Red carpet rollout
Demolition with Jake Gyllenhaal to open this year’s festival
The 15 galas and 34 special presentations represent only a fraction of the more than 300 films
The Toronto International Film Festival fired the first salvo on Tuesday in what will be a volley of announcements over the coming weeks regarding the lineup of the 40th annual event. Although the 15 galas and 34 special presentations represent only a fraction of the more than 300 films that will unspool from Sept. 10 to 20, they feature a who’s who of directing and acting talent.
For the first time since 2010, the opening-night film will be by a Canadian director, Jean-Marc Vallée. Although the film — Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts — is an American production. Vallée has been to TIFF many times, and his film The Young Victoria closed the festival in 2009. Demolition is one of 25 world premières among the films announced so far.
Other big names in the lineup include Johnny Depp, almost unrecognizable as organized crime figure James “Whitey” Bulger in Scott Cooper’s Black Mass. Julianne Moore and Ellen Page star in Peter Sollett’s Freeheld, the true story of a New Jersey detective who is dying of cancer and wants to leave her pension to her same-sex partner. Matt Damon plays a marooned astronaut in The Martian by Ridley Scott. Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams headline Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, about a Boston Globe investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church. And Tom Hardy plays both Reggie and Ron Kray, twin brothers who ran organized crime in London in the 1960s.
The festival this year already features a bookshelf worth of adaptations of novels, and a plethora of based-on-a-true-story films. Among the adaptations: Room, based on Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel, and starring Brie Larson; The Dressmaker, from Rosalie Ham’s book, and starring Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth; and Brooklyn, based on Colm Tóibín’s novel, starring Saoirse Ronan and Domhnall Gleeson.
True stories include those of cyclist Lance Armstrong (Ben Foster) in Stephen Frears’ The Program; mathematics genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel) in Matthew Brown’s The Man Who Knew Infin- ity; and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), caught up in the McCarthy witch hunts in Jay Roach’s Trumbo. There’s also a new Michael Moore movie, Where to Invade Next, in which the muckraking director decides to personally take over the more bellicose aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
Canadian filmmakers will be announced in full at a future press conference, but already there are a number of local talents represented. Deepa Mehta’s Beeba Boys will grab a gala slot at the festival, as will Forsaken by Maltese-Canadian director Jon Cassar; Hyena Road by Paul Gross; and Remember (featuring Christopher Plummer) by Atom Egoyan. In addition, Denis Villeneuve will bring his U.S.-shot feature Sicario to the festival; it had a world première in Cannes last May.
Toronto International Film Festival CEO and director Piers Handling recalled driving down from Ottawa 40 years ago for what was then the Festival of Festivals. In 1976, the future TIFF featured some 80 films, half a dozen parties and an “everything” pass that cost $50. The prices have gone up – ticket information and a full listing of films can be found at tiff.net – but on the plus side there are now many more parties and events, including a free screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with a live performance of the score by members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, on the final day of the fest.