With the red carpets remaining in storage this year and A-list players making no plans to quarantine for two full weeks in Canada’s capitol, this year’s slimmed down version of TIFF is many things: studio-less, gender-parity friendly, more Venice than Cannes, docu-centric, and pro-Canuck edition. Festival co-heads Cameron Bailey and Joana Vicente landed J Blakeson’s I Care A Lot and Regina King’s One Night in Miami as world premiere status in the Gala section, while Australia’s Glendyn Ivin and Penguin Bloom was placed with Sundance preemed Falling (Viggo Mortensen) and The Father (Florian Zeller) in the Special Presentations programme.
The filmed in Montreal English language debut Pieces of a Woman by Kornél Mundruczó is one of the half dozen several Venice Golden Lion Comp titles to benefit from a double premiere status (we still await Telluride token mentions). The other five include Michel Franco, Gianfranco Rosi, Chaitanya Tamhane, Jasmila Zbanic and Chloé Zhao whose Nomadland will likely be in the award season discussions shared with Francis Lee’s Cannes labeled Ammonite. Here are the titles organized by section:
Discovery:
180 Degree Rule – Farnoosh Samadi | Iran
Beans – Tracey Deer | Canada
Beginning – Dea Kulumbegashvili | Georgia/France
Gaza mon amour – Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser | Palestine/France/Germany/Portugal/Qatar
Limbo – Ben Sharrock | United Kingdom
Memory House – João Paulo Miranda Maria | Brazil/France
Shiva Baby – Emma Seligman | USA/Canada
The Best is Yet to Come – Wang Jing | China
Wildfire – Cathy Brady | United Kingdom/Ireland
* Spring Blossom – Suzanne Lindon | France
TIFF Docs:
76 Days – Hao Wu, Anonymous, Weixi Chen | USA
City Hall – Frederick Wiseman | USA
Enemies of the State – Sonia Kennebeck | USA
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds – Werner Herzog, Clive Oppenheimer | United Kingdom/USA
Inconvenient Indian – Michelle Latimer | Canada
Lift Like a Girl – Mayye Zayed | Egypt/Germany/Denmark
MLK/FBI – Sam Pollard | USA
No Ordinary Man – Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase Joynt | Canada
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel – Joel Bakan, Jennifer Abbott | Canada
Gala:
I Care A Lot – J Blakeson | United Kingdom
One Night in Miami – Regina King | USA
Pieces of a Woman – Kornél Mundruczó | USA/Canada/Hungary
* Ammonite – Francis Lee | United Kingdom
* Bruised – Halle Berry | USA
* Concrete Cowboy – Ricky Staub | USA
* David Byrne’s American Utopia – Spike Lee | USA (Opening Night Film)
* Good Joe Bell – Reinaldo Marcus Green | USA
* Nomadland – Chloé Zhao | USA
Contemporary World Cinema:
Bandar Band – Manijeh Hekmat | Iran/Germany
New Order (Nuevo orden) – Michel Franco | Mexico
Night of the Kings (La Nuit des Rois) – Philippe Lacôte | Côte d’Ivoire/France/Canada/Senegal
Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time – Lili Horvát | Hungary
Quo Vadis, Aïda? – Jasmila Žbanić | Several countries
Under the Open Sky – Miwa Nishikawa | Japan
Wavelengths:
The Inheritance – Ephraim Asili | USA
* Fauna – Nicolás Pereda | Mexico/Canada
Masters:
Notturno – Gianfranco Rosi | Italy/France/Germany
Special Presentations:
Falling – Viggo Mortensen | Canada/United Kingdom
Penguin Bloom – Glendyn Ivin | Australia
The Disciple – Chaitanya Tamhane | India
The Father – Florian Zeller | United Kingdom/France
* Another Round – Thomas Vinterberg | Denmark
* Summer of 85 – François Ozon | France
* True Mothers – Naomi Kawase | Japan
Midnight Madness:
Get the Hell Out – I-Fan Wang | Taiwan
Shadow In The Cloud – Roseanne Liang | USA/New Zealand
Violation – Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli | Canada
Primetime:
A Suitable Boy – Mira Nair | United Kingdom/India (Closing Night Presentation)
The Third Day – Felix Barrett, Dennis Kelly | United Kingdom
Trickster – Michelle Latimer | Canada