Over 295 films - this includes shorts, fiction and documentary, animation, retrospectives, tributes, professional panels, outdoor interactive installations, the festival which takes place between the 13th to the 24th of October, furiously promotes not only world talent, but local French Canadian filmmakers. Among the notable titles, we have Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro volte, Olivier Assayas' Carlos and Alex de la Iglesia's The Last Circus and Wang Bing is doing a Master Class for Venice-winning The Ditch. His epic 9 hour film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks will also be shown as part of a retrospective.
I was wondering why Peter Mullan's Neds wasn't included in Venice. I was wondering why the Midnight Madness section didn't name Koen Mortier's latest. I was wondering why Cannes regular Bent Hamer wasn't in Cannes. TIFF's CWC section has all three high profile items, plus Venice Film Festival's Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichard) and Three (Tom Tykwer). Reichard will participate in Kelly Reichardt in a Mavericks discussion about the behind the scenes of her process.
After IFC and SPC, it's now up to Strand Releasing to fill up their coffers with films from last month's Cannes festival. They just announced the pick up of the Cannes Classics selected Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, and less than 24 hours later comes one more pick up - this time in a Mexican film directed by a first time Australian filmmaker. Not to be confused with the comedy Leap Year, Año bisiesto was the lucky film that won the Camera D'or this year - which is given to a first time work and 2010 all three sections excluding the Main Comp for full of first time efforts.
In the list we find three items on my "Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of the Year in: Fabienne Berthaud's Pieds nus sur les limaces (see pic of Diane Kruger above), Cam Archer's Shit Year and Alistair Banks Griffin's debut film, Two Gates Of Sleep. Also included in the section is a doc-essay film from Michelangelo Frammartino that I'll be itching to see as well. Of the veteran auteurs, we have works from Christoffer Boe, Jean-Paul Civeyrac, old school High School doc filmmaker Frederik Wiseman and look for the Rolling Stones to be on hand for Stephen Kijak's Stones In Exile..
I spent all of last week divulging some of films that I expect to be in Cannes this year, and Screen Daily happened to do the same. There are a good number of films that are mentioned of both sites' lists, but I mention about twenty films that the trade makes no mention of, and of course they have got a long list as well of films that I either passed on as potential selections or I was totally oblivious as to their existence.