernay, actress Saoirse Ronan and a pairing of Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Barry Levinson.
10 GOOD BETS AMMONITE
Fossil hunter and early paleontologist Mary Anning has been the subject of several popular books, including Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures and Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. Writer-director Francis Lee delivers this cinematic version, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan.
BEANS
Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer sets her debut feature amid the events of the 1990 standoff between Indigenous communities and government forces in Quebec, as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl named Beans.
DRUK
Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg reunites with actor Mads Mikkelsen (they made the Oscar-nominated 2012 film The Hunt) in a story about a middle-aged man embarking on a dangerous experiment in constant drunkenness. Though the English title of the film is Another Round, a more precise translation from the Danish “Druk” would be Binge Drinking.
FALLING
Taking a page from the Clint Eastwood playbook, Viggo Mortensen wrote, directed, scored and stars in this drama, playing a gay man caring for his ailing and homophobic father (Lance Henriksen, though wouldn’t it have been great if he’d cast Clint?). There’s even a small role in the film for Mortensen’s friend and collaborator David Cronenberg.
FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARKER WORLDS
Werner Herzog reunites with co-director and volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer (Into the Inferno) for this globe-trotting exploration of meteorites and their place in science, history and mythology, taking in cave archeology and NASA’S planetary defence plans along the way. Oh, and Herzog narrates, which alone is worth the price of admission.
INCONVENIENT INDIAN/TRICKSTER
Indigenous filmmaker Michelle Latimer has two films at the festival this year, so they’re sharing space on our list. Her documentary is based on Thomas King ’s 2012 book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, connecting the dots between historical colonization and the present day. She also adapts the novel Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson into a TV series that tells the story of an Indigenous teen whose life may have been taken over by a figure from his culture’s mythology.
THE NEW CORPORATION: THE UNFORTUNATELY NECESSARY SEQUEL
In 2003, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott directed The Corporation, exploring the insidious power and reach of companies in modern society. Seventeen years later, their followup carries the subtitle The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, which should tell you what kind of slant to expect. The filmmakers look at companies that have rebranded themselves as socially conscious, and ask if that’s actually the case.
NOMADLAND
Part documentary, part drama, Chloé Zhao’s 2017 The Rider was a festival darling, picking up prizes around the world, including at Cannes. Her newest, starring Frances Mcdormand, is a drama based on Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century. Mcdormand plays a woman travelling the country working at odd jobs. “I’m not homeless,” she says. “I’m just houseless. Not the same thing.”
ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
Actress Regina King takes the director’s chair for this adaptation of Kemp Powers’ 2013 play that imagines a 1964 meeting of activist Malcolm X, pop star Sam Cooke, football player Jim Brown and boxer Cassius Clay (who would soon take the name Muhammad Ali) on the occasion of Clay’s win over Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship. Expect dialogue and ideas as relevant today as they would have been during the civil rights movement of ’64.
SHADOW IN THE CLOUD
Just one of three Midnight Madness titles this year, Shadow in the Cloud is from New Zealand writer-director Roseanne Liang and stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a Second World War pilot assigned to look after a piece of classified equipment on a rickety B-17 bomber. But she makes a discovery that seems to suggest this film shares DNA with the old Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.