Searching for Treasures at TIFF: A Top Dozen List

Hey Everyone. Amir here to preview the Toronto International Film Festival. There's less than a month to go before opening night. Those of you who follow the festival’s news regularly probably know that yesterday marked the completion of most of the festival’s strands, so we can officially start salivating all over the program book. Making a “Most Anticipated Films” list is a fool’s errand; TIFF’s lineup is so vast that the list would basically equate to everything that’s left to be screened in 2012 and then some. Titles like The Master, Anna Karenina, Argo (the latter of which I'm anticipating and dreading) and Cloud Atlas will feature on everyone’s list. There are also Cannes leftovers such as Rust & Bone, Reality, No and The Paperboy to be excited for, but I’m dedicating this list, to the pleasure of discovery which is the lifeblood of festivals.

Last year Nathaniel made a similar list of sixteen potential gems in advance of the festival. Some of those were films I would not have watched had he not suggested them, and I’m glad to say that one of them ended up not only as my top film of the festival, but the best film I saw all year. Here’s hoping we can strike gold again with any of these:

The Suicide Shop

12. A Liar’s Biography/The Suicide Shop

Yes, I hate "ties" as much as you when it comes to list-making but I wanted to round things out with an animated film and couldn’t decide between them. We've got a 3D fictionalized telling of Graham Chapman’s life through the perspective of the Monty Python gang or a Patrice Leconte musical about a family who help people take their own lives. Can you blame me for the indecision ?!?

12. The ABCs of Death

The Midnight Madness program is the one I’ve attended the least over the years, mostly because I see too many films in a day to have the energy at midnight. Yet this omnibus film seems like the perfect campy end to a festival day. Twenty-six directors from all over the world (including Ti West and Ben Wheatley) give us twenty-six alphabet inspired ways to die in a horror film.

10. Barbara

Barbara already screened at Berlinale to terrific reactions, but given that it has no Canadian distributor I’m watching. Director Christian Petzold netted a Silver Bear in Berlin and Nina Hoss, terrific in his last two films, returns to star in a third consecutive. The 80s-set story concerns a scientist forced to stay in a rural hospital as punishment by the East German government.

Isabelle Huppert, Terrence Malick, and Seven (or more) Pyschopaths after the jump.

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TIFF Lineup: Female Directors & Prestige Adaptations

 Paolo here. We should probably give in and see what this year's Toronto International Film Festival has to offer! Toronto marks the unofficial start of awards season, inflating or deflating much hyped movies and performances. Speaking of which, the locals can experience the star power of actual would be contenders.  Within the space of ten days, TIFF gives its paying audience access to a year's worth of art house cinema - these movies will be trickling out in limited release for at least a year to come.

Fine reasons to be excited but I have more personal reasons, too. 

Reason no. 1 They're bringing back some classics.
They're under the Cinematheque programme, spotlightling restorations like Dial M for Murder in 3D, Loin du Vietnam - a collaborative anti-war project involving a handful on 1960's auteurs like Godard, Agnes Varda, William Klein Alain Resnais and (RIP) Chris Marker. There's also Roberto Rosselini's Stromboli and Roman Polanski's Tess, the latter being an adapation of a Thomas Hardy novel that I've been reading the past month or so. Which brings me to reasons two, three and four... after the jump.

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TIFF Finale Pt. 2: Oscar Boosts, Oslo August, Wuthering Heights, and Personal Prizes

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post now includes personal prizes from both of our TIFF correspondents, Amir & Paolo. I thank them profusely for all the coverage this year! -Nathaniel R

Amir here, back with the wrap up to this year's Toronto International Film Festival coverage for TFE. The festival ended yesterday with Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? beating Iran's A Separation and Canada's Starbuck to take the top prize, the People's Choice Award.

For me personally, the festival went out with a bang as on the closing weekend I watched a very entertaining film called. ... wait for it... Where Do We Go Now? before it became the surprise winner. I have Nathaniel to thank because before he pointed this one out among his top 16 curiousities, it was not on my radar at all. On one hand, I'm a little upset that Nadine Labaki took the prize because this means A Separation came second. I haven't seen the latter yet but if you haven't guessed by the number of Iran-related films I covered, I'm from, you guessed it right, Iran. So if TIFF were to give legs to one Best Foreign Language Film Oscar contender, you know which team I’m rooting for. On the other hand, I did contribute to the People's Choice outcome by giving Labaki’s film a 5 star vote after my screening. My five star vote doesn't mean the film is perfect. Far from it, in fact. But I can overlook it's serious dramatic problems in favour of its many merits.

