In a dystopian Tokyo, 23 “tribes” (read: gangs) rule different sections of the city. These tribes range from the GiraGira Girls, a group of women including a whip-cracking dominatrix, to the Musashino Saru, a gang all about promoting peace and love. But it’s the Bukuro Wu-Ronz running everything, and their leader Big Buppa (Takeuchi Riki) is not to be messed with. Mera, one of Bukuro Wu-Ronz’s top members, starts a feud with Musashino Saru heads Tera (Ryuta Sato) and Kai (Young Dais), and the battle soon spins out of control, involving every other tribe in an epic battle to become the most powerful in the city. And did I mention it’s a hip-hop musical? Welcome to the insane world of Sion Sono and Tokyo Tribe.

But that’s not all! There’s also the presence of Sunmi (Nana Seino), a mysterious girl dragged into the gang conflict with some serious fighting skills. In fact, a lot of the cast can fight really well. This also happens to be a highly kinetic action film, with numerous fight scenes placed in between the rap songs sung by the massive cast. Sometani Shota provides help for viewers as the film’s MC, walking around scenes rapping exposition about different tribes and their feuds with other gangs. Just don’t bother actually trying to understand what the hell is going on, though. Tokyo Tribe is so dense and convoluted there are already 50 other things occurring the minute after a scene ends.

The density and hyperactivity of Sono’s style prove his film’s biggest strength and weakness. Sono, working with what looks like his biggest budget to date, packs as much as he possibly can into each frame. His shots are more ambitious, letting things play out in long, elaborate single takes, the camera moving all over the place. The set design is on a whole other level compared to Sono’s previous films as well, with so many elaborately designed locations for each tribe. And Sono never takes a moment to breathe, whipping back and forth between places, stuffing each one with as many extras and activity as possible, all while putting the camera right in the middle of it. It’s exhilarating, but at the same time incredibly exhausting

Trying to watch Tokyo Tribe for its story, nothing more than a standard gangster epic with a message about community, won’t maximize the amount of shock and joy Sono throws around on-screen. It’s the quirks and little moments that work best. Like Big Buppa’s son having a room where people act as his furniture. Or a massive karate fighter wishing someone a happy birthday as they punch them 50 feet in the air (one of the fighter’s only lines: “Take me! To! A sauna!”). Or an army tank driving around Tokyo blowing shit up. Tokyo Tribe is full of these kinds of insane, world-building moments, most of them hilariously original and bonkers beyond belief.

And even though Sono’s restlessness can get tiring at times, it doesn’t take away from the utter brilliance of Tokyo Tribe. No one injects more insanity and ideas into their films on a moment-by-moment basis the way Sono does. It was hard to imagine how Sono could outdo his previous film Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, but with Tokyo Tribe he’s outdone himself completely, and by successfully taking on musicals he feels unstoppable. With a propulsive, catchy score, Tokyo Tribe doesn’t have to try to be energetic. It breathes vivaciousness. Tokyo Tribe will leave viewers dazed, assaulted, and mortified, but by the end they’ll be begging for more.

A version of this review was originally published as part of our coverage of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Ramin Bahrani makes a loud return with 99 Homes, his follow-up to the disappointingly received At Any Price. Taking his aim at the U.S. housing crisis, Bahrani tells a gripping story that extends out to a damning statement on American capitalism and the exceedingly wealthy one percent. It’s a big step towards the mainstream for Bahrani, boasting a terrific cast and a relevant, necessary subject. And even with a problematic final act, one threatening to sink the entire film, its dramatic strengths end up winning out.

From the first frames, Bahrani blatantly expresses his intentions to generate ire from viewers. Real estate shark Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) looks at a bathroom covered in blood with a body on the toilet. Carver came to evict the homeowner for defaulting on his mortgage, and the owner decided to take his own life rather than vacate. Carver doesn’t care; he tells police the man’s suicide is a selfish act, one that leaves the homeowner’s family to fend for themselves. Within minutes, Bahrani establishes the cruel, emotionless world of his film.

Carver’s next person to evict is Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a construction worker down on his luck. With the housing market crashing, no one has any interest in building homes, meaning little to no construction work. Due to issues with the bank, Nash loses the family home, leaving his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and son Connor (Noah Lomax) with nowhere to go. Eventually Rick and Dennis’ paths cross again, and Rick ends up hiring Dennis to help clean out vacated homes for him. Dennis resists the idea of working for the man who kicked him out of his home at first, but the high paychecks prove to be too tempting.

Bahrani’s point, along with co-writer Amir Naderi (taken from a story by Bahrani and Bahareh Azimi), is to show the way capitalism has morphed into something monstrous. Nash represents the average hard-working American earning their own success, while Carver symbolizes the way success now defines itself as profiting off the suffering of the less fortunate. Carver’s philosophy on life leaves no room for sentiment or emotions. Dennis continually finds ways to get his family home back, something Carver finds ridiculous. “They’re just boxes,” Carver says to Nash. Bahrani uses Nash and his family to keep the human story elements at the forefront, making Carver’s soulless statements look all the more horrifying.

Garfield does a great job as Nash, giving a believable and emotional performance, but the real highlight is Michael Shannon. Playing a character written as a total villain, Shannon exudes a level of charisma that, combined with having to say most of the film’s more memorable lines, actually makes Carver enjoyable to watch. And even though he’s a cruel, unsympathetic character, his motivations and back story are fleshed out to make his behavior understandable. Carver, like Nash, simply does what he can to survive and prosper, except one of them is willing to go much further than the other to ensure their security.

Sadly, Bahrani feels the need to up the ante of his dramatic stakes, using a major plot point in the latter half to shift things into thriller territory. As the intensity builds, or at least tries to, so does the unsubtle political commentary. It’s an unfortunate move because the last thing the film needs is more emphasis. For that reason the climax falls flat, a stale effort to go out strong turning into poorly misguided melodrama.

Bahrani’s 99 Homes is still a success, even if it’s a small one. Its great cast and effective drama, at least for the majority of the film, are undeniably compelling. If At Any Price is Bahrani’s failed attempt to break into the major leagues, 99 Homes corrects that mistake.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Much like the heist at the centre of the film, Victoria is a bit of a risky, high-wire act in and of itself. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, where its audacious gimmick earned the film’s cinematographer an award: the entire 140-minute film plays out in one take, with no cuts or digital trickery involved. This inevitably lumps Victoria into a group of recent films that utilize digital filmmaking to push duration and shot length to new extremes (one of the first examples of this, and probably the most notable one, was Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark). But once again, like with Birdman and this year’s The Tribe, the praise lavished upon director Sebastian Schipper is less about the quality of his film than the quantity of work put into it. As a piece of stunt directing, Victoria is easy to admire; as a film it’s an overlong drag, with its one take gimmick serving as a distraction from its inept story.

Opening on the titular character (Laia Costa) partying it up in a nightclub, she eventually leaves to go open up the café she works at. On her way, she bumps into Sonne (Frederick Lau) and his three friends, who drunkenly ask her to hang out with them after failing to steal a car in front of her. She (inexplicably) accepts their offer, and as they walk through the streets of Berlin, she tells Frederick about herself: She’s an immigrant from Spain, having just arrived in the city several weeks ago without any friends. For some reason, Schipper and co-writers Olivia Neergaard-Holm & Eike Frederik Schulz think that being an immigrant in a new city means losing one’s ability to think; after watching Sonne steal from a corner store, and then learning his hot-tempered friend Boxer (Franz Rogowski) just got out of jail, Victoria happily follows them to hang out on a rooftop for drinks. By this point, logic has all but vanished, and Victoria’s actions are more like transparent moves by the filmmakers to sustain a narrative than realistic bad choices of an actual human being.

The only excuse given for Victoria’s dismissal of the figurative danger signs flashing over these four men is her attraction to Sonne, which gets little development before Schipper drops it to get the real story going. After one of Sonne’s friends passes out from drinking too much, he asks Victoria to help drive him and his friends to some sort of meetup. She (once again, inexplicably) agrees to drive and winds up aiding in a bank robbery when a crime lord orders Boxer to steal a bunch of money to pay off his debts. And so these four idiots drive off, hoping to score some cash from their barely thought out scheme. Will their robbery turn out unsuccessful? Follow up: Does a bear shit in the woods?

There’s no denying that Victoria is one dumb movie, but its stupidity is far more tolerable than the likes of Birdman or The Tribe, which use their penchant for long takes to give themselves the appearance of being serious art. Victoria doesn’t really aspire to be anything more than a self-contained genre piece, and that makes its silliness both easy to swallow and easy to make fun of at the same time. Yes, these characters are so incompetent it’s easy to think they were home schooled by their own pets, but this makes it perversely enjoyable to watch their plans (rightfully) fall apart.

