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 Lotand 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
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
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