The film is about a group of women in a village in Lebanon who try to ease tensions between the Christian and Muslim men using methods ranging from hash cookies to bringing in Ukrainian strippers. Part comedy, part musical and part exercise in interreligious coexistence in the Middle East, the film should be applauded just for approaching something as controversial as the Muslim-Christian relationship with comedy. But the script also has serious problems, ignoring any development in its male characters and unable to make the profound emotional impact it's aiming for when it ventures, too far, towards the dramatic and serious. But it is consistently funny if contrived, and the musical sequences are marvellous. Best of all, its female ensemble is Volver-level fantastic, equally funny and poignant.

I'm certain we'll see this as a Best Foreign Language Film nominee though I doubt that the critics will fall head over heels. Based on the recent track record of the category, I’d say this film has a good shot at winning the actual Oscar over whichever critical darlings are nominated alongside it.

On the last weekend of the festival I also so quite a double feature: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Chicken with Plums and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights.

AMIR & PAOLO's favorites from the festival after the jump.

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TIFF Finale Pt. 1: "Silver Cliff" and People's Choice Winner "Where Do We Go Now?"

Paolo here back with...wait, there are more movies after the awards were announced? Yes, but before we get to that, I was unfortunately reminded by Amir that I saw Love and Bruises. It's a movie about a Chinese woman in Paris named Hua who studies the women's rights movements but hangs around with rapists outside of campus. One of these, Mathieu (Tahar Rahim, who needs to work with better directors), is the jealous possessive type but lets her alone with his skeezy best friend. Cheery stuff.

Silver Cliff

Aarim Ainouz' SILVER CLIFF begins with Djalma (Otto Jr.), a beefy guy who isn't having fun despite swimming on a beach in Rio de Janeiro and making love to his wife Violetta (Alessandra Negrini). He flies to a smaller city and dumps her over the phone. Arriving at the airport too late, she roams around the city, from hotels to beaches, playing his voice message and suspicious of its tone. She meets a father (City of God's Thiago Martins) and daughter with their own back story.

Rio is a city where Brazilians can get willingly lost and here we follow the abandoned halves of broken marriages in Silver Cliff. Though the majority of the film concentrates on Violetta, her scenes neither written nor performed compellingly, Ainouz's choice to begin and end with the male characters is a puzzler.

The People's Choice Winner...

Where Do We Go Now?

After the screening of Nadine Labaki's WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (Lebanon's Oscar Submission), I overheard a festivalgoer telling his friends that 'someone's probably blogging that this is the worst People's Choice Winner ever.' I might be one of those bloggers misconstrued as writing that.

The film's chief merit is its female perspective on Lebanese sectarian conflict. In the spirit of "Lysistrata," a group of village women try to stop men from gunned conflict through pranks. (Some audiences might see this approach as too idealistic since it's difficult for any group who hate each other and unite and pull off miracles.) The director also stars as Amale (Labaki) whose character arc takes her from merely vulnerable and beautiful to someone who can publicly question notions of masculinity and God. But why did the idealistic women have to hire those big city Ukranian exotic dancers? By exploiting them for the men's use these women are taking steps back as they try to move forward. Where Do We Go Now? would have been more effective with less of its irreverent comic tone and musical numbers which only work half the time. The film could still reach the same denouement without trying so hard for its laughs.

TIFF Award Winners

The list as they came in [thanks to The Lost Boy]

BEST CANADIAN FIRST FEATURE Edwin Boyd, directed by Nathan Morlando (Paolo's review, Amir's review)
BEST CANADIAN FEATURE Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau
BEST CANADIAN SHORT FILM Doubles With Slight Pepper by Ian Harnarine
PEOPLE'S CHOICE MIDNIGHT MADNESS The Raid, directed by Gareth Huw Evans
PEOPLE'S CHOICE DOCUMENTARY The Island President by Jon Shenk
INTERNATIONAL CRITICS SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS The First Man, directed by Gianni Amelio
INTERNATIONAL CRITICS DISCOVERY SECTION Avalon directed by Axel Petersen 

And the biggie, the PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD, which often signifies Oscar attention in either Best Picture or Foreign Film categories is WHERE DO WE GO NOW? the musical from Lebanon which is from the director of Caramel. It was recently submitted for Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film.

UPDATE: Here's the international trailer.

It's officially one to watch now, a very likely nominee if past awards are indication. Runners up in this category were Iran's very buzzy marital drama A Separation and Ken Scott's Starbuck.