TIFF Lands World Preems for 360, Rampart, Twixt, Salmon Fishing, Elles, The Oranges, Butter, Pearl Jam and Hick

TIFF’s co-directors Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling have got us salivating with the smorgasbord list of world premiere offerings for next September. Opening film comes as a surprise, as we’ve haven’t heard much about it, but seeing that doc filmmaker Davis Guggenheim has a great relationship with the festival, From The Sky Down a doc about U2 (20 or so years after Phil Joanou’s U2: Rattle & Hum) will take centre stage. Doc-programmer guru Thom Powers makes sure that the fest will be a rocking good edition by also adding Pearl Jam Twenty from fanboy Cameron Crowe.

Before we get into the announcements, we can quickly take a look at titles that weren’t mentioned. Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar (NYFF?) Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret (got no clue), Alps, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (venice-bound, might be announced later), Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady (Weinsteins release it in December, might shown at London along with Simon Curtis’ My Week With Marilyn. No word of Jason Reitman’s next film…….at least not yet.

Among U.S titles (with several looking for North American distribution deals) we’ve got The Oranges, Butter, Friends With Kids, Hick, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Rampart, Ten Year and Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding. From down under, TIFF has programmed three Ausssie titles in Jonathan Teplitzky’s Burning Man, Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm, and Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter. The French have Mathieu Demy’s Americano, Cédric Khan’s A Better Life, Rémi Bezancon’s A Happy Event and Malgorzata Szumowska’s Elles. Other global entries include: Huh Jong-ho’s Countdown, Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters and Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna. Further Canadian selections will be announced later, but for the time being we have Sarah Polley’s Take this Waltz confirmed.

Among the confirmed films that will pass thru from Venice and into TIFF include: The Ides of March, W.E., Chicken with Plums, Dark Horse, Killer Joe, Shame (see pic above), Wang Xiaoshuai’s 11 Flowers and possibly Ann Hui’s A Simple Life. Items that were tipped to show in Venice and went directly to TIFF instead include: Rodrigo Garcia’s Albert Nobbs, Terrence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea, Luc Besson’s The Lady, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Woman in the Fifth, Francis Ford Coppola’s simply titled Twixt, and three major items in Fernando Meirelles’ 360, Lasse Hallstrom’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and The Descendants.

From Cannes, we don’t have any mentions for Aki or the Dardennes yet, but they’ve nabbed The Artist, Drive and We Need to Talk About Kevin which are all on route to Telluride beforehand, and they’ve got Habemus Papam, Melancholia, The Skin I Live In, and Where Do We Go Now? locked up for Special Presentation screenings. Traveling from other film fests, they’ve nabbed Like Crazy and Tyrannosaur from Sundance, and Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus from Berlin. Sean Durkin and Jeff Nichols continue there world film festival tour that commenced in Park City, took a splash in Cannes and will wrap themselves around the Toronto fixture. Martha Marcy May Marlene and Take Shelter are among our top 3 of the year so far and I see a bit of a correlation here as Blue Valentine (my tops of 2010) took a similar path. Among the films with within close range Fall calendar dates, Moneyball, 50/50, Anonymous and Machine Gun Preacher – all receive world premiere status/red carpet love.

Galas
Albert Nobbs – Rodrigo Garcia, Ireland World Premiere
Butter – Jim Field Smith, USA World Premiere
From The Sky Down – Davis Guggenheim, USA World Premiere (Opening Night Film)
A Happy Event – Rémi Bezancon, France World Premiere
The Ides of March – George Clooney, USA
The Lady – Luc Besson, France/United Kingdom – World Premiere
Moneyball – Bennett Miller, USA World Premiere
Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding – Bruce Beresford, USA – World Premiere
Take this Waltz – Sarah Polley, Canada – World Premiere
W.E. – Madonna, United Kingdom – North American Premiere

Special Presentations
11 Flowers – Wang Xiaoshuai, China/France
50/50 – Jonathan Levine, USA – World Premiere
360 – Fernando Meirelles UK/Austria/France/Brazil- World Premiere
Americano – Mathieu Demy, France – World Premiere
Anonymous – Roland Emmerich, Germany – World Premiere
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius, France – Toronto Premiere
A Better Life – Cédric Khan, France – World Premiere
Burning Man – Jonathan Teplitzky, Australia – World Premiere
Chicken with Plums – Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, France/Germany/Belgium – North American Premiere
Coriolanus – Ralph Fiennes, United Kingdom – North American Premiere
Countdown – Huh Jong-ho, Korea – World Premiere
Dark Horse – Todd Solondz, USA – North American Premiere
The Deep Blue Sea – Terence Davies, United Kingdom – World Premiere
The Descendants – Alexander Payne, USA – World Premiere
Drive – Nicolas Winding Refn, USA – Canadian Premiere
Elles – Malgorzata Szumowska, France/Poland/Germany – World Premiere
The Eye of the Storm – Fred Schepisi, Australia – International Premiere
Friends With Kids – Jennifer Westfeldt, USA – World Premiere
Habemus Papam – Nanni Moretti, Italy/France – North American Premiere
Headhunters – Morten Tyldum, Norway – North American Premiere
Hick – Derick Martini, USA – World Premiere
The Hunter – Daniel Nettheim, Australia – World Premiere
Jeff, Who Lives at Home – Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass, USA – World Premiere
Killer Joe – William Friedkin, USA – North American Premiere
Like Crazy – Drake Doremus, USA – International Premiere
Machine Gun Preacher – Marc Forster, USA – World Premiere
Martha Marcy May Marlene – Sean Durkin, USA – Canadian Premiere
Melancholia – Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany – North American Premiere
The Oranges – Julian Farino, USA – World Premiere
Pearl Jam Twenty – Cameron Crowe, USA – World Premiere
Rampart – Oren Moverman, USA – World Premiere
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Lasse Hallstrom, United Kingdom – World Premiere
Shame – Steve McQueen, United Kingdom – North American Premiere
A Simple Life – Ann Hui, Hong Kong, China – North American Premiere
The Skin I Live In – Pedro Almodóvar, Spain – North American Premiere
Take Shelter – Jeff Nichols, USA – Canadian Premiere
Ten Year – Jamie Linden, USA – World Premiere
Trishna – Michael Winterbottom, United Kingdom – World Premiere
Twixt – Francis Ford Coppola, USA – World Premiere
Tyrannosaur – Paddy Considine, United Kingdom – Canadian Premiere
We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lynne Ramsay, United Kingdom – Canadian Premiere
Where Do We Go Now? – Nadine Labaki, France/Lebanon/Italy/Egypt – International Premiere
Woman in the Fifth – Pawel Pawlikowski, France/Poland/United Kingdom – World Premiere