TIFF 51: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney” and “Sunburn” were among the fest’s best Canadian films

by Cláudio Alves

Sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that TIFF is a Canadian film festival. It’s the biggest Canadian film festival, to be specific, and, as such, it bears the responsibility of celebrating and helping launch local talent, voices and, indeed, Canadian film. By defining Hollywood-made movies as ineligible for the International People’s Choice Award, unlike UK- and Ireland-based projects, TIFF blurs the line between itself and the American film industry, perhaps as part of its endless quest to make the fest indissociable from the start of Hollywood’s awards season. Still, it remains a landmark cultural institution of Canada and, hopefully, for Canadians before it is for LA-based studio fare.

With that in mind, let’s talk about this year’s Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award winner, Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, a uniquely Canadian documentary fever dream by Winnipeg filmmaker Matthew Rankin. There’s also Serville Poblete’s Sunburn, a Toronto-set summery daydream that was awarded the Best Canadian Film prize…

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TIFF 51: Jury of Two, Part II

Time for another break from those TIFF and NYFF reviews. Cláudio Alves and Eurocheese have appointed themselves juries to choose the best of the Toronto fest. From Casting to Picture, let's go!

How many prizes can Eurocheese give to LA BOLA NEGRA? To quote a 22-year-old comedy classic, "the limits does not exist."

CLÁUDIO: Hello again, my friend. I guess it's time for the second round of these. Or third, if we count that gargantuan Best Actress conversation that spanned from Oscar frontrunner Julianne Moore to such underrated international thespians as Rejane Faria. And speaking of acting, why don't we start the next part of our jury-of-two journey with the category AMPAS hosted for the first time last season?

BEST CASTING 

First up, casting legend Nina Gold deserves praise for the miracles she does for Tender Loving Care and Clarissa. The former is full of small, one-scene roles that need to jump off the screen and feel as lived-in as our main quartet. Somehow, she got it right every single time, be they Leigh regulars, British theater and TV vets, or newcomers like Kaedon Skerritt. In the Nigerian Mrs. Dalloway adaptation, the main cast is more sprawling, and casting different versions of the same characters adds another layer of difficulty. Somehow, she aces it, sometimes by not insisting on superficial similarities between performers but by getting the right energy for the role at two such distinct phases of their lives that they might as well be different people altogether...

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TIFF 51: Jury of Two, Part I

Let’s take another break from those endless TIFF reviews, with Cláudio Alves and Eurocheese appointing themselves juries to choose the best of the fest, beyond Best Actress chatter.

I AM ROCKY was the People’s Choice Award runner-up at TIFF, just behind LA BOLA NEGRA. Will its popularity be reflected in Cláudio and Eurocheese’s picks?

EUROCHEESE: Having covered our favorite leading ladies at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, Cláudio and I will be naming our favorites in a number of categories. To start things off, let’s stick with the actressexual theme.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Many actresses were considered for this category, and there were some formidable runners-up. Adia matched her on-screen father, Mahershala Ali, in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, where Cláudio was right to call out the intensity of their scenes together. Olivia Colman may have a small part in Elsinore that registers mostly as a potential detractor, but of course she still finds enough notes in it to make her scenes with Andrew Scott sing. I also appreciated Gemma Chan’s loving but inadequate parenting in Josephine. In the end, though, there was a clear top choice…

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TIFF 51: Denmark’s “Woman Unknown” is an unnerving proposition

by Cláudio Alves

It’s funny, sometimes, how films can converse with each other. And those conversations aren’t even limited to a festival’s program. As I watched May el-Toukhy’s somewhat controversial Golden Lion winner, Woman Unknown, my mind drifted to The Odyssey. Not just Nolan’s blockbuster, but all the adaptations I’ve seen of the Homeric poem and how they deal with the mass femicide near the end. Or, better yet, how they ignore it, erasing a part of the story that might have a modern viewer regard Odysseus and Telemachus as nothing but cruel men, as monstrous as any of the creatures that tried to prevent Ithaca’s king from returning home. Do the maids that served Penelope’s suitors deserve to die? Were all of them co-conspirators or women caught in a patriarchy that demanded their total subservience to the desires of violent men? And what if, like Emily Wilson, we read the word “δμῳαί” as “slave” instead of “servant”? 

To define culpability and blame isn’t something we can wholly separate from how gendered our world has been through most of its history, or the power imbalances defined within class structures. And even those who commit wrongs, atrocities beyond belief, have a right to fairness in their trials and judgments. Theoretically, they do. More often than not, one tends to ignore these problems and believe in the simple dichotomy of heroes and villains, good people and bad, and be done with it. Ontological reductionism can be so comforting. Then again, both-siding everything can be just as soothing. Woman Unknown, recently selected as Denmark’s submission for the 99th Academy Awards, denies us these comforts. Indeed, it might have been one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I suffered through at TIFF in the four years I’ve attended, and I don’t mean that as a negative critique. Far from it…

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TIFF 51: “Tender Loving Care” could be Mike Leigh’s perfect swan song

by Cláudio Alves

In 1971, Mike Leigh appeared on the scene with Bleak Moments, an exercise in social realism that wouldn’t immediately open the doors one might hope for in the British film industry. Instead, he became a TV writer-director, slowly building his reputation and drawing on the easy rapport with actors and improvisational methods he’d developed on stage. By 1988, he’d make his grand return to theatrical features with High Hopes. Eight years later, he won the Palme d’Or for Secrets & Lies. Eight years later still, he’d take the Golden Lion for Vera Drake. In the past decade or so, such accolades meant little, as he struggled to finance projects after a couple of period drama flops whose majesty proved unpersuasive to investors. By the time he returned in 2024 with Hard Truths, headlines were written about how Cannes and Venice had rejected his comeback before a more modest world premiere at TIFF. It’s been a storied, eventful, and difficult career. And it might be over. 

Tender Loving Care, which premiered at Telluride before screening at TIFF, the NYFF, and sweeping San Sebastián by taking the Golden Seashell, Best Leading Performance for Kate O’Flynn and Best Screenplay for Leigh himself, is likely his last work. At 83, health issues have turned filmmaking into a painful endeavor, and financing remains an issue. Well, if this is to be Mike Leigh’s swan song, it’s a pretty perfect one at that…

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