But maybe it’s a little unfair to pick apart the screenplay since little effort went into it (due to the nature of the production, dialogue had to be largely improvised—making the screenplay only a few pages). There should be a special mention for cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, since he pulls off a superhuman feat (indeed, in the end credits his name gets acknowledged before anyone else’s). It’s easy to marvel at what he pulled off, but it also goes to show why the one-take gimmick is difficult to sustain. By unfolding in real time, the ability for elliptical editing goes away, meaning that a large chunk of Victoria is made up of interludes, with characters traveling from point A to point B. All the time spent walking to another location, or waiting around in one area for the next story beat to come along, exposes the weak structure and mechanics of the whole operation. Nils Frahm’s score provides some nice music during these “down” moments, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of being stuck in some sort of cinematic waiting room.

Still, as always, the technical fortitude on display from pulling off a successful feature-length take makes Victoria not without merit. And Laia Costa does a great job too, fighting off her poor characterization with a charisma that helps when she goes into full-on survival mode post-heist. Her presence certainly helps when Victoria seemingly doesn’t know what to do with itself. There’s something funny about the single take—a choice usually meant to make it easier to immerse oneself into a film—as it actually shows off the artifice of this film. Which isn’t surprising given how thinly drawn out Victoria feels. There’s little else appealing here aside from this singular gimmick, and once people stop being impressed by that, it’s not likely to stay memorable. One-take wonder indeed.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

The tag team of Bernard and CJ run wild on this episode as they talk about Denis Villeneuve’s new film, Sicario, as well as make sense of a blood-boiling argument Bernard had with a friend about the plausibility of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. Also, highlights from the roundtable interview Bernard had with Andrew Garfield, the star of Ramin Bahrani’s housing crisis drama 99 Homes. All that, plus our Indie Picks of the Week on this week’s exciting installment of the Indiecast!

Topics

• Indie Picks (3:34)
• Plausibility For Dummies (10:02)
• Sicario (29:22)
• Andrew Garfield (48:03)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

99 Homes TIFF Review
Sicario Review
Victoria TIFF Review
Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Review

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With Star Wars: The Force Awakens just on the horizon, Bernard, CJ, Dustin, and special guest (and giant Star Wars fanboy) Justin Boo go in-depth about the mass anticipation of the new film as well as the feverish passion of the millions of fans of the legendary franchise. Why is there such excitement for the new trilogy when the last one was such an abomination? Also, film critic Rob Trench joins CJ and Bernard to recap the Toronto International Film Festival, from the best to the worst to the fantastic films flying just under the radar. Plus, the return of our Indie Picks of the Week!

Topics

• Indie Picks (2:13)
• Star Wars Hype (15:00)
• TIFF Wrap-Up (45:12)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

The Fool Review
Me and Earl Review
TIFF Coverage

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Seven years ago, Bruce McDonald surprised horror fans with his chamber piece Pontypool, which centered around a radio DJ learning about a zombie breakout happening during his broadcast in the middle of nowhere. It was an inventive and seriously impressive low-budget thriller, one that showed how much imagination can go a long way when it comes to establishing dread and tension. Now, McDonald returns to the genre with Hellions, a low-budget horror film set on Halloween in a small town. It would be unfair to expect Hellions to operate exactly like Pontypool, and McDonald seems intent on making sure he isn’t doing the same thing twice; if Pontypool was all about being low-key, Hellions dives headfirst into the world of fantasy and surrealism. But Hellions is the exact opposite in all the wrong ways: it’s stale, cheesy, amateurish, and an all-around mess—an example of what happens when a filmmaker doesn’t know how to work within their limits.

High schooler Dora (Chloe Rose) is the standard image of the rebellious teen: skipping class with her boyfriend, smoking, drinking, and planning to spend Halloween night partying hard. But a quick follow-up with her doctor (Rossif Sutherland) early in the day brings her some shocking news: she’s four weeks pregnant. Not knowing what to do, and learning it’s only a matter of time before the doctor has to legally inform her mother (Rachel Wilson), Dora decides to stay home for the evening while her mom and little brother go out for some trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, Dora’s planned night of moping around to some bad horror movies gets thrown out of whack when some kids wearing creepy masks begin showing up at her door. The kids’ actions quickly become more aggressive, until one of them decapitates Dora’s boyfriend and demands she give over her unborn baby. Much to Dora’s surprise, her day actually could get worse.

At this point, Hellions goes full-blown surreal and never comes back. Once the army of demon children show up at Dora’s door trying to break in, everything gets transported to some sort of parallel universe where the skies turn red (in order to achieve this look, McDonald shot the majority of Hellions in infrared), and Dora’s pregnancy starts accelerating at a rapid pace. An explanation for all the insanity eventually comes in the form of an exposition-spouting local cop (Robert Patrick), who explains that it’s all part of some demonic ritual to sacrifice a baby on Halloween. That sort of clunky, awkward attempt to fill in the details is just one of many issues with Pascal Trottier’s screenplay, which feels like a textbook definition of the word “lacking.” Despite Chloe Rose giving a capable and convincing performance as Dora, her character amounts to little more than a bloody, screaming horror heroine, and the lack of any characterization puts a severe damper on the rest of the film. Without giving any sense of how Dora might feel about her pregnancy, Hellions feels like a cheap attempt at shock by repeatedly harming children (granted, they’re demon children, but still) and a fetus.

But a lackluster script isn’t what really tanks Hellions; bad writing isn’t exactly a surprise when it comes to the horror genre. The big surprise here is just how awful the film looks. McDonald has been making films for a few decades now, and he’s shown how skillful he can be on a stylistic level in the past, but Hellions is packed with visuals that feel like they’re from an inexperienced straight-to-video director. The infrared look only calls attention to the cheap DV cameras used to shoot the film, along with the fact that most of the nighttime scenes were shot during the daytime. And the use of special effects, like CGI shots of a fetus or exploding pumpkins, are more laughable than anything. It’s a giant disappointment from a filmmaker who can certainly do better, and an even bigger disappointment considering his proficiency within the horror genre in the past. Given the infrared cinematography—which makes this look like an even cheaper version of Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt—it might be best to just consider this a failed experiment and pretend it never happened.

While TIFF is known for its prestige and glamour, it’s also a really, really big festival (nearly 400 features and shorts are playing this year), and thankfully that means there’s room for a lot of fun, insane films. That’s where the Midnight Madness programme comes in. One movie screens every night of the festival at midnight in a packed, 1200+ seat theatre for the most rabid fans of genre films.

The man responsible for all the fun is Colin Geddes, who’s been running Midnight Madness since 1998. But in the last several years, Geddes has expanded his reach to the Vanguard programme, which describes itself as “provocative, sexy…possibly dangerous.” A few examples of films Geddes has helped unveil to the world through these two programmes should give you an idea of his influence and impeccable taste: Cabin Fever, Ong-Bak, Insidious, The Duke of Burgundy, The Raid: Redemption and many, many more.

As someone who got their start at TIFF through Midnight Madness—the first film I ever bought a ticket for was Martyrs, a choice Geddes tells me is like “baptism by fire”—I was more than excited to chat with him about some of the films playing in both programmes this year. Needless to say, any fans of genre films (or anyone looking to seriously expand their horizons) should try to check these films out. You can look at the line-ups for Midnight Madness and Vanguard HERE, along with everything else playing at TIFF this year.

Read on for my interview with Colin Geddes, where he details a handful of films from each programme, gives a glimpse into the behind the scenes of the festival, and tells me what he thinks will be the most talked about film at Midnight Madness this year.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10th to 20th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and you can buy individual tickets for films at the festival starting September 6th. To learn more, visit the festival’s website HERE.

I know some people who want to check out Midnight Madness but are afraid of essentially picking a really extreme film. What would be a good film for people to kind of dip their toes into the water this year with Midnight Madness?

What we celebrate with Midnight Madness is that it’s just a wild, crazy, fun ride. The criteria for picking the films is very different from the other programmers because I’m looking for a kind of tone and content. This is the last film people are seeing during the day, so it’s my mission to wake them up. It’s not necessarily always about horror films. It’s about action, thriller, comedy…

I would say that the one that kind of represents the Midnight Madness experience the most might be Takashi Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse, because it is just a gonzo brain-melter. Something different and crazy happens pretty much every five minutes. It’s a whole bunch of half-baked ideas happening in the film, but that’s kind of the fun of it. Takashi Miike is, in many respects, the godfather of the Midnight Madness programme. No other director has had as many films selected for Midnight Madness, and it looks like we’re actually going to have him here, something he hasn’t done since I think 2000. It’s gonna be nice to have him back.

Yakuza Apocalypse

And what would be a good film for someone who wants to get thrown in the deep end?

On the other end of the spectrum in Midnight Madness, if you want the baptism by fire, go hard or go home, there are two films. The first would be Baskin, which is a descent into hell from Turkey. I’m pretty proud that we have our first entry from Turkey in Midnight Madness this year. This one’s gonna have just as much of an effect on people as Martyrs potentially did. But the other one, which is also really intense but in a fun way, is Hardcore. It’s a Russian-American co-production, and it’s the first POV action film. I can safely say that it’s like the Blair Witch of action films.

Can you talk about the opening and closing films Green Room and The Final Girls? What made you choose them as bookends for the programme this year?

