TIFF: Last News

Ah, the years of one’s youth— a topsy-turvy, illogical rollercoaster of emotions, hormones, and boundless wonder. The finest films that capture this spirited chaos often use their child characters as conduits, letting them revel in the sheer essence of being a kid.

The premiere of Lil Nas X’s new documentary was reportedly delayed after a bomb threat.

Forty years ago, the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme and the art-punk band The Talking Heads made one of the most outstanding concert docs of all time, “Stop Making Sense.” Now on this milestone anniversary, the beloved concert doc returns to theaters with a TIFF World Premiere and Global IMAX Live event on September 11 in a pristine new 4K restoration. Following that debut, the doc will then exclusively open in IMAX on September 22 and in theaters everywhere on September 29.

How great does Martika Ramirez Escobar’s surreal, award-winning film “Leonor Must Die” sound? This first feature transports a retired screenwriter of Filipino action films into the story of one of her own unfinished scripts. The film is the official Midnight Madness closing night Film of the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and it’s already won a ton of awards, including the Special Jury Prize for Innovative Spirit at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Emmy-nominated American writer and film director Stefan Forbes, known for making the documentary “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story,” is back with another fantastic documentary, this time focusing on conflict resolution and how you can’t fight fire with fire in the aptly titled, “Hold Your Fire.” The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and was quickly acquired by IFC Films.

The 2021 Fall Festival season seemed to bring a sense of normalcy 18 months into the COVID pandemic. Venice, Telluride, and the New York Film Festival all had in-person screenings with no capacity restrictions.

During my first year of film school, my teacher would assign a great task to all her students during a post-production and sound course. The assignment was a unique redubbing exercise, stripping the audio and initial sound mix from pre-existing film scenes.

Toronto International Film Festival: The utilization of hand-drawn animation as preferred medium for artists to assimilate and explicate real-world chaos in recent years has produced gorgeously sensitive visions including Cartoon Saloon’s “The Breadwinner,” and just this year the animated documentary “Flee” and Ari Folman’s tenderly fantastical “Where is Anne Frank.” READ MORE: Fall 2021 Movie Preview: 60+ Must-See Films Realized with few flourishes of imagination but an undaunted resolve for dealing with human tragedy, “Charlotte,” by directors Tahir Rana and Éric Warin and based on a screenplay from writers Erik Rutherford and David Bezmozgis, joins the growing list of such mature animated projects with underlying social justice concerns.

Guns, gold bars, drug lords, military coups, folk heroes, tall tales, and ghost stories. Is there a 2021 film that gives more bang for the buck than Jean Luc Herbulot’s superb “Saloum”? This is not a case of “too much” movie, where the director and screenwriter thoughtlessly stuff as many ingredients into the pot as they can and hope the concoction doesn’t boil over.

We casually throw the word “icon” around with such abandon these days that it almost feels like we need a new, more potent idiom to describe those who actually fit the bill. But until we get that term, let’s say that Sigourney Weaver is an absolute icon and leave it at that — a brilliant actor equally adept at drama, action, and comedy, a three-time Academy Award nominee (two of them in the same year), the kind of screen presence who lifts just about anything she’s in.

Comfortable in his newly found friendship, Hatzín (Hatzín Navarrete), a teenager from Mexico City who traveled to Chihuahua’s northern state to reclaim his father’s remains, pretends to be upset and explains he’s decided to return home. He laughs several seconds later, tricking Mario (Hernán Mendoza), his boss and impromptu life mentor.

Justine Bateman is on a quest to explore the fears and to openly address the toxic, self-destructive voices in our heads that tell us we’re no good and unworthy of love and success. The actor’s directorial debut and new drama, “Violet,” debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, highlights the ideas she’s thought about and faced head-on in her own life: self-made insecurity, fear, and crippling self-doubt.

The original queen of cuisine, the first rock star foodie, Julia Child became a cooking phenomenon throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, thanks to her PBS series and cookbooks. A trailblazer for sharing her love and enthusiasm for cooking and food in the mediums of books and TV, Child paved the way for today’s culture of 24/7 food programming, passing away before seeing the influx of reality TV cooking, Food Networks, and foodie social media.

Everyone knows someone like Rebeca Huntt. A born-and-bred New Yorker, she came of age in a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, her family’s pride and joy.

To open: Ada (Milana Aguzarova), a young woman living in North Ossetia, is planted against the cement wall by the freeway. As the tumult of cars rushes by, a young man — the seemingly lovesick Tamik (Arsen Khetagurov) — calls for her.

There’s no escape for the women in Hany Abu-Assad’s blistering new film “Huda’s Salon,” a fearless statement on gender oppression shaped as an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Back in top form, the acclaimed director behind stunners such as “Paradise Now” and “Omar” returns to dissecting the perilous Palestinian experience under Israeli control.

We have a tendency, as difficult films work the festival circuit, to reduce them to simplistic, giggle-worthy loglines, perhaps as a way to avoid grappling with work that challenges our ideas of what this medium is and how it should work.

Against a wide, white sky, with snow sprinkled across the ground, a man stands near the railroad tracks. He watches the train approach, takes off his glasses, sets them down gently on the ground, and steps in front of the oncoming locomotive.

Another fall season, another deluge of fall film festival movies and previews. If you’ve been playing along, and hopefully, you have, you’ve already seen our coverage from the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and Italy’s Venice International Film Festival.

The 46th Toronto International Film Festival is fast approaching and the festival is finalizing its line-up in the weeks ahead of launch day in September. Today, the festival unveiled a few new titles, announced the Canadian Satellite Screenings, unveiled the 2021 Industry Conference details and the Primetime lineup.

The 46th Toronto International Film Festival is fast approaching and the festival is finalizing its line-up in the weeks ahead of launch day in September. Today, the festival unveiled a few new titles, announced the Canadian Satellite Screenings, unveiled the 2021 Industry Conference details and the Primetime lineup.