"Belfast" is TIFF's choice. How far can it go with Oscar?

by Nathaniel R

going to the movies in "Belfast"

It's been strange to have gone without TIFF, my once favourite festival, for two years running. As a result i have yet to see Kenneth Branagh's Belfast which did not play at Venice though its Oscar buzz is now quite loud. It recently won TIFF's People's Choice Award which has long been a strong Oscar bellwether. We'd argue that that connection is less causal than reflective of a "similar taste profile", though. The type of people who go to huge and accessible film festivals are not unlike Oscar voters in that their tastes lean mainstream but mainstream under the now niche umbrella (sigh) of "also art"...

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TIFF: Alison Pill and Sarah Gadon in ‘All My Puny Sorrows’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

Certain feelings and states of being are entirely subjective, and that leads people to judge others based on the limited amount they’re able to perceive. Competing for the most legitimate reason to be unhappy is never a productive exercise, and yet many think that someone else can’t possibly have it as bad as them or have as much of an excuse to feel the way they do. Sadness can only be truly experienced and quantified by the one experiencing it, a concept navigated in the moving drama All My Puny Sorrows, screening in the Special Presentations section at TIFF…

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TIFF Review: Céline Sciamma’s ‘Petite Maman’

Abe is covering a few selections from the Toronto International Film Festival remotely.  

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Expectations play a big part in the experience of watching any movie. One of the major factors I consider when selecting what I’m going to see at a film festival is whether I’ve seen (and liked) the director’s previous work. I was fully intrigued by the concept of revisiting the mind of Céline Sciamma, whose last feature was Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which I think may be one of the few films that everyone at Team Experience can agree that we loved. Well, let’s start by clarifying that her follow-up, Petite Maman, couldn’t be any more different…

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"Nomadland" wins TIFF's People's Choice

by Nathaniel R

This year's TIFF has wrapped. Normally we cover it extensively, as you know, but they cut out a big swath of press this year including us... *cries*. Hopefully we'll return next year and if not we'll have to find a new favourite festival to obsess over. Herewith the winners and some Oscar stats, and if we've already discussed the movies, there's a link...

AUDIENCE PRIZES

People's Choice: Nomadland dir. Chloé Zhao.
(First runner up: One Night in Miami... dir. Regina King; Second runner up: Beans dir. Tracey Deer.)
People's Choice, Documentary: Inconvenient Indian dir. Michelle Latimer. 
People’s Choice, Midnight Madness: Shadow in the Cloud dir.  Roseanne Liang. 

That's right ALL of the audience prizes this year went to female filmmakers! Even the runners up were directed by women. The People's Choice Award is major bragging rights since it often signals kind Oscar fates down the road. Basically it would be a shock if Nomadland misses the Best Picture nomination at this point afterwinning TIFF and Venice though One Night in Miami has less convincing stats on its side. The stats go like so... 

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Doc Corner TIFF Special Edition: Werner Herzog's 'Fireball'

By Glenn Dunks

We're not covering TIFF more broadly this year, but I was lucky to snag a screener or two so we'll be writing about them in a couple of additional Doc Corner columns.

One of my favourite bits of movie trivia is that Werner Herzog is the only filmmaker to have ever directed feature-length films on every single continent. He completed that unique party trick with his 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary Encounters at the End of the World. I’m sure that if he could, he would make a movie in space. For now, however, his latest feature doc about the elements of space will have to suffice.

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds begins in the terrestrial outback of Australia and ends in the shimmering blue plateaus of Antarctica with just about every other continent in between (he just can’t help himself). Herzog traces the history of meteorites with regular collaborator and first-time co-director Clive Oppenheimer...

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