Eric Lavallée

Today co-directors Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling of the Toronto International Film Festival announce the first batch of titles that are the make-up of the 36th edition. Today's the pair will read off mostly Gala screening mentions (our Blake Williams will be LIVE tweeting), which in turn give us a strong indication as to what will be shown in Venice and what Telluride, NYFF and BFI London Film Festivals might salvage/lasso as their own.

Running between August 31st and September 10th, the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival would be a dandy last edition for festival impresario Marco Muller even if he doesn't nab the likes of Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster, Walter Salles' On the Road, Fernando Meirelles' 360 and/or Zhang Yimou's Heroes of Naking. In his final year of contract, with approximately twenty-two competition slots (minus the already confirmed opening film from Italian res George Clooney and his TIFF-bound The Ides of March), this thursday's announcement should be heavy on items from the the U.K along with a robust presence from European filmmakers headed by Roman Polanski's Carnage.

I'm not sure what Wellspring Media paid for Tarnation, the 218 dollar film which most definitely was their most profitable title with half a million dollar take at the box office, but if they were up and running today, you'd be sure that they would be among the more interested parties in getting the distribution rights for Jonathan Caouette's second docu-outing.

Expect this upcoming Fall season to be a pivotal first for the two-year old ATO Pictures. With Pawel Pawlikowski's The Woman in the Fifth and Dominik Moll's The Monk both expected to make their North American first looks at Telluride/TIFF, the disturb co. will have a Sundance preemed black comedy hitting theatres around the same time.