pina dreaming

Once, when I was a teenager, immersed in acting lessons and still unable to give up ballet, despite an upper body that had filled out and a patrician second toe that made pointe work impossible, I went to see Pina Bausch's Wuppertal Dance Theatre. I still remember the piece I saw: there were leaves and dirt on the floor that the performers slid on and smeared each other with. At one point there was a kind of cakewalk in which the dancers followed each other single file while making a beautiful repetitive arm and hand gesture that spoke to my childish heart. The music of that little cakewalk I still remember, all these years later. It is a complete unit of melody which, like the dance, repeats itself over and over. I don't know why my brain has held on to it, but it has.

In the week or so since Pina Bausch died, that melody has been haunting me. I have plunged into a sea of youtube, dailymotion and other video sites, trying to determine what must have been the piece that I saw. The leaves and dirt point to Rite of Spring, the early monumental work that took on Stravinsky with a kind of existential, almost reluctant spirituality, thwarted by a downward spiral of human emotion. The dates for that project (mid-70s) jive as well. I watched segments from it with amazement and new appreciation, but the gorgeous Stravinsky was wrong for the work I saw. The music I remember is extremely playful. Like the music of a jewel box, it is a tune a child could pick up and hum for days. And I remember it being a briefer work - a short piece.

As I continued my search, I was reminded of Pina Bausch's exclusive and devoted relationship to the classical choral music repertoire. In an era when her North American spiritual cousin Twyla Tharp was criss-crossing the landscape of western musical tradition with her works, Bausch stayed remarkably loyal to the classical choral forms. Her passion for Gluck allowed for her beautifully layered Orphee et Eurydice (pictured above). Though in later years she experimented with African and Asian themes and rhythm, she was most at home with the European canon, both classical and contemporary, and leaning toward opera in new and revitalized ballet interpretations of such legendary works as Bartok's Bluebeard.

Since I was not often able to see her work live, the video journey has led to yearnings and regrets for missed opportunities. Of these, Cafe Muller sticks out, and watching her lifelong collaborator, the amazing Dominique Mercy in Ein Trauerspiel, set to one of my favourite piano works by Schubert (the piano trio in E flat). Kontakthof with its somewhat oversimplified message of sexism is still a raw, powerful piece and I would be curious about its echos in memory for me of a youthful feminist zeal. But if I could snap my fingers and see anything in the next minute, it would undoubtedly be Vollmond, the very recent work which is an extraordinary celebration and lamentation in water. It would have been not only affecting, but hugely impressionable to me. Watch a trailer from youtube and you'll see what I mean.

I still haven't figured out what was the work I saw back in my teens. But my journey also took me to one of my favorite films, and one of my earliest encounters with international cinema, Fellini's E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On). In that movie, Bausch plays a blind princess on a 19th century ocean voyage with other nobility. In the scene I remember, she recounts the colours produced by the sounds of people's voices. It's one of the few times we the world heard the actual voice of Pina Bausch in a performance context. Watch her and note how her lovely character, at first glance the most colourless and dowdiest person at the table, becomes by the end of the scene the most transcendently compelling.

Her face then, and especially in recent years, looked a bit like Virginia Woolf, another hero of mine. There is the same intelligent brow and slightly sunken cheeks, smallish eyes that somehow still dance with liveliness. The face is expressive, like Martha Graham's. It causes me to imagine how the face would have leant itself to the body when she performed her own works. In that regard, perhaps nothing is more iconically vivid as a farewell image of Pina Bausch than the white-draped sylphanic and diaphonous black and white scenes from Cafe Muller. In them, she is almost a dream incarnation of herself, even while rooted in the rough and tumble hard-edged and very earthbound choreography of the men who fight and fall around her in the cafe. That footage is available in many places online, but watch it here in this French tv version where the quality is best. It starts at minute 2:27 but the documenary profile, if you understand french, is a good setup. We are so lucky that we have that sequence to watch so that we can always remember this goddess of the underground as the moving spirit that she was, rooted in earth and leaves but equally and eternally buoyant.

pina dreaming

Arriving in the Industry pick-up centre this morning at the Hyatt Regency on King, I was surprised at how full it already was, as people (many arriving directly from Venice) trailed suitcases and suitbags - too anxious to get their package to check in first. It seemed impossible to me that a cliché was the very first piece of dialogue I overheard: "I'm Jack. We met in Cannes I think."

