The eyes of film lovers across the world are set on TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) which started on 10 September and will go on till 20 September. The festival this time is incorporating physical screenings, drive in and digital screenings and virtual red carpets. This year’s selection comprises a lineup of 50 new feature films, five programmes of short films.
Highlights for Indian Audience - 'A Suitable Boy' and the Only Indian Film to Make it to TIFF This Year 'The Disciple'
Mira Nair's A Suitable Boy starring Tabu, Ishaan Khatter, Tanya Maniktala and Mahira Kakkar is screening on 19 September. Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel A Suitable Boy was inspired by a conversation he overheard on a city bus, between a mother and daughter who were debating arranged marriages. It seems appropriate, then, that acclaimed director Mira Nair of Monsoon Wedding and Queen of Katwe fame and screenwriter Andrew Davies of BBC's miniseries Pride and Prejudice and War & Peace have made an episodic adaptation of his novel.
The series premiered on BBC in the UK and is likely to be available on Netflix soon.
Director Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple is India's only film that made it to TIFF this year. His film won the International Critics’ Prize and the Best Screenplay award awarded by FIPRESCI at the 77th Venice International Film Festival also. A review in The Variety calls The Disciple “a nuanced look at a determined Hindustani musician”. The reviewer Jay Weissberg also mentions, “As he did with Court, Tamhane patiently constructs his characters out of small details, relying on his audience to pick up on small changes and muted shifts of tone that signal the passage of time and Sharad’s interior journey. It’s hard to imagine the film succeeding so well without lead actor Modak’s quiet concentration (not to mention vocal skills), capturing his character’s all-consuming hunger while generally projecting a never-dull placidity.”
Best Picks from TIFF This Year
Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan's Ammonite screened on 11 September and BBC called it an "exquisite" film. The film is written and directed by Francis Lee is the story of forbidden passion told in the most honest and brutal manner. The film is inspired by the life of British palaeontologist Mary Anning, played by Kate Winslet, and centres on a romantic relationship between Anning and Charlotte Murchison, played by Saoirse Ronan.
Good Joe Bell by director Reinaldo Marcus Green has been popular at the festival since last year. Green's film stars Mark Wahlberg, Reid Miller, Connie Britton, Maxwell Jenkins, and Gary Sinise. The film premieres on 14 September.
Two others to look out for on 14 September are - Idris Elba starer Concrete Cowboy (digital presentation), and the inspiring Lift Like A Girl (digital presentation) looks to be an audience favourite.
Known for his long string of Cannes picks, Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman English-language debut was one of the buzzier movies to premiere earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival. The film is a brutal depiction of the grief experienced by parents who lose a child during a home birth.
After his Fire at Sea became the first nonfiction film to win Berlin’s top prize in 2016, Oscar-nominee Gianfranco Rosi’s latest documentary Notturno is off to a promising start. It’s the only documentary to be selected this year by Telluride, Venice, TIFF, and NYFF.
Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, in which she also stars, will screen as a work-in-progress. Berry plays a former MMA fighter struggling to regain custody of her son and restart her career in a classic redemption story with texture.
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