We'll find out exactly at the beginning of next month, what Telluride manages to steal from the world premiere mentions below, but regardless of world preem status, TIFF this year is BIG. In the award season contention list, TIFF have stole the thunder from NYFF by adding Clint Eastwood's Hereafter and the always welcomed helmer Danny Boyle is bringing 127 Hours - this one is Telluride bound you can smell it.
As a result of a bizarre 2009 production year, TIFF is the happy recipient of some premium titles which include the world premieres to some of my most anticipated films this year in: Mike Mill's Beginners, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, Andrucha Waddington's Lope and Rowan Joffe's Brighton Rock. Then we have titles that are coming from this year's Sundance, Cannes or both (Blue Valentine picks up the trifecta honor) and then we have titles that come to us from out of nowhere with Michael Winterbottom's The Trip and Richard Ayoade's debut film, Submarine.
What we do know from the list below is that along with Black Swan, we have Barney's Version, The King's Speech, Potiche and The Town heading to Venice. The Debt is likely to debut there as well, joining Helen Mirren in The Tempest, but for some reason I'm seeing it more as a Telluride item. Among the world premieres that will service the Toronto public well, we have a pair of buyer titles in Little White Lies and The Conspirator and we have the shot in the streets of Toronto, Casino Jack (no longer being called Bagman). Among the off the radar selections, I'd say not many were expecting Emilio Estevez's The Way, Barry Blaustein's Peep World, David M. Rosenthal's Janie Jones.
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.
Compared with last year, Fortissmo Films come packing with only a single title, but that doesn't mean their sales agent won't be spending pretty much the entire festival from their rented office balcony. They signed a fairly ambitious deal with Fox - first time I've heard of a major studio outputting their titles to a films sales company of this nature and they've got one receiving a world preem at the festival in Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy.