Toronto hosts World Preems for Leaves of Grass and Ondine

Presented at last year’s TIFF as a soon to be lensed project, Leaves of Grass returns as a full fledged offering with Edward Norton to the power of two (see still). Also in the special presentation category we find Neil Jordan’s Ondine, a fantasy pic that might remind some people out there of Splash.

Leaves Of Grass – Tim Blake Nelson got to present his last picture as a director The Grey Zone only two days after 9/11. Norton is portraying twin brothers, one an Ivy League philosophy professor, the other a small-time and brilliant marijuana grower.

London River – Rachid Bouchareb got to present this at Berlin. This is about the terror attacks in London on July 7, 2005. Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyate star as strangers who come to London to find their son and daughter who have been missing since the bombings. They discover their children had been living together at the time of the attacks.

Mao’s Last Dancer – Directed by Bruce Beresford, this is scripted by Jan Sardi, this is based on the autobiography of Li Cunxin, a Chinese peasant-turned- ballet dancer who ultimately defected and later migrated to Australia.

Max Manus – Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg’s WWII pic sees Max Manus return to Norway, currently occupied by the Nazis. He joins with the Norwegian resistance movement in their fight against the Germans but is arrested. He manages to escape to Scotland where he receives training before being sent back to Norway to carry out various sabotage missions against the occupational force.

Moloch Tropical – Raoul Peck is a foreign filmmaker (born in Haiti, raised in Zaire (Congo) and France) and I’ve got no clue who he is. This is based on the sociopolitical atmosphere during the last 24 hours that marked the undoing of the kingdom of Henri-Christophe, one of the major leaders of the Haitian Revolution, through which Haiti gained its independence from France in 1804.

Mother – Bong Joon-ho’s film played extremely well at Cannes, Scripted by Bong and Park Eun-kyo, story sees an a social loser framed as the perpetrator of an horrific murder and his hard-headed mother has to figure out who really did it to keep her son from prison.

Ondine – Neil Jordan tells the story of a fisherman (Colin Farrell) in southwest Ireland who hauls up a live girl in his nets. Ondine is a mythological sea nymph, and theories about the girl’s origins blossom as she transforms the lives of the fisherman and local townsfolk.