It has been an exciting first day. But before I get to that, I have to I start my TIFF blogging with an apology. For the last few years I have been ranting about the Lightbox - its corporate leadweight on the festival, the way it symbolizes the increasingly corporate profie of TIFF that has changed it from an alternative art-house salon into a marketplace. But now that I am attending movies in it, I have to say that it is a great screening house. The cinemas are ideal movie spaces - and it only takes a quick walk up the street to the loathsome Scotiabank to feel the gratitude deepen. TIFF's P & I screenings are split this year between the Scotiabank multiplex and the Lightbox. The LB screens are exquisite (and my first film was made all the richer by its cinema space). The building also contains the feeling of "museum" in a way that is entirely appropriate. I will have to get used to the many suspended walkways and glass railings that feed my vertigo, but the building works and is a pleasure to be in.

My first screening was Wim Wenders' Pina, and it was thrilling to be handed my 3D glasses. Waiting for the lights to go down I listened in on a conversation behind me: two men talking about Lars Von Trier's Melancholia which they had just seen. I had hoped so much to arrive in time today for that screening, but couldn't manage it. I learned much however from their intelligent, insightful discussion which included relating it to von Trier's wider work.

Pina's gorgeous lines are borne out of Wim Wenders ability to adopt Bausch's eye for the inspiration born of environment, from an industrial complex to open mountain side to the graceful gliding of the monorail through Wuppertal like a dancer itself. The decision for 3-D works, though I wasn't sure at first. 3-D offers a separation of space that feels like CGI and takes a while to adjust to as having been generated in true action. The advantage here is that it simulates the way we experience dance in the theatre and Wenders seems to intuit that - with shots that play with the concept of a theatrical 'house' - where the heads of those like us are visible in the frame watching the dance. And yet in many other ways the film seeks to break the fourth wall. It made me think of the work of my friend and Canadian filmmaker Moze Mossanen who has been doing this since the 1980s with his films about dance. I can't wait for Moze to see this film and assess the 3D aspect. Which wall are we breaking with the third dimension? It seems to be about depth of field and there are moments when the dancers seem to be coming right toward us. There is a layering of the theatrical sets that also works well.

Wenders' respect for Bausch is perhaps the most moving thing about Pina. It is an homage, from one German master to another, speaking across forms but with a tremendous amount of suspended ego. Their styles seem to blend. When Pina Bausch died two years ago, I wrote a piece on her then. (Go here to read it.) I wrote there about Café Muller and how haunting it is to watch Bausch perform it. Wenders uses that footage of her performance in a wonderful way, nestling it in the centre of a sequence that approaches the piece through the reminiscences of her collaborators, who then perform the work again. The film seeks to lift its participants' voices out of the body by allowing us to simply watch them, as we hear their voice. It is a clever device. In the end it is the dances themselves which transfix the image and memory of Pina in our hearts. Lovingly performed by an otherwise sorrowful company, still adjusting to her departure, they lift out of even three dimensions into a weightless undefinable reality.

TIFF '11: Docs and Buenos Aires

Without question, the two most exciting films named this past Tuesday did not belong to any of the programmes being released that day, but instead are two more in the Masters line-up still largely yet to come. Of these, I am thrilled that TIFF will give me the opportunity to see Wim Wenders biopic of German dance theatre genius Pina Bausch, in Pina. It boggles my mind to imagine the one aesthetic being brought to bear on the other but I am certain only pleasure awaits, especially since the film takes the excerpted dance works into the outdoor environment of Wuppertal, the town in Germany where Bausch's company lived and worked. A tremendously exciting entry. Equally compelling will be Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb's poignantly titled This is Not a Film which made me cry when I first saw it, alongside the first filmmaker's name. As most people are aware, Panahi has been under house arrest and banned from filmmaking in Iran for almost two years because of that country's disapproval of the subject matter of his films, which often break the taboo on showing adult relations and political realities in very powerful ways. Assisted here by Mirtahmasb, he has nonetheless brought another project into the world which both chronicles his own house arrest and profiles the current realities of Iranian cinema. These two films soar to the top of my list as absolute musts.

There are programmes that define the festival-goer. Among these, Midnight Madness offers a chance to live out the violent and surreal in sophisticated ways in films made by often master story tellers. Alas, however, it is not for me. I'm more of a Wavelengths girl myself - a programme which is usually the first out of the gate in the announcements, since its experimental and avant-garde context speaks perhaps to the smallest number of interested people. The festival press office doesn't create much buzz of suspense around what programer Andréa Picard has done each year, despite that her programme is held highly within the festival staff itself, and I often devote an entire blogpost to it.