What I strive to do with Midnight Madness is to get underdog films as much as I can. I actually veer away from big studio films. They can be fun and all, but I’d rather showcase a film from Japan or Turkey, somewhere you’re probably not going to see [the film] with that much energy. But then, at the same time, in order to properly champion those films, the programme always benefits by a couple of what you call tentpole films. So, if a newspaper article writes about Patrick Stewart in Green Room, then they’re also going to write about Baskin or Southbound or one of the smaller films. It’s important to have those in the mix, but I’m very selective on what I do. I just felt Green Room was a really sharp, fun thriller.

And with Final Girls, when I do a closing film, it’s a little more tricky just because of the kind of pedigree of premiere status. And it’s harder sometimes to have a world premiere at the end of the festival because that’s when the bulk of the media and the industry have probably left, so it’s hard for me to do a premiere at the end. But when I saw Final Girls the premiere status had already been broken, and I realized “You know what? Closing night!” Thematically, Final Girls is an excellent fit for the final night, and it’s also nice to end the programme on a humourous high.

Green Room

Midnight Madness has established a lot of new filmmakers to audiences over the years. Do you have a particularly fond memory of a filmmaker you helped introduce through Midnight Madness?

I really take pride in being able to introduce audiences to Ong-Bak. Thai Cinema has had a rich history, but it’s a rich history which hasn’t really been known outside of its own country. And literally overnight we were able to introduce the world to the first Thai film star who became internationally recognized. Who knew from when we first screened Ong-Bak that, years later, Tony Jaa would be in a Fast & Furious film? And then repeating the same thing with The Raid: Redemption. I like to take pride that we probably brought the biggest audience anywhere in North America for an Indonesian film.

What can you tell me about Southbound? When you announced it, very little was known about the film.

Southbound is an anthology film, but as opposed to something like V/H/S which had an interlinking episode, in this film, the stories all interlock with one another. It’s kind of seamless, where one story ends and it moves into the beginning of the next story. It does have some of the directors who have done films for V/H/S including the collective Radio Silence and David Bruckner. It also has a female director, Roxanne Benjamin, who’s made a really fun segment. And a female director in Midnight Madness…Even within the guys of the anthology, I’m really proud to be able to do that. There aren’t a lot of female directors working in genre at the moment, but that’s slowly starting to change. To be able to help usher in a new voice into genre is really exciting.

I could ask about every film in the programme, but I’ll ask about one more: I’m really interested in the short film The Chickening, which I guess is the real opening film since it will play before Green Room.

[Laughs] The Chickening came to me from…I got a link from a good friend, but I didn’t take the link seriously. The e-mail sat in my inbox for a couple of weeks before I watched [it]. It’s kind of similar to if you have friends in bands. You’re kind of like “Ugh, here’s their new album, is it gonna be good or bad?” It’s the same with films. When I put The Chickening on my jaw dropped. It is one of the craziest, freakiest, fun things I’ve seen, and in many respects the less said about The Chickening the better. The Chickening is, I think, going to be one of the most talked about films in Midnight Madness, and it’s only 5 minutes long.

The Chickening

Moving on from Midnight Madness to Vanguard now, I feel like Vanguard is a really vital programme in a lot of ways. Aside from genre festivals, I don’t really see many major festivals around the world profiling the kind of in-between genre films that Vanguard shows off.

Yeah, that’s exactly it. In many ways, I can single you out as a poster child of how the TIFF experience goes. Midnight Madness is the gateway drug for people. That’s how it was for me. I stood in line for the first year of Midnight Madness, and after that, I started seeing more films within the festival. People can get kind of intimidated or scared off by art films or foreign films, but everyone can accept a horror film or an action film. But as the audience grows and matures, so do their tastes. And so I really feel that Vanguard is almost the older, cooler sister of Midnight Madness. These are where we can find films that intersect within genre and arthouse. It’s a fun programme to see the people who are taking it to heart. I used to be a Midnight Madness fan, and now I’m a Vanguard fan.

I did want to talk about what might be the most hyped up titles in Vanguard this year, which I’m referring to as TIFF’s power couple: Gaspar Noe’s Love and Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Evolution.

Oh, I’m so glad you caught on to that! I mean Gaspar and Lucile are in many ways cinematic opposites. Whereas Gaspar deals with the extremities, Lucile deals with the intimacies. It’s quite fascinating. I mean Love, there’s not much to be said about Love: It’s a 3D porn film. Or, more appropriately, it’s a love story, and those sequences of physical love are in 3D.

But Evolution is a little bit more of a hard nut to crack because it’s a sublime, body horror, fairy tale mystery. There are no easy answers in this one, but it is beautiful, lush and so engaging. Come and get ready to dive into that film. The imagery is just going to wash over you and slowly get under your skin. When people come out of Evolution they’re going to be talking about it.

Evolution

There are some interesting U.S. indies in Vanguard this year like Missing Girl, which stars Robert Longstreet and Kevin Corrigan, and Oz Perkins’ February.

It’s great because Longstreet is the lead, and it’s so nice to finally see a film that he’s carrying. Missing Girl is a fun, quirky indie. Quirky also works within Vanguard. This is almost a Ghost World-esque thriller in a minor key. It’s got some great performances, and it’s got this likable character who you’re concerned about. It’s a really nice, small, controlled universe. 

And February is a kind of beautiful, sublime horror film. When I sat down and watched the film I wasn’t really sure where it was going, and then there’s a certain point where everything just clicked for me and I was along for the ride. It’s just kind of an awkward coming of age story that takes some very demonic twists.

When you’re programming films, does that moment you’re talking about where everything falls in place kind of entice you? Is that something you seek for when you’re watching things.

Yeah. Personally, for me, I like films where I don’t know where they’re going. I like going down a path that kind of twists and turns. Another example is Demon from Poland. That’s a film that I didn’t know much about. I tracked it down based on the name alone. And it was so rich and rewarding to see a film where I couldn’t predict what the outcome was. It’s also refreshing to see a tale from another part of the world. I’m at the whims of whatever the market gives me, but I try to do as many non-American films as I can. So to be able to discover and put a film from Poland in Vanguard makes me really happy.

Demon

Alex de la Iglesia was last seen in Midnight Madness with Witching and Bitching, and this year he’s in Vanguard with My Great Night. It looks a lot different from Witching and Bitching, but it still looks pretty wild.

It’s totally wild, yeah. This is a film that could have fit in Midnight Madness. There’s a definite madcap energy to it. It’s just about the filming of a New Year’s special in Spain and all the crazy people in the televised special. It’s like a long, drunk, crazy party. It’s as funny as Alex de la Iglesia’s other films. Diana Sanchez—the programmer who selected it—and I had a big talk about it. She was worried that the audience might not recognize some of the cultural references. I was like “No, this is totally going to work.” This is classic Alex, and anyone who’s in for this is totally in for this ride.

I think Midnight Madness and Vanguard have a unique quality compared to other programmes in the fest where you’re kind of the face of these programmes. Throughout the year, when you do this selection process for the programmes, how much of it is you and how much is more of a collaborative process with other people behind the scenes?

Midnight Madness is pretty much carte blanche for me, it’s all of my picks. But Vanguard is a collaborative process with the other programmers. I’ll see something, or they’ll see something, and we’ll meet or discuss whether or not we feel it might fit into Vanguard. A good example of this is Collective Invention from South Korea. I had watched it, and my selections were already full, so I immediately sent it over to our Asian programmer Giovanna Fulvi and said, “You have to see this.” It has the same kind of mad spark of genius we saw with some films at the beginning of the new wave of Korean cinema, like Save the Green Planet or The Foul King. It’s a perfect Vanguard film. She saw it and embraced it, and that’s how it ended up in Vanguard.

Finally, outside of the films in Midnight Madness and Vanguard, what is a film that you personally want to see badly?

High-Rise, Ben Wheatley’s film. I haven’t had a chance to see it. It’s in the Platform section. I’ve read the book, and when Wheatley was here for A Field in England he was telling me what he was going to be doing with the film. I’m so excited to see that one. Hopefully I’ll check it out before the festival. Otherwise I’m just gonna have to skip my duties and run and catch a screening while it’s on.

Today came as a bit of a surprise for TIFF fans, as the festival unveiled twelve selections for its brand new programme Platform. For years, the Toronto International Film Festival has put its emphasis on audiences, as the fest’s major awards were based on votes by audience members. This year, for their 40th anniversary, TIFF has changed gears, introducing a new programme that will be overseen by a three-member jury. And for its first year, TIFF has started things off with a bang: the jury will comprise of filmmakers Claire Denis, Jia Zhang-Ke, and Agnieszka Holland. Piers Handling, director and CEO of TIFF, describes the 12 filmmakers selected for Platform as “the next generation of masters whose personal vision will captivate audiences, industry members and media from around the world.” And to make things more interesting, at the end of the festival the jury will give a $25,000 prize to the winning film.

