Movies that ref lect the world
World tensions are being tackled at this year’s TIFF, which kicks off Thursday.
Titles including Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 and American Dharma by Errol Morris look at politics, while the opioid crisis is explored in Peter Hedges’ Ben is Back and Felix van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy.
Meanwhile, unconventional heroines are on offer in titles including Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut A Star is Born, Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer, and Out of the Blue by Carol Morley.
“There are some comedies as well, but on the whole it’s a pretty disruptive moment, a pretty uncertain moment,” says Piers Handling, director and CEO of TIFF.
“It’s a festival that reflects the world that’s going on right now.”
Here are some top TIFF 2018 picks from Handling and Cameron Bailey, the festival’s artistic director and soon-to-be co-head.
PIERS HANDLING
The Korean mystery Burning by Lee Chang-dong, about a young man, his love interest and an interloper: “I felt it was maybe the best film that he has done as an artist. Love that film.”
Oscar-winning director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Polish romantic drama Cold War, featuring two musical performers in post-war Eastern Europe: “I thought that was him at the height of his powers as a filmmaker.”
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Japanese social critique/ family portrait Shoplifters, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes: “A superb piece of work.”
Good Girls by Alejandra Marquez Abella, about the impact of Mexico’s 1982 economic crisis on a wealthy couple: “I thought it was wonderfully achieved.”
Benjamin Naishtat’s Rojo, about the victims of the Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 1970s: “A film full of surprises narratively, it just kept me on the edge of my seat.”
CAMERON BAILEY
Alfonso Cuaron’s semiautobiographical Roma, about a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City: “I was surprised that the man who made Gravity, this big-budget fantasy spectacle set in outer space, would turn and go back to Mexico and made a very personal, intimate film.”
Steve McQueen’s starpacked heist thriller Widows: “I was equally surprised that Steve McQueen, who won the Academy Award for 12 Years a Slave, this really wrenching drama about one of the founding wounds in Western history, would turn around and make a heist movie for Fox called Widows.”
Bailey said he was also surprised master French filmmaker Claire Denis would helm a sci-fi movie called High Life with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche: “These filmmakers who we think we know and we know them for doing one thing, they’re pivoting and doing something new, testing their skills in another area, and that’s been a real pleasure.”