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.
Today co-directors Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling of the Toronto International Film Festival announce the first batch of titles that are the make-up of the 36th edition. Today's the pair will read off mostly Gala screening mentions (our Blake Williams will be LIVE tweeting), which in turn give us a strong indication as to what will be shown in Venice and what Telluride, NYFF and BFI London Film Festivals might salvage/lasso as their own.
Next week, the Sundance Film Festival will release about 100+ titles that are the make up of their upcoming edition and this can only mean one thing: this past week was the official nail-biting, living next to the phone type of deal for several first time filmmakers.
The Toronto Int Film Festival have added tons of Canadian content sprawling across several sections and this year's Midnight Madness opener will be a rowdy one in Michael Dowse's Fubar II. Among the notable world premieres we have Jonathan Sobol's A Beginners Guide to Endings grabing a Gala screening and in the Special Presentations we'll have a green carpet premiere for Sturla Gunnarsson's Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie - she follows the 75 year-old environmentalist during his time outs, and Jacob Tierney will make it a back to back years of preeming at TIFF, after The Trotsky he'll show off Good Neighbours which stars Scott Speedman, Emily Hampshire and Jay Baruchel.
July is a pretty big month for movie productions worth keeping tabs on - this month's IONCINEMA.com's "Tracking Shot" features a mix of indie and studio project, with helmer Chris Gorak (Right at Your Door) making the jump for low budget to huge budget with Summit Ent. distributing and Timur Bekmambetov producing an alien invasion project.