Based on that description, and looking at the selection, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of these names might fly over the heads of some people (but hey, the purpose of this programme is to help establish these directors as the new generation of major filmmakers). But some big films did find their way into Platform, with the biggest of all being Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, which has a huge cast including Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Elisabeth Moss. Other notable films include new works by Argentinian director Pablo Trapero (Carancho, White Elephant) and Canadian documentarian Alan Zweig (Vinyl). We’ll obviously be looking forward to Wheatley’s latest effort here, as he’s an indie filmmaker we’ve all been quite fond of ever since his debut Down Terrace, but we’re looking forward to seeing what new and/or underappreciated talent TIFF showcases with this new programme.

Read on below for more information on the twelve films selected for Platform. The Toronto International Film Festival will run from September 10th to 20th in Toronto, Canada. And be sure to come back to Way Too Indie over the next few weeks leading up to and during the fest, as we have plenty of coverage coming your way.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)
Eva Husson, France (World Premiere)
Biarritz. Sixteen-year-old George, a beautiful high-school student, falls in love with Alex. To get his attention, she initiates a group game with Alex, Nikita, Laetitia and Gabriel during which they will discover, test, and push the limits of their sexuality. Through scandals, love and the breakdown of their value systems, each of them manages this intense period in radically different ways. Starring Daisy Broom, Fred Hotier, Lorenzo Lefebvre, Marilyn Lima, and Finnegan Oldfield.

The Clan (El Clan)
Pablo Trapero, Argentina/Spain (North American Premiere)
Within a typical family home in the traditional neighbourhood of San Isidro, a sinister clan makes its living off kidnapping and murder. Arquímedes, the patriarch, heads and plans the operations. Alejandro, his eldest son, is a star rugby player who gives into his father’s will and identifies possible candidates for kidnapping. To a greater or lesser extent, the members of the family are accomplices in this dreadful venture as they live off the benefits yielded by the large ransoms paid by the families of their victims. Based on the true story of the Puccio family, this film full of suspense and intrigue takes place in the context of the final years of the Argentine military dictatorship and incipient return to democracy. Starring Guillermo Francella and Peter Lanzani.

French Blood (Un Français)
Diastème, France (International Premiere)
This is the story of a Frenchman, born in 1965 on the outskirts of Paris. The story of a skinhead, who hates Arabs, Jews, blacks, communists and gays. An anger that will take 30 years to die out. A bastard, who will take 30 years to become someone else. And he will never forgive himself for it. Starring Alban Lenoir, Paul Hamy, Samuel Jouy and Patrick Pineau.

Full Contact
David Verbeek, Netherlands/Croatia (World Premiere)
A contemporary tale of a man who accidentally bombed a school through a remotely operated drone plane. Modern warfare keeps Ivan safe and disconnected from his prey. But after this incident, this disconnectedness starts to apply to everything in his life. He is unable to process his overwhelming feelings of guilt, but needs to open up to his new love Cindy. Only by facing his victims can he rediscover his humanity and find a new purpose in life. Starring Grégoire Colin, Lizzie Brocheré and Slimane Dazi.

High-Rise
Ben Wheatley, United Kingdom (World Premiere)
1975. Two miles west of London, Dr. Laing moves into his new apartment seeking soulless anonymity, only to find that the building’s residents have no intention of leaving him alone. Resigned to the complex social dynamics unfolding around him, Laing bites the bullet and becomes neighbourly. As he struggles to establish his position, Laing’s good manners and sanity disintegrate along with the building. The lights go out and the elevators fail but the party goes on. People are the problem. Booze is the currency. Sex is the panacea. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans and Elisabeth Moss.

HURT
Alan Zweig, Canada (World Premiere)
Steve Fonyo is a one-legged cancer survivor who completed a cross-Canada run raising $13 million in 1985. The next 30 years were straight downhill: petty theft, larceny and drug addiction. The run has nothing to do with the life of this one-time hero, and everything to do with it. Starring Steve Fonyo.

Land of Mine (Under Sandet / Unter dem Sand)
Martin Zandvliet, Denmark/Germany (World Premiere)
A story never told before. WWII has ended. A group of German POWs captured by the Danish army, boys rather than men, are forced into a new kind of service under the command of a brusque Danish Sergeant. Risking life and limbs, the boys discover that the war is far from over. Starring Roland Møller, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman, Emil Buschow, Oskar Buschow and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard.

Looking for Grace
Sue Brooks, Australia (North American Premiere)
Grace, 16, runs away from home. Her parents, Dan and Denise, head off on the road across the Western Australian wheat belt with a retired detective, Norris, to try and get her back. But life unravels faster than they can put it back together. Grace, Dan and Denise learn that life is confusing and arbitrary, but wonderful. Starring Richard Roxburgh, Radha Mitchell, Odessa Young and Terry Norris.

Neon Bull (Boi Neon)
Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil/Uruguay/Netherlands (North American Premiere)
Iremar and his makeshift family travel through Northeast Brazil taking care of bulls at the Vaquejadas, a Brazilian rodeo. But the region’s booming clothing industry has stirred new ambitions and filled Iremar’s mind with dreams of pattern-cutting and exquisite fabrics. Starring Juliano Cazarré, Aline Santana, Carlos Pessoa and Maeve Jinkings.

The Promised Land (Hui Dao Bei Ai De Mei Yi Tian)
He Ping, China (World Premiere)
Ai Ling, growing up in a small town, loses her fiancé Jiang He in Beijing. After returning to her hometown with a broken heart, she has to face all the complications life and love have in store for her. Starring Jiajia Wang, Yi Zhang, and Zhiwen Wang.

Sky
Fabienne Berthaud, France/Germany (World Premiere)
Romy is on holiday in the USA with her French husband, but the journey quickly turns into a settling of old scores for this worn out couple. After a huge argument, Romy decides to break free. She cuts her ties to a stable and secure life that has become alienating and escapes to the unknown. Drifting through a noisy Las Vegas to the wondrous high desert, she goes on with her solitary journey, abandoning herself to her sole intuitions and making it up as she goes. Liberated, she will cross paths with a charismatic and solitary man, with whom she’ll share an inconceivable but pure love. Starring Diane Kruger, Norman Reedus, Gilles Lellouche, Lena Dunham and Q’orianka Kilcher.

The White Knights (Les Chevaliers Blancs)
Joachim Lafosse, France/Belgium (World Premiere)
Critically acclaimed Joachim Lafosse brings to the screen the Zoe’s Ark controversy which made headlines in 2007: a story about the limits of the right of interference. Jacques Arnault, head of Sud Secours NGO, is planning a high impact operation: he and his team are going to exfiltrate 300 orphans, victims of Chadian civil war and bring them to French adoption applicants. Françoise Dubois, a journalist, is invited to come along with them and handle the media coverage for this operation. Completely immersed in the brutal reality of a country at war, the NGO members start losing their convictions and are faced with the limits of humanitarian intervention. Starring Vincent Lindon, Valérie Donzelli, Reda Kateb, Louise Bourgoin and Rougalta Bintou Saleh.

A vastly opposing turn from last year’s mostly light and decidedly oddball Frank, Lenny Abrahamson’s next film—which will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival as a Special Program—looks to be a heartstring tightener. Room stars Brie Larson and newcomer Jacob Tremblay as a mother and son trapped within the confines of a 10ft x 10 ft one-room shed. Based on the book by Emma Donoghue, Larson plays Ma, a young woman determined not to let the smallness of the universe she and her son Jack (Tremblay) occupy limit his growth and world experience.

As evidenced by the teaser, Ma and Jack make a daring escape and young Jack faces the shocking reality that there is a world beyond the four walls he’s only ever known. Also starring William H. Macy and Joan Allen the film looks like it should elicit some serious emotion.

The film releases limitedly on October 16th and nationwide November 6th.

The first round of titles for the 40th Toronto International Film Festival were announced this morning by Piers Handling, CEO and Director of TIFF and artistic director Cameron Bailey. 15 Galas and 34 Special Presentations were announced and, as usual, represent a diverse range of directors and countries.

Among the standouts are the opening night film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition, a film about a man struggling with his wife’s tragic death through an unlikely communication with the customer service department of a vending machine company. Other titles to get excited for: Ridley Scott’s hotly anticipated The Martian, a new comedy from Julie Delpy, Peter Sollett’s Freeheld, and Cary Fukunaga’s much buzzed about Beasts of No Nation, and a new documentary from Michael Moore. Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne is sure to garner great interest as well.

Previous festival favorites, such as Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth and John Crowley’s Brooklyn, will also make their North American and Canadian premieres, as well as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster and Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria.

One thing’s for sure, TIFF continues to lead the Fall festival pack, and although Telluride’s lineup won’t be revealed until Labor Day weekend, TIFF continues to be the launching platform for awards season, and this year looks as promising as any.

The 40th Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10 to 20, 2015.

GALAS

Beeba Boys
Deepa Mehta, Canada, World Premiere
An adrenaline-charged violent Indo-Canadian gang war mixes guns, bhangra beats, bespoke suits, cocaine, and betrayal. Gang boss Jeet Johar and his loyal, young crew are audaciously taking over the Vancouver drug and arms scene from an old-style crime syndicate. Hearts are broken and family bonds shattered when the Beeba Boys (known as the “nice boys”) do anything “to be seen and to be feared” — in a white world.

