Time to TIFF: Toronto International Film Festival announces first wave of films

Film buffs’ number one reason for excitement about the fall season just got a lot more tangible, as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) today unveiled the first wave of films for its 36th edition, which takes place from September 8 to 18.

There’s lots to feed your filmgoing fire in here, and you’ll be able to read tons more about TIFF’s must-see movies on NIGHTLIFE.CA as programme announcements keep pouring in. For the time being, suffice it to say that among the 10 Gala and 43 Special Presentations titles revealed to media this morning, 31 of them are World Premieres. Among them, Luc Besson’s The Lady; Sarah Polley’s Take this Waltz; Jonathan Levine’s 50/50; Fernando Meirelles’ 360; Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea; Alexander Payne’s The Descendants; Jay and Mark Duplass’ Jeff, Who Lives at Home; Marc Foster’s Machine Gun Preacher; Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna and Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt.

Jason Segel and Ed Helms in Jay and Mark Duplass' Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen in 50/50

Among the already buzzed-about North American premieres, you’ve got David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method; George Clooney’s The Ides of March; Madonna’s W.E.; Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Chicken with Plums; Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus; Todd Solondz’s Dark Horse; Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam; Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia; Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty; Steve McQueen’s Shame; Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In and Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.  

Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi's Chicken with Plums

Ryan Gosling in The Ides of March, directed by George Clooney

TIFF’s annual Opening Night Gala is one of the only areas where this practically irreproachable festival consistently leaves me confounded. Recent years have seen average-at-best features kick off the fest, like Due South poster boy Paul Gross’ patriotic war epic Passchendaele (2008), British helmer Jon Amiel’s yawn-inducing Charles Darwin biopic Creation (2009) and last year’s clichéd though oh-so-conveniently-Canadian entry Score: A Hockey Musical, which had some debating whether it could be the worst film to have ever opened the festival.

This year, the fest chose not to go with a Canuck title, opting instead for From the Sky Down, a U2 documentary. Now that’s all well and good for diehard Bono fans (and God knows there are many here, as they filled that oft-neglected Hippodrome to the brim for two consecutive nights), but for all of us non-Bono admirers, here are a few comforting facts: the film is directed by Davis Guggenheim, who brought us last year’s most sobering Waiting for Superman, a well-crafted survey of American public education and its countless, potentially fatal cracks. That, plus he’s the man behind the Oscar attention-grabber An Inconvenient Truth. It's also the first time in 36 years that TIFF organizers choose a documentary to kick off the festivities, so here’s to encouraging such risk-taking, and hopefully it won't be the last time we see a non-fiction film launch the event.

Davis Guggenheim's From the Sky Down, Opening Night film at TIFF 2011

The festival also announced the return of its Cadillac People’s Choice Awards for the fifth consecutive year, as chosen by the voting public. It’s worth commending Hogtown crowds for making very shrewd film picks that also serve as reliable indicators of the awards season that follows. In recent years, the top prize was given to Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech (2011 Oscar winner for Best Picture), Lee Daniels' Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire (2010 Oscar Best Picture nominee), Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (2009 Oscar winner for Best Picture) and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2008 Oscar Best Actor nominee). Keep that savvy coming, Toronto!

36th Toronto International Film Festival
September 8 to 18 | tiff.net