Similarly, Vanguard, the edgy new programme that emerged in this last decade, offers films that challenge us to go outside our comfort zone. But aside from a handful that I have loved, I tend to find the real 'edginess' elsewhere. Comfort zones exist as much in our expectations of cinema as in the content of films. I find The Tree of Life one of the edgiest films in recent times, because it defies almost all North American film conventions, pushing the poetic over the linear, the timeless over the sequential narrative, the impressionistic over the progressively logical. That is a very brave film in my mind, cast into the world without the director's presence anywhere nearby to lend a helping hand in understanding it. That said, this year's speight of Vanguard films do hold promising entries.

First of these is a film which at first glance strangely echoes events of recent weeks entitled Oslo, 31. August by Norwegian director Joachim Trier. A closer look, however, reveals a much more thoughtful and less violent film which chronicles a day in the life of a young drifter eerily named Anders as he attempts to reconcile his own past mistakes and future possibilities in a single night of encountering friends in the nation's capital. Lou Ye's Love and Bruises, has a title that hints at the crises in store for a young Chinese woman who falls in with a French youth in the suburbs when she moves to Paris. This newest work from a fascinating Chinese filmmaker may have interesting things to say about gender and sexuality when they are both located and dislocated from culture and community. Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio offers a story set in the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami affecting that country last year, with The Year of the Tiger. A convict is both freed by these events and left to face their consequences to his own life.

Otherwise, of the films announced on Tuesday in the Vanguards, Midnight Madness, TIFF Kids, City to City and Real to Reel programmes, my remaining picks cull from the last two. The city being featured in this year's festival is Buenos Aires, likely to be a much less controversial choice than last year's Tel Aviv. The uniquely Argentinian street performance culture of Murga is featured in Alison Murray's Caprichosos de San Telmo which looks at the multi-cultural aspect of this new form. Pablo Trapero's Crane World looks interesting, about a man whose life as a crane operator in the city's construction industry promises a very different take on the city from its glamourized music and café traditions. Santiago Mitre's The Student is billed as a thriller set in the crumbling world of the University of Buenos Aires and uses a corrupt student political life as a model for the larger world around it. My strongest bet in this programme, however, is Nicolás Prividera's Fatherland, which explores the more recent history of Argentina through the voices of writers that emerge from Buenos Aires' Recoleta Cemetery.

In recent years, I have found the Real to Reel programming very disappointing, perhaps reflecting a trend in less innovative work being made. I am thrilled to be much more optimistic this year as emerging voices of the documentary form like Jessica Yu run alongside old festival favourites like Nick Broomfield. Broomfield's latest chronicles the obvious in Sarah Palin: You Betcha and there is much to look forward to and be on guard for here. I find Broomfield's style very strongly prejudiced (more so than even Michael Moore) without much room for nuance, but then it will be hard to resist seeing that brought to bear on the famous Tina Fey-mimicked politician. I'm not sure if I will make it through all of Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: an Odyssey which pulls together 15 hours of compiled footage on the history of film and includes rare and important interviews and clips from the films that have helped shape our film consciousness, around the world, - but I want to and should. Gary Hustwit's Urbanized completes his trilogy that observes the way cities integrate the innovative design of their leading architects and planners. Costa Botes has made a film about one man's attempt to save Eskimo dogs from extinction through private breeding and care in The Last Dogs of Winter. Corinna Belz's portrait of the famous artist in Gerhard Richter Painting sounds like it might be a poetic reflection not only the artist but on the paintings themselves and is billed as increasing our understanding of "the art of seeing". Jonathan Demme's I'm Carolyn Parker: the Good, the Mad and the Beautiful profiles a woman whose younger years in the civil rights movement gave her the voice and strength needed to lead the movement for the rights of those affected by Hurricane Katrina to return to their homes and rebuild when city officials had deemed it too dangerous and impossible. In a similar theme to Tree of Life, Ron Fricke's Samsara is a "non-verbal, guided meditation that spans the globe on a journey of the soul." I'm game for that journey.

My two top picks in this category, however, are Atia Al Daradji and Mohamed Al Daradji's In My Mother's Arms and Jessica Yu's Last Call at the Oasis. The former profiles Hasham, a man who rescued 32 children from warzones and has cared for them, who nonetheless is forced to find new lodgings with them when threatened with eviction. A rare opportunity to see behind the scenes on the Iraqi side of this ongoing war, it promises an important reality check on the true picture of civilian casualties caused by it. Jessica Yu's film explores how North Americans stay oblivious to the profound water crisis soon to affect us all.