Demolition
Jean-Marc Vallée, USA, World Premiere (Opening Night Film)
In Demolition, a successful investment banker, Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal), struggles after losing his wife in a tragic car crash. Despite pressure from his father-in-law (Chris Cooper) to pull it together, Davis continues to unravel. What starts as a complaint letter to a vending machine company turns into a series of letters revealing startling personal admissions. Davis’ letters catch the attention of customer service rep Karen (Naomi Watts) and, amidst emotional and financial burdens of her own, the two strangers form an unlikely connection. With the help of Karen and her son (Judah Lewis), Davis starts to rebuild, beginning with the demolition of the life he once knew.

The Dressmaker
Jocelyn Moorhouse, Australia, World Premiere
Based on the best-selling novel by Rosalie Ham, The Dressmaker is a bittersweet, comedy-drama set in early 1950s Australia. After many years working as a dressmaker in exclusive Parisian fashion houses, Tilly Dunnage, a beautiful and talented misfit, returns home to the tiny middle-of-nowhere town of Dungatar to right the wrongs of the past. Not only does she reconcile with her ailing, eccentric mother Molly, and unexpectedly falls in love with the pure-hearted Teddy, but armed with her sewing machine and incredible sense of style, Tilly sets out to right the wrongs of the past and transforms the women of the town but encounters unexpected romance along the way. Starring Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving.

Eye in the Sky
Gavin Hood, United Kingdom, World Premiere
London-based military intelligence officer Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is remotely commanding a top secret drone operation to capture a group of dangerous terrorists at their safe-house in Nairobi, Kenya. The mission suddenly escalates from a capture to a kill operation, when Powell realizes that the terrorists are about to embark on a deadly suicide mission. American drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) is poised to destroy the safe-house when a nine-year-old-girl enters the kill zone just outside the walls of the house. With unforeseen collateral damage now entering the equation, the impossible decision of when to strike gets passed up the kill chain of politicians and lawyers as the seconds tick down. Also stars Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi and Iain Glen.

Forsaken
Jon Cassar, Canada, World Premiere
Tormented by a dark secret, an aging gunfighter abandons a life of killing and returns home, only to discover his mother has died. He’s forced to confront his estranged father and the life he left behind. Starring Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland and Demi Moore.

Freeheld
Peter Sollett, USA, World Premiere
Based on the Oscar-winning documentary and adapted by the writer of Philadelphia, Freeheld is the true love story of Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree and their fight for justice. A decorated New Jersey police detective, Laurel is diagnosed with cancer and wants to leave her hard-earned pension to her domestic partner, Stacie. However the county officials — the Freeholders — conspire to prevent Laurel from doing so. Hard-nosed detective Dane Wells and activist Steven Goldstein come together in Laurel and Stacie’s defense, rallying police officers and ordinary citizens to support their struggle for equality. Starring Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, Michael Shannon and Steve Carell.

Hyena Road (Hyena Road: Le Chemin du Combat)
Paul Gross, Canada, World Premiere
A sniper who has never allowed himself to think of his targets as humans becomes implicated in the life of one such target. An intelligence officer who has never contemplated killing becomes the engine of a plot to kill. And a legendary Mujahideen warrior who had put war behind him is now the centre of the battle zone. Three men, three worlds, three conflicts — all stand at the intersection of modern warfare, a murky world of fluid morality in which all is not as it seems.

LEGEND
Brian Helgeland, United Kingdom, International Premiere
The true story of the rise and fall of London’s most notorious gangsters, brothers Reggie and Ron Kray, both portrayed by Tom Hardy in an amazing double performance. LEGEND is a classic crime thriller that takes audiences into the secret history of the 1960s and the extraordinary events that secured the infamy of the Kray twins.

Lolo
Julie Delpy, France, North American Premiere
While on holiday in the south of France, Parisian sophisticate Violette falls in love with carefree geek Jean-René. As their relationship blossoms, Jean-René heads to Paris to spend more time with Violette but finds himself up against her possessive teenage son Lolo who is determined to sabotage their relationship by any means necessary. A razor-sharp comedy from Julie Delpy.

The Man Who Knew Infinity
Matthew Brown, United Kingdom, World Premiere
A true story of friendship that forever changed mathematics. In 1913, Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematics genius from India, travelled to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he forged a bond with his mentor, the eccentric professor GH Hardy, and fought to show the world the magic of his mind. Starring Dev Patel and Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons.

The Martian
Ridley Scott, USA, World Premiere
During a manned mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. Based on a best-selling novel, and helmed by master director Ridley Scott, The Martian features a star-studded cast that includes Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Donald
Glover.

The Program
Stephen Frears, United Kingdom, World Premiere
From Academy Award-nominated director Stephen Frears (The Queen, Philomena) and producers Working Title (The Theory of Everything), comes the true story of the meteoric rise and fall of one of the most celebrated and controversial men in recent history, Lance Armstrong. Starring Ben Foster, Dustin Hoffman, Chris O’Dowd and Guillaume Canet.

Remember
Atom Egoyan, Canada, North American Premiere
Remember is the contemporary story of Zev, who discovers that the Nazi guard who murdered his family some 70 years ago is living in America under an assumed identity. Despite the obvious challenges, Zev sets out on a mission to deliver long-delayed justice with his own trembling hand. What follows is a remarkable cross-continent road-trip with surprising consequences. Starring Academy Award winners Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau.

Septembers of Shiraz
Wayne Blair, USA, World Premiere
A thriller based on the New York Times bestseller, this is the true story of a secular Jewish family caught in the 1979 Iranian revolution and their heroic journey to overcome and ultimately escape from the deadly tyranny that swept their country and threatened to extinguish their lives at every turn. Starring Salma Hayek and Adrien Brody.

Stonewall
Roland Emmerich, USA, World Premiere
This fictional drama inspired by true events follows a young man caught up during the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine) finds himself alone in Greenwich Village, homeless and destitute, until he befriends a group of street kids who introduce him to the local watering hole, The Stonewall Inn — however, this shady, mafia-run club is far from a safe haven. As Danny and his friends experience discrimination, endure atrocities and are repeatedly harassed by the police, the entire community of young gays, lesbians and drag queens who populate Stonewall erupts in a storm of anger. With the toss of a single brick, a riot ensues and a crusade for equality is born. Starring Jeremy Irvine, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ron Perlman and Joey King.

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Anomalisa
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, USA, Canadian Premiere
A man struggles with his inability to connect with other people. Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan and David Thewlis.

Beasts of No Nation
Cary Fukunaga, USA/Ghana, Canadian Premiere
Based on the highly acclaimed novel, director Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation brings to life the gripping tale of Agu (newcomer Abraham Attah), a child soldier torn from his family to fight in the civil war of an African country. Idris Elba dominates the screen in the role of Commandant, a warlord who takes in Agu and instructs him in the ways of war.

Black Mass
Scott Cooper, USA, Canadian Premiere
In 1970s South Boston, FBI Agent John Connolly persuades Irish-American gangster Jimmy Bulger to act as an informant for the FBI in order to eliminate their common enemy: the Italian mob. The drama tells the story of this unholy alliance, which spiraled out of control, allowing Whitey to evade law enforcement while becoming one of the most ruthless and dangerous gangsters in Boston history. Starring Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, Kevin Bacon, Dakota Johnson, Julianne Nicholson, Corey Stoll and Peter Sarsgaard.

Brooklyn
John Crowley, United Kingdom/Ireland/Canada, Canadian Premiere
Set on opposite sides of the Atlantic, this drama tells the profoundly moving story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish immigrant navigating her way through 1950s Brooklyn. Lured by the promise of America, Eilis departs Ireland and the comfort of her mother’s home for the shores of New York City. The initial shackles of homesickness quickly diminish as a fresh romance sweeps Eilis into the intoxicating charm of love. But soon, her new vivacity is disrupted by her past, and Eilis must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters.

The Club
Pablo Larraín, Chile, North American Premiere
Four men live in a secluded house in a seaside town. Sent to purge sins of the past, they live under a strict regime and the watchful eye of a caretaker. Their fragile stability is disrupted by the arrival of a fifth man who brings with him their darkest secrets.

Colonia
Florian Gallenberger, Germany/Luxembourg/France, World Premiere
Colonia tells the story of Lena and Daniel, a young couple who become entangled in the Chilean military coup of 1973. Daniel is abducted by Pinochet’s secret police and Lena tracks him to a sealed off area in the south of the country called Colonia Dignidad. The Colonia presents itself as a charitable mission run by lay preacher Paul Schäfer but, in fact, is a place nobody ever escapes from. Lena decides to join the cult in order to find Daniel. Starring Emma Watson, Daniel Brühl and Michael Nyqvist.

The Danish Girl
Tom Hooper, United Kingdom, North American Premiere
The Danish Girl is the remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener (portrayed by Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander), directed by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Misérables). Lili and Gerda’s marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili’s groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

The Daughter
Simon Stone, Australia, North American Premiere
A man returns to his hometown and unearths a long-buried family secret. As he tries to right the wrongs of the past, his actions threaten to shatter the lives of those he left behind years before. Starring Geoffrey Rush, Paul Schneider, Miranda Otto and Sam Neill.

