Toronto Star

BOLD AND CURRENT

Some of the films, Canadian and otherwise, making a point at TIFF, including Two Lovers and a Bear,

- VICTORIA AHEARN THE CANADIAN PRESS

If there’s one thing to take away from the Canadian lineup at this year’s Toronto Internatio­nal Film Festival, it’s that homegrown moviemaker­s are pushing the creative boundaries, say programmer­s.

“Across the board, something we noticed right away is the ability of filmmakers to play with the form and for the esthetic choices of their films to truly speak of the subjects at hand,” says Magali Simard, film programs manager at TIFF, which runs Thursday to Sept. 18.

“It’s impressive to see filmmakers do really bold moves.”

Simard points to Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World, which won the prestigiou­s Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Vincent Cassel and Marion Cotillard star in the story of a dying author, which was shot on actual film (a rarity in cinema these days) and mostly in tight close-ups in Quebec.

“It’s about the emotions and we’re tight with them. We never leave these characters, ever,” she says. “You have to kind of take breaths between sequences sometimes because you’re so involved in it. It becomes immersive in its narrative in that sense.”

Meanwhile, fellow Quebec filmmaker Kim Nguyen (whose 2012 drama Rebelle was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film) gets metaphoric­al with Two Lovers and a Bear. Gordon Pinsent voices the titular polar bear as it haunts a troubled couple, played by Dane DeHaan and Tatiana Maslany.

“It’s kind of a magic realist piece. Very smart,” says Steve Gravestock, senior programmer at TIFF.

With Anatomy of Violence, veteran filmmaker Deepa Mehta took what TIFF calls “a fearless approach” to the story of a 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman on a bus in India.

Using just a tiny camera, she worked improvisat­ionally with actors in New Delhi to create fictional back stories of the victim and the six men who raped her.

“She’s a great director and has been Oscar-nominated, but I think this is really one of her most courageous films,” Gravestock says.

“It really looks at how the men were formed, their attitudes about where they came from, and it’s shot in this really raw way. It’s really one of the strongest films we saw this year.”

Bruce McDonald returns to the black-and-white format with the coming-of-age tale Weirdos, about a high school relationsh­ip in1976 Nova Scotia.

And for Window Horses, Ann Marie Fleming used animation to tell the story of a young Canadian poet who learns about her family history during a literary festival in Iran. Sandra Oh, Ellen Page and Don McKellar are among the voice actors.

“It’s quite stunning to look at and I think it’s our first animated feature in more than 10 years,” Gravestock says. “So it’s really good to have that type of film back and at a featurelen­gth level.”

Fleming’s film is among several Canuck titles dealing with fracturing families. Others include Johnny Ma’s Old Stone and Alanis Obomsawin’s doc We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice, about a landmark discrimina­tion complaint against Indian Affairs and Northern Developmen­t Canada concerning aboriginal children.

Obomsawin’s documentar­y speaks to another trend in the Canadian lineup: politicall­y inclined films. Titles include Fred Peabody’s All Government­s Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone and Nicholas de Pencier’s Black Code, about online privacy.

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 ?? TIFF ?? In Anatomy of Violence, filmmaker Deepa Mehta used improvisat­ion to create a fictional dramatizat­ion of a 2012 rape and murder case in India.
TIFF In Anatomy of Violence, filmmaker Deepa Mehta used improvisat­ion to create a fictional dramatizat­ion of a 2012 rape and murder case in India.

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