TIFF 2019 - Here we go!

Note! Alphabetical list below is not complete yet but will be soon --- please check back! T - Z is coming!

Another year has passed, and a particularly challenging summer for this blogger, and so looking forward to TIFF19 has been like seeing the line of shore from a storm-tossed boat. That image might also capture the spirit of this year's TIFF programming list, which pitches and rolls and floats its way through the world issues that are most preoccupying us, while also looking within at our deepest hopes and fears. Here's a glimpse at how.

Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche in
Hirokazu Kore-eda's The Truth

Families! The old saying that you can't live with them and you can't live without them will find its many voices in this year's TIFF programming. In thirty-five plus years of attending the festival, I have never seen a year so marked by stories of the way we come together and form families, whether biological or chosen, broken, reunited, struggling, or free. Mother-child stories are at a premium, followed by stories of families in migratory or refugee realities. People separated from families and loved ones looking to find ways to be whole again will take us on many journeys. (See below: Antigone, Balloon, Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies, Blackbird, Bring Me Home, just to name a few from the front of the alphabet).

Biopics! Some documentary, some docufiction, some dramatic reconstructions will reframe the lives of performers and legends of all kinds as the movies bring us the stories of Judy Garland, Jean Seberg, Helen Reddy, Truman Capote and two popes!, among many others! A film can show us what a written biography can't -- the quiet moments of decision and uncertainty and triumph that build the story of a life. All of these will be tapped in the next two weeks.

TIFF is taking very seriously its commitment to upholding women filmmakers. The Share Her Journey campaign, which seeks to support the voices of women in film from all over the world, continues this year in the presence of new and provocative talents, rich with vision and wisdom from all over the globe.

So get out the highlighters and settle in! The voyage to new and familiar worlds is boarding! Titles are linked to the TIFF programme page and directors are named in brackets. The associated programme area is also included. Bon voyage!

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Hassen Ferhani's 143 Sahara Street

143 Sahara Street (Hassen Ferhani). The brief clip available for this doc about a woman running the only cafe in the middle of the Sahara promises a bit of humour, while contemplating what it means to surrender your whole life to be an oasis for others. Wavelengths

37 Seconds (Hikari). A woman living with cerebral palsy dreams of being a Manga artist while managing a family in this first feature by Japanese filmmaker Hikari, which won the Audience Award at the Berlinale. Contemporary World Cinema (CWC)

Oualid Mouaness' 1982, starring Nadine Labaki

1982 (Oualid Mouaness). Nadine Labaki wowed the film world last year with her Oscar-nominated Capernaum. This year she goes in front of the camera in Mouaness' story of a boy-girl romance set in a posh Christian school in 1980s pre-invasion Lebanon. Discovery

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson). The lofty and the earthbound are evoked in the compelling series of images that have emerged from this latest film by Swedish master Andersson, which includes a couple floating like Chagall lovers. Little can be found about the actual story except that it offers a series of vignettes about "personal lack of awareness". Visuals are very compelling. Masters

Roy Andersson's About Endlessness

Adam (Maryam Touzani). Two outcast women -- one pregnant and shunned and the other widowed and bereft -- join forces in this first-time feature from actor Touzani set in contemporary Casablanca. I've watched the only available clip several times, drawn by performances. CWC

American Son (Kenny Leon). Kenny Leon is bringing to the screen the Broadway award-winning play by Christopher Damos-Brown about a young man's disappearance and the mixed-race parents who are trying to find out what may have happened to him and confronting racism and police violence in the process. No trailer, but Kerry Washington is reprising her Broadway role. SP

Louise Archambault's And the Birds Rained Down

And the Birds Rained Down (Louise Archambault). One of the great memories of recent Festival years was Louise Archambault's Gabrielle, about a young woman musician with Williams syndrome in Montreal who strives to be both an artist and independent. This year Archambault turns her lens on aging hermits hiding out in the Québec wilderness whose world is interrupted when a woman is brought to stay with them. Love the trailer. CWC

Anne at 13,000 Feet (Kazik Radwanski). I still remember vividly Radwanski's The Tower, and I have come to appreciate lead actor Deragh Campbell through her collaborative work with Sofia Bohdanowicz. So I am especially excited to see this story of a woman waiting for her life to take flight, figuratively and literally. Platform

