The Toronto International Film Festival opens Thursday for its 51st edition, running Sept. 10-20 across the city's downtown theaters. Sian Heder's "Being Heumann," her follow-up to the Oscar-winning "Coda," opens the festival, kicking off a program built largely on titles arriving fresh from Venice and Telluride, including Martin McDonagh's "Wild Horse Nine" and Danny Boyle's Rupert Murdoch drama "Ink," alongside new work from Pedro Almodóvar, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Mike Leigh, Cristian Mungiu and John Madden. In all, the festival's Gala, Special Presentations, Platform and Discovery programs draw films from nearly 30 countries.
Actors take the director's chair
A notable thread running through this year's lineup is how many films were directed by actors better known for what happens in front of the camera. Jesse Eisenberg's "The Debut," Chris Rock's "Misty Green," Tim Blake Nelson's "The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd," Courteney Cox's "Evil Genius" and Rebel Wilson's "Girl Group" all premiere in Toronto this year, part of what trade coverage has described as an unusually crowded season for actor-directed features. The festival is also introducing TIFF: The Market, a new industry initiative meant to bring film, series and games buyers together under one roof during the festival's run.
Days before the festival's opening, organizers added a late, unexpected entry to the slate: Zack Snyder's "The Last Photograph", a jungle-set revenge thriller starring Stuart Martin, Fra Fee and Jackie Kay, will have its world premiere Sept. 13 at TIFF's new John Bassett Theatre venue inside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It is Snyder's first true independent feature, a project dating back to the early 2010s, when Christian Bale and Sean Penn were once attached, before Snyder detoured into a decade of DC Comics blockbusters. The film arrives in Toronto without a distributor, screening as an acquisition title for buyers.
Without the crush of a festival the size of Venice, films that catch on in the smaller confines of Telluride or the industry-heavy market of Toronto can quickly become the talk of the fall season, carrying momentum into awards-race conversations that will run through the winter. TIFF runs through Sept. 20.
