In the realm of cinema, nothing is quite as exciting as a film festival. It’s a place where a buffet of high-quality entertainment is laid out, each piece begging for your attention. Titles can range from micro-budget indies to major studio blockbusters, all of them using the festival as a launching pad for future box office and awards success.
Of the 10 films nominated for best picture at last year’s Academy Awards, seven premiered at a film festival. That includes the winner, “Anora,” which began its victory path at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
Festivals reach their peak from late August through mid-September, when the Venice, Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals overlap. This condensed timeline spurs fierce competition among the trio to host screenings of select films. Some titles will play at all three festivals, some at two and some at just one.
Filmmakers and distributors plan these rollouts intentionally, since each festival offers its own pros and cons. Venice is more accepting of rigorous arthouse and international films, Telluride fosters a laid-back and exclusive environment, and Toronto is one of the largest publicly attended festivals in the world.
TIFF has always been my favorite festival thanks to its long-held tradition of being the “festival of festivals,” collecting a mixture of the best films from all the other festivals (Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, etc.), along with a swath of juicy world premieres.
This year’s lineup flaunts 209 feature films screening over 10 days across the festival’s many splashy venues. I’ll attempt to watch 40 of those films, an improvement over last year’s tally of 37.
This will require mental toughness to comprehend viewing up to five films per day, a stretching program for my stiff legs and neck (some TIFF venues have very uncomfortable seats), and a willingness to take a risk on some under-the-radar gems.
The first day will feature four Cannes standouts: “Sentimental Value,” “Nouvelle Vague,” “Sound of Falling” and the Palme d’Or winner, “It Was Just an Accident.”
I wasn’t able to attend Cannes this year – my first absence since I started going in 2021. Luckily, TIFF always welcomes many of its top titles, which means I can partially replicate that experience – minus the pristine beaches and beautiful weather of the French Riviera.
The second day presents new works from two of my favorite filmmakers. The first is “The Wizard of the Kremlin” by French writer-director Olivier Assayas. Paul Dano stars as Vadim Baranov, a filmmaker who became an adviser to Vladimir Putin during his rise to power in post-Soviet Russia. Jude Law portrays Putin, with Alicia Vikander, Jeffrey Wright and Tom Sturridge rounding out the cast.
Next is “No Other Choice” from Park Chan-wook, whose two previous features, “The Handmaiden” and “Decision to Leave,” rank among my all-time favorites. His new film is a dark satire about a chronically unemployed man who decides the best path to getting a job is to kill all the other applicants.
Saturday night features the marquee event: the world premiere of “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” the third installment in the whodunit series starring Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc.
Earlier in the day will be a 70mm presentation of “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a musical about the founder of the Shaker movement starring Amanda Seyfried as the titular character. Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, the team behind last year’s “The Brutalist,” co-wrote the film, with Fastvold taking her turn in the director’s chair.
Other big titles across the weekend include “The Lost Bus,” starring Matthew McConaughey as a bus driver during the 2018 wildfires in California; “Rental Family,” a dramedy starring Brendan Fraser as a professional surrogate for a Japanese family; “Good Fortune,” Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut; “Hamnet,” Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of the acclaimed novel with Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his grieving wife, Agnes; and “Nuremberg,” a courtroom drama centered around the trials of the Nazi high command in the wake of World War II.
Dwayne Johnson will turn up the lights as he’ll present the North American premiere of “The Smashing Machine,” the life story of MMA and UFC fighter Mark Kerr.
But the fun doesn’t slow down as the festival heads into its second half. Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker most in love with monsters, is finally getting the chance to adapt the story of the most famous one of all. He and Netflix will debut the epically mounted “Frankenstein,” starring Oscar Isaac as the mad scientist and Jacob Elordi as the born-again creature.
The steamer also brings over “Ballad of a Small Player,” directed by “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Conclave” helmer Edward Berger. Colin Farrell plays a travelling gambler in over his head as detective Tilda Swinton tracks him down to Macau.
From there, the schedule gets a bit more fluid. There’ll still be plenty of screening opportunities for stuff like “The Christophers,” “Fuze,” “Sacrifice,” “A Private Life,” “Scarlet,” “Roofman,” “Easy’s Waltz” and “Eternity,” as well as other titles not on my watchlist that receive great buzz.
Respectively, “The Beast” and “April” were my favorite films of the 2023 and 2024 editions of the festival. Both were seen mostly on a whim in the festival’s waning days, proving that the best films are often hidden in plain sight.
I could spend several more paragraphs describing the rest of the films I’m seeing and why I’m excited about them. That risks this article getting repetitive, and there will be plenty of time devoted to all those films in my recap article.
For now, you can take a look at the full slate of festival titles at the TIFF website. I’ll be publishing full reviews for select titles on my website, with a few of them likely to become some of my favorites of the year.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 4-14.
Eden Prairie resident Hunter Friesen is a film critic who owns and operates The Cinema Dispatch, a website where he writes reviews, essays, and more. He’s also the film critic for the Woodbury News Net. He currently serves as the president of the Minnesota Film Critics Association and travels the globe covering film festivals both big and small. To view his entire body of work, you can visit his website and Instagram.
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