Nahéma Ricci in Sophie Draspe's Antigone

Antigone (Sophie Deraspe). The ancient drama by Sophocles is given a modern re-telling in this story of a man gunned down by mistake, and how his sister, Antigone, finds a way to hold honour and family together as a new immigrant in Québec. CWC

Arab Blues (Manele Labidi). This first feature from French-Tunisian Labidi follows a woman returning to her native Tunis after a decade in France, hoping to set up a psychotherapy practice. But are people ready for it? The programme note hints at some comedic elements. CWC

Atlantics (Mati Diop). Fresh from her Grand Prix at Cannes, Mati Diop's first feature story of a woman coping with the departure of her lover and a requisite marriage to someone else has been hailed by critics and audiences abroad. CWC

Nina Hoss in Ina Weisse's The Audition

The Audition (Ina Weisse). The amazing Nina Hoss plays a violin teacher with an uncompromising commitment to talent, including a new protegé in this second feature from Weiss who previously directed The Architect. Discovery

August (Armando Capó). Capó goes home to rural Cuba to tell this coming-of-age story of a young man caught in the whirlwind of radically shifting Cuban politics, who joins those migrating by boat to the US. Discovery

Pema Tseden's Balloon

Balloon (Pema Tseden). Two sisters, a fulfilled mother of three and a Buddhist nun, must make unexpected choices in the face of changing family and relationship realities in contemporary Tibet. CWC

Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov). Fresh from the FIPRESCI Best Director (Un Certain Regard) prize at Cannes, Balagov (who was a protegé of Alexander Sokurov) brings us a story of post-siege Leningrad, and two women trying to rebuild their lives amid catastrophic losses. CWC

Jennifer Ehle in Edward Burns'
Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies

Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies (Edward Burns). Actor-director Burns brings us a contemporary story of a suburban couple -- and particularly a woman -- who are struggling to remember the meaning of life as children stretch their wings and not much else changes at home. Starring Jennifer Ehle, on the short-list of actors I would follow into anywhere. CWC

Blackbird (Roger Michell) Why are so many good Danish films being remade this year? I have been dreading the American remake of After the Wedding, as the original is one of my favourite films of all time. But now there is also Blackbird, which reconsiders Bart Freundlich's 2014 film, Silent Heart. Starring Susan Sarandon, Mia Wasikowska and Kate Winslet, it follows a dying woman's desire to bring her family together -- and the two sisters who collide when she does. Gala

Bring Me Home (Kim Seung-woo). A mother grieving her husband, who died looking for their lost child, finds new hope in a dubious hint that the son may be found in a local fishing village. There she encounters corrupt authorities and more challenges in this first feature being billed as a thriller. Discovery

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Violet Nelson in
The Body Remembers when the World Broke Open

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Kathleen Hepburn). One woman comforts another when two strangers encounter each other on the street in the middle of a crisis. Compassion, empathy and solidarity lead to burgeoning friendship in this collaboration between two gifted Indigenous Canadian filmmakers. Director Tailfeathers also co-stars. CWC

Gitanjali Rao's Bombay Rose

Bombay Rose (Gitanjali Rao). Eight or more storylines converge and intertwine around a single rose as it moves through the heart of Mumbai in Rao's first animated feature. CWC

The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi). Set on Lake Como (which might be reason enough alone to see it), this heist film follows an art dealer who becomes obsessed with the idea of having a particular painting, at any cost. Co-stars Elizabeth Debicki whom I loved in Vita & Virginia. Gala

The Cave (Feras Fayyad). We've all heard of the horrific intentional bombing of hospitals in the war on Syria. This documentary chronicles a subterranean hospital under the city of Damascus, run by women, and a particular surgeon seeking to hold the place together, despite criticism from male partners. Docs

Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu) This is such a great idea for a film, and there is every reason to believe it will be wonderful. Alfre Woodard plays a death-row prison warden whose job is to help make the last hours of inmates comfortable. The emotional reserve she must have to do her job is a liability at home, where her husband tries to recover the woman he once knew. Gala

Tamar Shavgulidze's Comets

Comets (Tamar Shavgulidze). I love how nuanced this story sounds, which follows two women in the country of Georgia who once came close to being lovers and who find themselves living as neighbours thirty years later. The programme note says, "sometimes only the language of cinema can unlock the secrets we keep and the words that go unspoken." Not sure how movies will make a difference but observing how love transitions and changes, while staying the same is a big draw for me. Disc

Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again

Coming Home Again (Wayne Wang) A veteran of the beautiful adaptation, Wang brings his considerable gifts this time to the story of a man taking care of his dying mother in San Francisco, while trying to remember and master her traditional cooking. SP

Coppers (Alan Zweig). Zweig has brought his insightful sensibility to so many Canadian realities -- so this profile of policemen and women and the toll the work takes on them personally seems likely to be very moving. The trailer also points to a more poetic experience than we might expect. Docs

Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa). I am very intrigued by the sound of this tale of a youth offender who poses as a priest in a Polish village. Rather than just a disguise, the ruse leads to opportunities for spiritual transformation for himself and the community, until his past catches up. CWC

Grímur Hákonarson's The County

The County (Grímur Hákonarson). Let's face it. Anything by an Icelandic filmmaker should be on your list. But this story of a farmer who tries to confront her corrupt local co-op after the death of her husband -- promises humour as well as a good fight, from the director of the fabulous Rams. CWC

Cunningham (Alla Kovgan). Many of us remember the awe-inspiring beauty of Wim Wenders' Pina, which celebrated Pina Bausch in 3D splendour. Perhaps inspired by that film, Kovgan has turned out her own 3D feature profiling American dance legend Merce Cunningham. Discovery

Desert One (Barbara Kopple). Blending live action with animation, legendary filmmaker Kopple goes behind scenes on the dramatic rescue of hostages in the 1979 Iranian revolution by focusing on the helicoptor that brought people to safety. Discovery

Oliver Laxe's Fire Will Come

Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe). The trailer is gorgeous for this odd tale from the director of Mimosas, about a pyromaniac who returns to his home village from prison for having set a notorious fire. Will he do it again? Wavelengths

The Goldfinch (John Crowley) The novel by Donna Tartt is given the full Hollywood treatment for this story of a boy who loses his mother in a museum terrorist blast and goes on a quest to find the painting of a goldfinch that was the last thing they shared together. Gala.

Greed (Michael Winterbottom) It's hard to read what the style of this film will be -- but certainly some satire is implied in the title, in this story of a billionaire fast-fashion magnate (Steve Coogan) who holds a birthday party disrupted by refugees. SP

Guest of Honour (Atom Egoyan) It's always a time for celebration when Egoyan has a new film. I have been sitting in his TIFF screenings for close to thirty years. David Thewlis -- one of my favourite actors in the world -- tries to mend his relationship with his daughter while working as a restaurant health inspector. Watch the clip on the link. SP

Cynthia Erivo as the title character
in Kasi Lemmons' Harriet

Harriet (Kasi Lemmons) Some of us remember the beautiful nuance and character depth in Lemmons' Eve's Bayou. So we can only imagine what she will do with the life story of Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist who almost single-handedly founded the Underground railroad during and after the American Civil War. Gala.

A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick). I get to start my whole festival with Malick's latest, which has drawn good reviews in Europe, about a WWII Austrian conscientious resister whose faith prevents him from participating in Nazi ideology. All of the WWII dramas this year promise more depth and soul-searching than usual -- see also Lyrebird and The Painted Bird. Masters

Hala (Minhal Baig). A newly-immigrated teenage Pakistani youth tries to balance her family's expectations of her with her newfound freedom and burgeoning desires. Parents start out in differing perspectives that change over the course of the story -- a nice way to show how immigration affects all members of the family. CWC

Hope Gap (William Nicholson) I'm so glad that we get this chance to see the deeper side of Bill Nighy's considerable gifts -- without the ironic edge which he seems constantly cast for, in this story of a couple breaking up after most of their lives together. Co-stars Annette Bening. SP.

Alanis Obomsawin's Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger

Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger (Alanis Obomsawin) Indigenous cinema in Canada has been born on the backs of Alanis Obomsawin, whose unflinching and human eye on Indigenous story in this country has illuminated worlds which have a harder time being understood in the wider media. I am so glad that she is bringing her lens to the unsettling and enraging story of Jordan Michael Anderson, whose childhood illness was unable to be treated properly because his case was mired in bureaucratic tape as to whose government responsibility he was. Jordan's Principle is the legislation that emerged from this tragedy, but we are still a long way from full implementation of it. A must-see. Masters

Renee Zellwegger as Judy Garland in Rupert Goold's Judy

Judy (Rupert Goold) Well. What to say about this!! Most of us know the story of the legend that was Judy Garland, whose early life as a studio actor at MGM led to a life-time struggle with overwork and addiction. Her talent inspired a generation of people and had no small impact on the birth of the LGBTQ+ movement. Renee Zellweger takes on the diva. The trailer is both worrying and reassuring in ways too complex to explain in sound bites.  SP

