Canuck visions both frightening and comic of a radically changed world are among the highlights of Canadian films coming to next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Many of the 72 dramatic and documentary features, shorts and installations unveiled Wednesday by TIFF for its Sept. 10 to 20 event, are world, international or North American premieres.
Into the Forest, a dystopian drama by Toronto’s Patricia Rozema, stars Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood as orphaned sisters stranded in their wilderness home by global calamity. Their survival struggles mean venturing into a surrounding forest containing wild beasts, both animal and human.
Real-world dangers loom large in This Changes Everything, a documentary by Toronto’s Avi Lewis that tells seven stories from around the globe of community efforts to halt global warming. It’s inspired by his wife Naomi Klein’s international bestseller of the same name.
A humorous take on future shock is seen in No Men Beyond This Point, a “deadpan mockumentary” by Vancouver’s Mark Sawers. It envisions a world where, for more than 60 years, women have been able to reproduce without need of men … and almost all of their offspring are female. But some males survive and the youngest of them, a 37-year-old housekeeper named Andrew (Patrick Gilmore), finds himself drawn into a battle to save men from extinction.
Phillipe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) joins a strong Quebec contingent at TIFF with My Internship in Canada, which reckons Canada as a warmonger nation, albeit reluctantly, in this political satire. Starbuck’s Patrick Huard plays an independent MP from Northern Quebec who lands in the bizarre circumstance of holding the decisive vote in Parliament that could send the nation to war in the Middle East. He embarks on a fact-finding “Democracy Tour” with his visiting Haitian intern (Irdens Exantus), discovering that passions run very high. The film co-stars Suzanne Clément, who played Huard’s feisty girlfriend in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy.
Toronto’s Guy Maddin always sees the world via a funhouse mirror and his latest vision, The Forbidden Room, comes to TIFF via Sundance. It’s a deranged and rainbow-drenched tribute to classic cinema, co-directed by Evan Johnson, which includes lost woodsmen, doomed submariners, skeleton women, talking vampire bananas and a giant throbbing brain amongst its manic visions.
Maddin will be a big presence at TIFF 2015. He’s also bringing the documentary Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, filmed with Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, which provides behind-the-scenes glimpses of the filming of Hyena Road, an Afghanistan War drama directed by Paul Gross that was previously announced as a TIFF gala world premiere.
Maddin protégé Galen Johnson rounds out the ex-Winnipegger’s TIFF contributions with The Forbidden Room — A Living Poster, which fiddles with the form of the film in a production showing as part of the fest’s avant-garde Wavelengths program.
Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan War is also the topic of Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr, a documentary world-premiering at TIFF from Patrick Reed and the Star’s award-winning Michelle Shephard. It’s the story of controversial captive Khadr, recently released from a decade of U.S. jail inside Cuba’s Guantanamo prison, told in his own words.
Brian Johnson’s doc Al Purdy Was Here comes from a “lost Canada” when the country’s artists enjoyed wider support, the ex-Maclean’s movie critic turned docmaker says. The aim of the film is to introduce or reacquaint Canadians to a humble but significant national poet, a “brawling beer hall bard” who died in 2000, and also to recall a Canada when the arts had greater cultural currency.
“People who’ve been there want to see it come back and people who never experienced it want to get a piece of that,” Johnson says.
Other films headed to TIFF from other fests include the Cannes sensation Sleeping Giant, by Toronto’s Andrew Cividino, a coming-of-age story starring teen actors Reece Moffett, Nick Serino and Jackson Martin during an eventful summer on the wild shores of Lake Superior.
And Toronto’s Bruce McDonald brings his horror film Hellions to TIFF, following its premiere last January at Sundance. It stars Chloe Rose (Degrassi) as a teenager who must survive a Halloween night from hell.
Toronto Mayor John Tory (open John Tory’s policard) was at TIFF’s Canadian press conference at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, the first time in memory that a sitting mayor has attended. He expressed enthusiastic support for TIFF, adding that you can tell he really means it because despite his ongoing battle against traffic jams, he’s in favour of continuing Festival Street, whereby TIFF closes part of King St. for a multi-day street party during the fest.
Besides Hyena Road, Canadian features previously announced for TIFF 2015 include Deepa Mehta’s Beeba Boys, Atom Egoyan’s Remember, Jon Cassar’s Forsaken and Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition.
The latter film, TIFF’s dramatic gala opener starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts, is technically a U.S. production, but Quebecer Vallée has long been a TIFF regular. Most of his earlier features, including the recent Wild and Dallas Buyers Club, have all played the fest.
Full details on TIFF’s Canadian selections are available at tiff.net.
Source: Toronto Star
