Ioncinema

It has to be among the best open-air public spaces at any festival to premiere a film and it also counts as a safe space for some world premiere screenings. Included in the Piazza Grande section, the folks that fill up the 8,000 seats will find a mix of world premieres, Swiss preems and so polished-off older films. Sundance preemed Gaucho Gaucho by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw will be nice to take in in the great outdoors and so will Tarsem Singh‘s The Fall (Restored Cut). On the world premieres side Simon Jaquemet‘s Electric Child in finally complete – filmed in October 2022 this is about a couple whose child develops an unusual illness.… Read the rest

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Former Pardo d’Oro champs Hong Sangsoo (Right Now, Wrong Then – 2015) and Wang Bing (Mrs. Fang – 2017) will be measuring up against a large swath of Euro films in the prestigious competition section at Locarno next month. Hong Sangsoo reteams with his usual players for By the Stream, while Wang Bing continues with docu film series that begin in Cannes with Youth (Spring) (2023) and continues with Youth (Hards Times). Among the items we have been tracking for a while now that were lassoed for the Concorso Internazionale section we find Virgil Vernier returning to the fest with Cent Mille Milliards (formerly known as Century Island, 100,000 Light-Years) – a project that was filmed in Monaco with Zakaria Bouti, Victoire Kong, Mina Gajovic.… Read the rest

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After the first sextet of titles released back in the middle of June, the Toronto International Film Festival are throwing us another fivesome of film items that come stamped with the World Premiere status stamp with We Live in Time by John Crowley (of Brooklyn ’15 and The Goldfinch ’19 fame) being the potential awards-chatter contender of the group. Starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, this is about as a couple whose chance encounter changes their lives as they fall in love, build a home, start a family, and face difficult truths. A film that might duel with Matthew Rankin’s Cannes hit to represent Canada at the Oscars will be Shepherds.… Read the rest

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Sundance has Sebastian Silva. Cannes has the Dardenne Bros. And at this point, we can call him a VIP guest at Toronto Intl. Film Festival as David Gordon Green will open the 49th edition of the festival with Nutcrackers – a dramedy about a workaholic, Mike (Ben Stiller) who has to travel to rural Ohio to look after his recently orphaned nephews. Gordon Green has shored up at the fest with the likes of  everything from George Washington (2000), All the Real Girls (2003), Undertow (2004) and Snow Angels (2007) to Stronger (2017), and most recently, Halloween (2018). For us, this is a welcome return to working in a genre that is not popcorn studio horror projects.… Read the rest

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