Kuessipan (Myriam Verrault). Indigenous cinema is fast becoming the most exciting in our land. As more Indigenous filmmakers have access to resources, a greater variety of story and experience emerges. What a gift to have a film (based on the novel by Naomi Fontaine) set in an Innu Québec community -- which follows two girlfriends whose futures are unfolding in vastly different ways. Discovery

Meryl Streep in Steven Soderburgh's The Laundromat

The Laundromat (Steven Soderburgh) It's Meryl Streep. It's Steven Soderburgh. And it's the Panama papers. That should be enough to put this one on your list! The story follows a widow trying to resolve her insurance claim who is led into the world of financial crime and money laundering. SP

Lyrebird (Dan Friedkin). This post-WWII art forgery drama is a first feature for Friedkin, and tells the story of a soldier and member of the Dutch resistance who investigaes the illegal sale of a Vermeer to Herman Göring  by an affluent Nazi-sympathizer. SP

Made in Bangladesh (Rubaiyat Hossain). Rights activist Hossain brings her knowledge and sensibilities to bear on this story of a Dhaka woman who attempts to form a union in her garment factory, after a fire kills a colleague. CWC

Satu Tuuli Karhu in Zaida Bergroth's Maria's Paradise

Maria's Paradise (Zaida Bergroth). The visuals are compelling in this fourth feature from Bergroth, which follows a young woman living from birth in a cult in 1920s Finland. A chance look at the outside world, brings new perspectives and desires. CWC

Military Wives (Peter Cattaneo) Kristin Scott Thomas leads a strong cast in this true story of a choir made up of military wives, whose ties deepen as their fame grows. SP

Shan MacDonald in Heather Young's Murmur

Murmur (Heather Young). Continuing a predominant theme of mother-child films in this year's TIFF, a woman forced to community service finds herself adopting pets as a way of overcoming the loss of other relationships, in this first feature by promising Canadian director Heather Young. Discovery

My Zoey (Julie Delpy). The programme note is a bit vague on plot -- but we can guess that Delpy is entering new and riveting territory with this psychological thriller, in which she also stars, about a recently divorced mother driven to extremes when tragedy strikes. Platform.

Apayata Kotierk and Kim Bodnia in Zacharias Kunuk's
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk

One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (Zacharias Kunuk). The Indigenous cinema of the Arctic has a pretty formidable history and much of that is due to the work of Kunuk, arguably Canada's greatest living filmmaker. The director of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and Maliglutitt (Searchers), arrives at TIFF this year with the story of Inuit communities being forced to resettle, through the eyes of a nomadic Inuit hunter. Not to be missed. (Special Events)

Ordinary Love (Lisa Barros-D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn) Irish playwright Owen McCafferty wrote the screenplay adaptation of his play, about the ways that a cancer diagnosis reveals long-held truths for a couple in contemporary Ireland. Gala

The Other Lamb (Malgorzata Szumowska) I loved Szumowska's Elles, which screened at TIFF a number of years ago. So I am excited for this return feature from the Polish director, about a woman born into a female cult who starts to resist. Two films at TIFF this year follow extremely similar stories -- see also Maria's Paradise, above. SP

Atiq Rahimi's Our Lady of the Nile

Our Lady of the Nile (Atiq Rahimi). 1970s Rwanda is the background for Rahimi's newest film about schoolgirls at a Belgian-run Catholic school in Rwanda. Elitism and tribal differences foreshadow the genocide of the 1990s. CWC

Pain and Glory (Almodóvar) Memory and addiction are two themes in Spanish auteur Almodovar's self-reflective film about a filmmaker trying to reconcile aging, career and the return of an old flame. Antonio Banderas won the Best Actor prize at Cannes. SP

The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul) Czech filmmaker Marhoul brings a "not for the faint of heart" gritty realism to his adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel about a Jewish boy whose parents are killed and who wanders Eastern Europe during WWII in an effort to survive. An all-star cast, including Harvey Keitel and Stellan Skarsgard. SP

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) Shoplifters, as a thriller. Korean master filmmaker Bong won the Palme D'Or this year for this story of two vastly different families, whose lives overlap when a son of one becomes tutor to the daughter of another. Throw in some sci-fi and unexpected twists, and you have one of the biggest hits of the year. SP

Adèle Haenel and Valerie Golino in Céline Sciamma's
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) Those who remember Sciamma's Girlhood will be eager to see her latest film, set in eighteenth-century France, about a woman sent to paint a portrait of a young fiancée, who falls in love with her instead, causing both women to push the boundaries imposed on them by society. Starring Adèle Haenel. SP

Radioactive (Marjane Satrapi). Ever since Persepolis, I have loved (and taught) the work of Marjane Satrapi, whose humour and acutely truthful eye illuminates the stories she tells. This film blends live action and animation in chronicling the life of scientist Marie Curie. Starring Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley. Gala.