Desierto
Jonás Cuarón, Mexico, World Premiere
Moises is traveling by foot with a group of undocumented workers across a desolate strip of the border between Mexico and the United States, seeking a new life in the north. They are discovered by a lone American vigilante, Sam, and a frantic chase begins. Set against the stunningly brutal landscape, Moises and Sam engage in a lethal match of wits, each desperate to survive and escape the desert that threatens to consume them. Starring Gael García Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Dheepan
Jacques Audiard, France, North American Premiere
To escape the civil war in Sri Lanka, a former Tamil Tiger soldier, a young woman and a little girl pose as a family. These strangers try to build a life together in a Parisian suburb.

Families (Belles Familles)
Jean-Paul Rappeneau, France, World Premiere
When Shanghai-based businessman Jérome Varenne learns that his childhood home in the village of Ambray is at the centre of a local conflict, he heads there to straighten things out and finds himself at the centre of familial and romantic complications. Starring Mathieu Amalric.

The Family Fang
Jason Bateman, USA, World Premiere
Annie and Baxter Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents. But when both siblings find themselves stalled in life, they return home for the first time in a decade where they become entangled in a dark mystery surrounding their parents’ disappearance. Jason Bateman directs and stars, along with co-stars Nicole Kidman and
Christopher Walken, in this film based on the New York Times bestseller.

Guilty (Talvar)
Meghna Gulzar, India, World Premiere
Based on true events that set off a media frenzy all over the world, Guilty follows the 2008 Noida Double Murder Case of an investigation into the deaths of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar and 45-year-old Hemraj Banjade, a domestic employed by Aarushi’s family, in Noida, India. The controversial case lives on in the mind of the public, despite a guilty verdict that sentenced the parents of
the murdered girl to life in prison. Starring Irrfan Khan.

I Smile Back
Adam Salky, USA, Canadian Premiere
Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Amy Koppelman, I Smile Back explores the life of Laney (Sarah Silverman), a devoted wife and mother who seems to have it all — a perfect husband, pristine house and shiny SUV. However, beneath the façade lies depression and disillusionment that catapult her into a secret world of reckless compulsion. Only very real danger will force her to face the painful root of her destructiveness and its effect on those she loves.

The Idol (Ya Tayr El Tayer)
Hany Abu-Assad, United Kingdom/Palestine/Qatar, World Premiere
A young boy in Gaza, Mohammad Assaf, dreams of one day singing in the Cairo Opera House with his sister and best friend, Nour. One day, Nour collapses and is rushed to the hospital where it is discovered that she needs a kidney transplant. Nour leaves Mohammad with a dying wish that someday, he will become a famous singer in Cairo. Escaping from Gaza to Egypt against
unbelievable odds, Mohammad makes the journey of a lifetime. From two-time Academy Award nominee Hany Abu-Assad comes this inspirational drama inspired by the incredibly true story of Mohammed Assaf, winner of Arab Idol 2013.

The Lady in the Van
Nicholas Hytner, USA/United Kingdom, World Premiere
Based on the true story of Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who “temporarily” parked her van in writer Alan Bennett’s London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years. What begins as a begrudged favour becomes a relationship that will change both their lives. Filmed on the street and in the house where Bennett and Miss Shepherd lived all those years, acclaimed director Nicholas Hytner reunites with iconic writer Alan Bennett (The Madness of King George, The History Boys) to bring this rare and touching portrait to the screen. Starring Maggie Smith, Dominic Cooper and James Corden.

Len and Company
Tim Godsall, USA, North American Premiere
A successful music producer (Rhys Ifans) quits the industry and exiles himself in upstate New York, but the solitude he seeks is shattered when both his estranged son (Jack Kilmer) and the pop-star (Juno Temple) he’s created come looking for answers.

The Lobster
Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/United Kingdom/Greece/France/Netherlands, North American Premiere
In a dystopian near future, single people are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days or are transformed into animals and released into the woods. Starring Colin Farrell, Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux and Ben Whishaw.

Louder than Bombs
Joachim Trier, Norway/France/Denmark, North American Premiere
An upcoming exhibition celebrating photographer Isabelle Reed three years after her untimely death brings her eldest son Jonah back to the family house, forcing him to spend more time with his father Gene and withdrawn younger brother Conrad than he has in years. With the three men under the same roof, Gene tries desperately to connect with his two sons, but they struggle to reconcile their feelings about the woman they remember so differently. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne and Jesse Eisenberg.

Maggie’s Plan
Rebecca Miller, USA, World Premiere
Maggie’s plan to have a baby on her own is derailed when she falls in love with John, a married man, destroying his volatile marriage to the brilliant Georgette. But one daughter and three years later, Maggie is out of love and in a quandary: what do you do when you suspect your man and his ex-wife are actually perfect for each other? Starring Julianne Moore, Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph.

Mountains May Depart (Shan He Gu Ren)
Jia Zhang-ke, China/France/Japan, North American Premiere
The new film from master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke (A Touch of Sin) jumps from the recent past to the speculative near-future as it examines how China’s economic boom has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

Office
Johnnie To, China/Hong Kong, International Premiere
Billion-dollar company Jones & Sunn is going public. Chairman Ho Chung-ping has promised CEO Chang, who has been his mistress for more than 20 years, to become a major shareholder of the company. As the IPO team enters the company to audit its accounts, a series of inside stories start to be revealed. Starring Chow Yun Fat, Sylvia Chang, Tang Wei and Wang Ziyi.

Parched
Leena Yadav, India/USA, World Premiere
Three ordinary women dare to break free from the century old patriarchal ways of their village in the desert heartland of rural India. Starring Tannishtha Chaterjee, Radhika Apte and Surveen Chawla, this unforgettable tale of friendship and triumph is called Parched.

Room
Lenny Abrahamson, Ireland/Canada, Canadian Premiere
Told through the eyes of five-year-old-Jack, Room is a thrilling and emotional tale that celebrates the resilience and power of the human spirit. To Jack, the Room is the world… it’s where he was born, where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. But while it’s home to Jack, to Ma it’s a prison. Through her fierce love for her son, Ma has managed to create a childhood for him in their 10-by-10-foot space. But as Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s own desperation — she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely. Starring Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridgers and William H. Macy.

Sicario
Denis Villeneuve, USA, North American Premiere
In the lawless border area stretching between the U.S. and Mexico, an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is enlisted by an elite government task force official (Josh Brolin) to aid in the escalating war against drugs. Led by an enigmatic consultant with a questionable past (Benicio Del Toro), the team sets out on a clandestine journey that forces Kate to question everything that she
believes.

Son of Saul (Saul Fia)
László Nemes, Hungary, Canadian Premiere
October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.

Spotlight
Tom McCarthy, USA, International Premiere
Spotlight tells the true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world’s oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper’s tenacious “Spotlight” team of reporters delves into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of
Boston’s religious, legal, and government establishment, touching off a wave of revelations around the world. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Brian d’Arcy James and Billy Crudup.

Summertime (La Belle Saison)
Catherine Corsini, France, North American Premiere
Delphine, the daughter of farmers, moves to Paris in 1971 to break free from the shackles of her family and to gain her financial independence. Carole is a Parisian, living with Manuel, actively involved in the stirrings of the feminist movement. The meeting of the two women changes their lives forever. Starring Cécile De France, Izia Higelin, Noémie Lvovsky and Kévin Azaïs.

Sunset Song
Terence Davies, United Kingdom/Luxembourg, World Premiere
Terence Davies’ epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War follows a young woman’s tale of endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life. Based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and told with gritty poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur, Sunset Song stars Peter Mullan and Agyness Deyn.

Trumbo
Jay Roach, USA, World Premiere
The successful career of 1940s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) comes to a crushing end when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political beliefs. Trumbo tells the story of his fight against the U.S. government and studio bosses in a war over words and freedom, which entangled everyone in Hollywood from Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne to Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.

Un plus une
Claude Lelouch, France, World Premiere
Charming, successful, Antoine (Jean Dujardin) could be the hero of one of those films he composes the music for. When he leaves for a job in India, he meets Anna (Elsa Zylberstein), a woman who isn’t like him at all, but who attracts him more than anything. Together, they are going to experience an incredible journey.

Victoria
Sebastian Schipper, Germany, Canadian Premiere
On a night out in Berlin, Victoria meets four young local guys. After joining their group, she becomes their driver when they rob a bank. Finally, as dawn breaks, everyone meets their destiny.

Where to Invade Next
Michael Moore, USA, World Premiere
Oscar-winning director Michael Moore returns with what may be his most provocative and hilarious movie yet. Moore tells the Pentagon to “stand down”— he will do the invading for America from now on. Discretely shot in several countries and under the radar of the global media, Moore has made a searing cinematic work that is both up-to-the-minute and timeless.

