The Toronto Film Festival offers a high-powered lineup.
The lineup for TIFF
The Toronto International Film Festival has become the unofficial starting point for awards season. This year’s festival, beginning Sept. 7, boasts another high-powered slate of studio films, indies and foreign fare.
The closing night film will be “C’est la vie!” by the directors of the award-winning “Intouchables.” The closing special presentation will be “Sheikh Jackson,” an Egyptian offering about an Islamic cleric who has a crisis of identity upon learning his teenage idol, Michael Jackson, has died.
Indie darling Greta Gerwig’s directing debut, “Lady Bird,” stars Saoirse Ronan as a Sacramento teen hoping to make it to New York City. Gerwig also penned the comedy’s script.
Haifaa al-Mansour, thought to be Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker, enjoyed acclaim and official selection by her country’s Oscar submission board for her first feature, “Wadjda,” in 2012. She is back with “Mary Shelley” (previously known as “A Storm in the Stars”), concerning the relationship between the author of “Frankenstein” and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The cast is led by Elle Fanning and Douglas Booth, and gets support from Bel Powley (“Diary of a Teenage Girl”), Maisie Williams (“Game of Thrones”), Stephen Dillane (“Game of Thrones,” “John Adams”) and Joanne Froggatt (“Downton Abbey”).
Andy Serkis’ directorial debut, “Breathe,” which he made during time off from his upcoming motion-capture “Jungle Book,” stars Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy (“The Crown”) in a polio-themed romance.
“Breathe” was also the title of Mélanie Laurent’s last directorial effort — her new one, “Plonger,” will also screen at TIFF.
“The Current War” is about the conflict between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), with a bit of Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult). The director is Alfonso GomezRejon, who directed 2015’s “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.”
Among the many other prominent TIFF titles: two Matt Damon movies (“Downsizing,” a sci-fi comedy by Alexander Payne, and “Suburbicon,” a crime comedy directed by George Clooney); Margot Robbie as the titular disgraced figure skater in “I, Tonya”; Darren Aronofsky’s thriller, “Mother!” (with Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem); the buzz-gaining “Call Me By Your Name”; and the latest from Martin McDonagh: “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” which stars Abbie Cornish, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes and Peter Dinklage and Oscar-winner Frances McDormand.
Trivia question
McDonagh has won three Oliviers and been nominated for four Tonys. Has he ever won an Oscar?
In from the wilderness?
Word is, following the general scratching of heads in response to “Song to Song,” Terrence Malick has pledged to return to a more clearly narrative form of filmmaking.
Since the plaudits showered on 2011’s “The Tree of Life,” Malick’s “To the Wonder,” “Knight of Cups” and “Song” have hovered around the notfresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 44-46 percent.
The director’s almost completely improvisational style often has even his actors wondering what’s going on. As Christian Bale said in a Collider interview, “Anyone who gets involved with a Terry film, they know that, ‘I’m either not in the film, or I might be the lead in the film.’ ”
Malick’s “Radegund,” concerning a real-life Austrian conscientious objector during World War II, focuses on storytelling — according to the filmmaker.
As reported at Little White Lies, Malick admitted his often script-free style could sometimes lead to him “losing track over the course of the day” amid the improvisation and wandering shooting. He said with “Radegund,” he has “repented and gone back to working with a much tighter script.”
The film is supposed to be released this year.
To see a Collider interview with Christian Bale discussing working with Malick: https:// tinyurl.com/y8qmjljc.
Trivia answer
Yes, for his short “Six Shooter.” He was also nominated for the screenplay of “In Bruges.”