The Rest of Us (Ainsling Chin-Yee) There are shades of Kieslowski's Three Colours: Blue in this story by Canadian Chin-Yee about a single mother who welcomes her ex-partner's wife and daughter into her life when they become homeless. A wonderful cast, including Heather Graham, Bomb Girls' Jodie Balfour and Sophie Nélisse (Monsieur Lazhar). Discovery

Sarah Gavron's Rocks

Rocks (Sarah Gavron). UK director Gavron was able to steer the all-star team in Suffragette. This film about a teenaged girl forced to take care of herself and her younger brother also boasts a cast of many young women/girls and reflects on what happens when children are forced into adulthood and maturity sooner than they should be. Platform.

Seberg (Benedict Andrews) Kristen Stewart's reputation as a serious dramatic actress has been on the rise in the last few years, and largely because of her work with French auteur Olivier Assayas. Now she is working with Aussie-filmmaker Andrews, in this biopic of the American actor who inspired the filmmakers of the French New Wave -- and particularly Godard. The film picks up her life as she returns to America where she becomes obsessed with, and joins, the Black Power movement in the late 1960s. SP

Sing Me a Song (Thomas Balmès). Filmmaker Balmès first met his subject, a Buddhist monk in Bhutan, in the early 2000s when he was a boy of seven. Now seventeen, the filmmaker returns to discover that the young man, still a monk, lives on the internet. His transformation at the hands of technology, and his long-distance relationship with a woman form the narrative for this documentary by the director of 2013's Happiness. Docs

Wang Xiaoshuai's So Long, My Son

So Long, My Son (Wang Xiaoshuai). I still remember Wang's beautiful Flowers, from 2011, so I am keen to see this latest film about a couple coming to terms with the death of their son. Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei won top prizes for acting at Berlin. CWC




The Song of Names (Francois Girard) It's been several decades since Girard made The Red Violin, which follows a single violin through several continents and centuries. The complexity of vision that has a true ear for music and musicians seems set to wow us again in this tale of a violin virtuoso searching for a friend and fellow violin virtuoso, whom he knew in the camps of the holocaust. Gala.

Raha Khodayari and Mahan Nasiri in
Mahnaz Mohammadi's Son, Mother

Son, Mother (Mahnaz Mohammadi). Iranian activist Mohammadi makes her fiction film debut in this story of a woman working in a factory who must weigh the terrible cost of a marriage proposal that would allow her to provide for her children -- but one of them will be forced to live elsewhere. Discovery

Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach). When the year arrives that there is no Ken Loach movie -- we will stop the clocks. At age 83, he continues to confront the primary social issues of our time, and always with a deeply compassionate and ruthlessly honest heart. In this latest, he tackles the challenges faced by a family who strike out to work for themselves, while sliding slowly deeper in debt. Masters

Ellen Page and Ian Daniel's
There's Something in the Water

There's Something in the Water (Ellen Page and Ian Daniel). Page and Daniel interview Indigenous and Black communities in Nova Scotia who are directly (and it seems intentionally) affected by the toxic waste of industries. Extraordinary women who are living the fight every day -- narrate their experiences of environmental racism. Docs

The Two Popes (Fernando Mereilles) This film was a surprise to me -- I had not heard anything about it as the festival seasons wound their way around Sundance and Europe this winter-spring. But I am completely drawn to it -- a depiction of the shift in the papacy from Pope Benedict to Pope Frances, especially with Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce playing the respective pontiffs!.  SP

The Truth (Hirokazu Kore-Eda). (See picture at top) So many reasons to be excited about this first feature outside of Japan by Kore-eda. His ongoing preoccupation with family relationships moves to France, to follow a mother and daughter in the filmmaking business: the mother is a famous actress; the daughter a screenwriter. Forced to collaborate, they now must face long-held resentments. A top pick for me. SP