Youth
Paolo Sorrentino, Italy/France/United Kingdom/Switzerland, North American Premiere
Youth explores the lifelong bond between two friends vacationing in a luxury Swiss Alps lodge as they ponder retirement. While Fred (Michael Caine) has no plans to resume his musical career despite the urging of his daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz), Mick (Harvey Keitel) is intent on finishing the screenplay for what may be his last film for his muse Brenda (Jane Fonda). And where will inspiration lead their younger friend Jimmy (Paul Dano), an actor grasping to make sense of his next performance? From Italy’s Oscar-winning foreign language film writer and director Paolo Sorrentino, Youth asks if our most important and life-changing experiences can come at any time — even late — in life.

From the looks of it, Guy Maddin’s been having a good year. Back in January, his 2007 “docu-fantasia” My Winnipeg received a DVD and Blu-Ray release on The Criterion Collection. Around the same time, he premiered his latest work The Forbidden Room with co-director Evan Johnson at Sundance to rave reviews from critics. And most recently, when the Toronto International Film Festival revealed their 2015 poll of Canada’s top ten films of all-time, My Winnipeg came in at number nine on the list. Since he started directing in the ‘80s, Maddin has gradually become one of Canada’s most distinct, celebrated and all-around best filmmakers working today. Maddin, who describes himself as a dilettante, specializes in the early years of film, specifically the silent era and the transitional years when talkies began to take over. His films are both an homage to that time period and something entirely new. While most people may look back and see these production methods as antiquated, Maddin’s films feel like an exploration of the artistic possibilities of a largely abandoned mode of filmmaking.

This summer, TIFF has been presenting the “Dreaming in Technicolor” series to celebrate Technicolor’s centenary, screening over two dozen classic films, and Guy Maddin will host a Technicolor Master Class on Douglas Sirk’s 1954 melodrama Magnificent Obsession on July 18^th. When asked about his own experiences watching Technicolor, Maddin quickly points out the importance of watching Technicolor on the big screen. “About ten years ago I saw The Wizard of Oz in a theatre,” he recalls. “I realized the experience…seeing something in Technicolor and on the big screen made a difference. I could actually see into the corners of the sets, stuff that was too tiny for me to see on a 25” living room television. You can see where the floor’s been polished, where the artifice got less intense, and a space for a production assistant whose job was to stand there with a mop in between takes so the munchkins’ footprints weren’t visible or something. You can sort of see there were limits to the seemingly infinite amount of art direction in Oz. I really liked that, it sort of gave the movie more breathing room. That’s more testimony to the transformative power of seeing Technicolor on the big screen as opposed to television.”

“My most recent experience was watching Black Narcissus at the Berlin Film Festival,” he says. “Seeing it on the big screen created a genre shift. I realized Black Narcissus is closer to being a comedy than a nun melodrama, that the very subtle differences in facial expressions were wildly recognizable. You could feel the horniness in this movie. The audience was laughing with the movie. It literally transformed the film from a drama to a comedy on the big screen. The big screen experience of Technicolor is what really excites me, and should excite visitors to Magnificent Obsession.”

Still from Magnificent Obsession

Part of why Maddin chose a Sirk film for his Master Class was for personal reasons. “Douglas Sirk is really important to me,” he explains. “When I first picked up a camera, I had the idea of ‘What should be the ultimate goal of a filmmaker?’ It occurred to me that the ideal film would be able to manipulate people into crying while laughing at the same time. This seemingly impossible, mutually exclusive display of emotions should be something to aim for as a filmmaker. I first experienced that really devastating double-pronged pair of emotions watching a Douglas Sirk film.”

That film was Written on the Wind, Sirk’s 1956 melodrama starring Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone. “I became so wrapped up in Robert Stack’s tragic story, so overwhelmed with how unloved he felt, and yet I was laughing at the movie because there was so much Technicolor delight and lurid, oversaturated plot lines. It’s one thing for the colours to be more saturated than they are in nature, but with melodrama the storylines, the very humans themselves are more saturated than life. I found myself laughing at the entire proceedings but being wiped out as well, sobbing and laughing at the same time.”

Magnificent Obsession follows rich playboy Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson), whose selfish and careless attitude almost kills him when he crashes a speedboat while taking it for a joyride. He’s saved thanks to a resuscitator owned by the town’s renowned physician Dr. Phillips across the lake, but in a tragic coincidence Dr. Phillips dies from a heart attack at the same time. Merrick realizes the town despises him for “killing” their beloved doctor, including Phillips’ widow Helen (Jane Wyman), whom Merrick falls for. In his attempt to earn Helen’s forgiveness and love, Merrick winds up causing an accident that permanently blinds Helen, causing him to dedicate his life and fortune to find a way to cure Helen’s blindness (it just so happens that Merrick studied to be a surgeon before he dropped out to live the high life). The plot is absurd, but Sirk’s masterful direction puts characters’ emotions at the forefront, making it easy to get swept up in the melodrama.

Maddin explains why he chose Magnificent Obsession for his Master Class: “I remember reading an interview with Douglas Sirk where he remembers being presented with the script and just going ‘Oh god, what is this stuff? This stuff’s crazy!’ Sirk had directed theatre back in Germany, he knew his Euripides and he knew his Kleist, but he recognized in this insane and wildly implausible plot trajectory the basic elements of Euripidean drama. And he felt like the only chance he had for making this thing play was to play it dead serious. It’s the idea of someone taking this material and working at it as hard and seriously as possible, and letting people just surrender their retinas to the experience. Technicolor works really well with melodrama, and this was the most melodramatic title on the list, so it took me about a nanosecond to decide.”

The Technicolor process had its heyday between the 1930s and 1950s, before newer technology made filming in Technicolor less desirable. Technicolor started out in several forms before the three-strip process became the norm. The three-strip camera got its name because it would run three strips of film simultaneously through different coloured filters (red, green and blue), and by combining the three strips together it would create that vibrant, saturated Technicolor look. But Maddin doesn’t concern himself with learning about the why when it comes to Technicolor and cinema in general. “I like the ignorance and the wonder of it all,” he says. “I still like feeling like a child when I’m watching movies. I now know why faces used to be even more saturated on Sunday matinee movies because I know how print traffic moved around from television station to television station. But I used to like not knowing, and I felt that was just the way things were. My grandmother had one way of telling a bedtime story and my mother had another way, and Technicolor had one way of telling a story on television in black and white and another in theatres.” He brings up the Kafka parable Leopards in the Temple, where leopards break into a temple and ruin a ceremony so many times their behaviour eventually gets incorporated into the ceremony itself. “Reel changes, scratches, oversaturation and snowy transmissions are more leopards that I just incorporated into the viewing experience. I like not knowing why.”

Maddin’s own films tend to be in black and white, but when he brings in colour it usually emulates the two-strip Technicolor process (used in the 1920s before three-strip Technicolor took over), where two strips of film ran through a red and green filter. His 1992 film Careful emulated the two-strip look. “I really didn’t understand how colour worked yet,” he explains about his work on Careful. “I understand it better now, but I just didn’t want any accidental colour meanings to come through, so I wanted to rein them in. And by harkening back to the days of two-strip Technicolor, by painting everything on a set and having every single frame shot on a set, I was able to keep things artificial, which was my way of setting myself aside from the rest of Canadian cinema at the time. So there was a certain amount of calculation in it, and a desperate need to give my movies a chance by setting themselves apart, so two-strip Technicolor became a part of it.”

Still from The Forbidden Room

Maddin’s latest film, The Forbidden Room, also emulates the two-strip look. It’s a phantasmagorical epic from Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson that started from their fascination with lost films. Recruiting a group of international actors (including Udo Kier, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling and Caroline Dhavernas, to name a few), Maddin and Johnson created spiritual remakes of these lost films, connecting them through a series of nested narratives that can go six or seven layers deep. The approach allows Maddin and Johnson to be as imaginative as possible, throwing in one absurd idea after another (a volcano’s dream, insurance defrauder skeletons, squid theft, bladder slapping) without letting up. It’s an exhaustive and hilarious film that might be Maddin’s best work yet.

Did he try to remake any lost Technicolor films while making The Forbidden Room (which is actually part of a larger, interactive project called Seances set to launch sometime this year)? “I decided that with all the lost films I was going to adapt that I wouldn’t worry about whether they were in black and white, colour, 3D, Odorama. I just decided that the cinema afterlife, the sort of limbo which the spirits of these lost films have inhabited, was colour blind. I made the aspect ratio a modern one, 16×9, without worrying about the original aspect ratios. I even made the movie colour blind in terms of nationality of performers. I had a bunch of Quebecois and French actors, and I used them as the mediums even though some of the lost movies were from Hollywood, Japan, China, Bolivia, Hungary…So I didn’t worry about whether the movie was originally in Technicolor.” Maddin mentioned that he remade The Three Stooges’ lost 1933 Technicolor film Hello Pop! with an all-female cast in Paris, but the original film ended up getting found.

