Film Festivals

Center Court: Janus Metz’s Borg/McEnroe is 2017 TIFF Opener / Neon to Distribute

Published on July 31, 2017

It was one of the titles on our radar for when we were thinking of the fall festival line-ups, and now Janus Metz‘s sports drama (and fiction debut) is going to be center court at the 42nd Toronto International Film Fest. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Sverrir Gudnason and Stellan Skarsgård, perhaps the red carpet for Borg/McEnroe will also include the players themselves. A tidbit worth mentioning that hadn’t been announced before is that Tom Quinn & Tim League’s Neon is the U.S distributor for the title and have dated this as a 2018 release.

Gist: Borg/McEnroe tells the story of the epic rivalry between Swedish tennis legend Björn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason)
and his greatest adversary, the brash American John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf), which came to a head during the 1980 Wimbledon Championships.

Worth Noting: One of the rare docu films to be included in Cannes Critics Week, Armadillo is one hell of a war is hell piece. This is Metz’s long awaited sophomore pic.

Do We Care?: The opening film of the fest was long associated as being a whimper item, but we consider this biopic a prestige item.

Related Topics:2017 Toronto Int. Film Festival, Borg/McEnroe, Janus Metz, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Sverrir Gudnason

Eric Lavallée

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).