And unlike some people who lament the loss of shooting and projecting on film, Maddin is far more optimistic about digital filmmaking. “People are far more open to the looks of films now. In the ‘80s people had really narrow tastes. The average public had to see something in 35mm colour, and it had to be that kind of 80s look of what passed for realistic colour. Now people watch America’s Funniest Home Videos, and they’ve gotten used to the lowest resolutions and snowiest transmissions. People are able to happily watch different kinds of schema, representations on film, and people have more access. I think viewers are more open-minded to different visuals and editing styles now. I like to think that anyone with a smartphone and some sort of editing software has the ability to make a movie now if they’re smart or clever or ambitious enough. We’re in this great era of democratization that’s going to produce more terrible movies, but it also just might produce the Rimbaud of the cinema, a young gifted flaming visionary, and I really hopeful that some kind of new vocabulary of cinema might come out of this super-democratization.”

The myth—or rather, the idea—of Robin Hood has resonated across the world since stories of him first emerged in the mid-17th century. His schtick is sublime in its simplicity: he robs from the rich, gives to the poor and has a lot of fun doing it. He’s a rabble-rouser, a deadly archer, a protector of justice and a smooth-talking ladies’ man. An all-around good dude.  His brand of clean-cut heroism has gone out of fashion in recent times, however; these days, stand-up heroes like Robin Hood are treated like a joke. It’s a crying shame.

1938’s terrific, jaunty The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring an improbably chipper Errol Flynn, is playing on July 4th as a part of TIFF’s “Dreaming in Technicolor” film showcase. It’s a treasure that all should see, though it’s the kind of lighthearted hero’s tale mainstream audiences have sadly lost an appetite for.

We’ve grown too cynical and in love with mayhem and revisionism to take seriously a man in green tights swinging on vines and letting out a big “A-HA!” as he pushes his fists into his hips and puffs out his chest. Romantic swashbuckling is difficult, I’m afraid, for the average 2015 moviegoer to take un-ironically. Ridley Scott‘s 2010 Robin Hood ran in the opposite direction of the Flynn version, painting a dreary picture of 13th-century England for Russel Crowe‘s “Robin Longstride” to brood around in because, these days, gloom is all the rage.

Our generation’s Robin Hood, arguably, is the Dark Knight himself. Batman is the perfect example of the kind of hero people crave today: psychologically damaged, shrouded in darkness, defined by tragedy and loss. No superhero, not even the bright and shiny Marvel ones, can contend with his superpower-less, black-on-black hipness. His look has evolved over the years, getting scarier and scarier with each reboot of the movie franchise, to the point where the latest version of the Bat, played by Ben Affleck in the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, straight-up looks like evil incarnate. We’ve come a long way from Robin of Loxley and his funny little hat.

In The Adventures of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Curtiz (and, to a lesser extent, William Keighley), we see Flynn’s Robin stride into the malevolent Prince John’s massive banquet hall, plopping down a (very illegally) poached royal deer in front of the interim king. Surrounded by an army of armed men, Robin accuses John of treason and vows to avenge the missing King Richard and fight for the poor. What courage! What honor! For centuries, this was the epitome of heroism.

Batman treats evil-doers a bit differently, to put it mildly. He’s an intimidator who lurks in the shadows and strikes fear in his enemies from behind a mask, a symbol that hides his true identity (as a billionaire, another subversion of the Robin Hood myth). He’ll do anything to gain an advantage (short of killing, of course). In a classic comic book version of the Batman/Superman confrontation (found in Jeph Loeb’s Hush), Bruce Wayne defines his true nature. “If Clark wanted to,” he says internally as Superman pulls his punches, “he could squish me into the cement.” He suddenly smashes Superman in the face with a ring made of kryptonite. But Superman’s got an even bigger weakness than the glowing green stone, as Bruce explains. “Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person. And deep down, I am not.”

Where’d all the good guys go? A remnant of Robin Hood’s youthful spirit does exist prominently in Batman lore. His famous sidekick, Robin, was clearly inspired by Robin Hood. In fact, “The Boy Wonder” was a direct homage to Errol Flynn. Robin is the last glimmer of innocence in Bruce Wayne’s world, a playful young ally designed to bring a bit of levity to the Batman comic book series.

The character’s gruesome death is a darkly poetic sign of the times, now more than ever.

Jason Todd, the second to take up the “Robin” identity, is brutally beaten with a crowbar in front of his own mother (who’s just sold him out), his medieval yellow cape and green boots soaking in a puddle of his own blood. Mother and son are restrained, a ticking time bomb plunked beside them. Jason throws himself onto the bomb to shield his mom, despite her betrayal, in a final act of heroism. With Robin’s bright light snuffed out, only darkness remains for the mourning “caped crusader.” Written by Jim Starlin, the story was called “A Death in the Family.”

It’s an apt parable for what’s happened, culturally, to exuberant, grinning movie heroes like Flynn’s Robin Hood. Jason Todd was murdered by The Joker, a demented cackler with a sick sense of humor who applauds and giggles at the sight of brutality and pain. Sound like anyone you know? If Robin represents Robin Hood’s chivalric valor, the Joker symbolizes modern audience’s regurgitation of such classical ideals. He’s more interested in Batman; they’re a reflection of one another, both messed-up social outliers with a penchant for violence. “I don’t wanna kill you,” Joker tells Batman in Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight. “What would I do without you?”

As moviegoers, we owe it to ourselves to not let pure, lighthearted heroics fall into extinction at the cinema. The reason Zack Snyder‘s The Man of Steel sucked was that it wasn’t any goddamn fun. It was a de-saturated, over-produced drag obsessed with mining darkness out of a character who should inspire wonder and make kids cheer. Batman v Superman looks to offer more of the same, depressing superhero action.

Get excited about The Adventures of Robin Hood instead. It’s everything The Man of Steel isn’t: fun, full of laughter, bursting with life (in Glorious Technicolor) and punctuated by thrilling, plain-spoken action sequences. If we would just let go of our snarky aversion to unclouded optimism every once in a while, perhaps Robin could live once again.

As we’ve said, we are really excited about the Dreaming In Technicolor film showcase at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this year.

Among the films being shown are three musical spectaculars: Singin’ in the Rain on June 19th, Meet Me In St. Louis on June 21st, and The Wizard of Oz on June 27th. All three will be presented in 35mm, with The Wizard of Oz screening on an archival print.

Besides being innovative change-makers in the film industry through their use of Technicolor and their musicality, they each hold one very valuable characteristic in common: Arthur Freed.

Though best known and recognized for his hand in An American In Paris and Gigi, Arthur Freed wet his feet with MGM as an uncredited associate producer of The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Known for his memorable lyrics, he wrote most of the songs for Singin’ in the Rain and several for Meet Me in St. Louis. After The Wizard of Oz, MGM created for him his own “Freed Unit” of producers. They developed a large portion of the mainstay films within the musical collective that emerged from their heyday, making MGM the lead developer of film musicals.

The Wizard of Oz, released in the U.S. on August 25th, 1939, was directed by Victor Fleming and adapted to the screen from Frank L. Baum’s book by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf. It starred Judy Garland in her first major role as hapless and innocent Dorothy Gale, who travels by way of twister to the land of Oz where she meets the confused scarecrow (Ray Bolger), the stiff Tin Man (Jack Haley), and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr). To get home, and to get each those parts of themselves they feel they are lost without, they set off to find the great wizard, played by Frank Morgan. Though gifted with the magical ruby-red slippers by Glinda the Good Witch (Billy Burke), along the way they are beset with many obstacles wrought by the Wicked Witch of the West, played by Margaret Hamilton.

One of the major changes from the book was altering Dorothy’s originally silver shoes to their now iconic ruby-red. This was done to take advantage of the new Technicolor process, which was also the reason behind their showing Dorothy’s farm life in classic black and white and only alternating to color when she arrived in Oz. Technicolor productions required a greater amount of lighting than their black and white counterparts. Often the studio lights on the set of The Wizard of Oz exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Several of the cast members, in heavy costume and make-up, required extra measures taken to keep from over-heating, and some even suffered permanent eye damage from the bright lights. This was one thing that added a significant amount to the overall budget for a movie filmed in Technicolor. The estimated budget for The Wizard of Oz was $2,777,000. Second only to Going My Way, it was one of the highest-grossing films of the year.

Roger Ebert said of the film that “the switch from black and white to color would have had a special resonance in 1939, when the movie was made. Almost all films were still being made in black and white, and the cumbersome new color cameras came with a ‘Technicolor consultant’ from the factory, who stood next to the cinematographer and officiously suggested higher light levels. Shooting in color might have been indicated because the film was MGM’s response to the huge success of Disney’s pioneering 1937 color animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

The Wizard of Oz won two Oscars that year. One for Best Original Song with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and the other for Best Original Score. It was nominated for four more Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Special Effects. Judy Garland was also awarded a Juvenile Academy Award for her work in both this and Babes in Arms, which was released that same year and was Arthur Freed’s first solo project.

It was selected by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry for its cultural significance in 1989.

Five years after working with Judy Garland for The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms, Arthur and his “Freed Unit” produced Meet Me in St. Louis, written by Irving Brecher and Fred Finklehoffe, which premiered November 22, 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri. Directed by Vincente Minelli who would meet Judy Garland for the first time on this set and marry her just a year later, this was only Garland’s second color film after The Wizard of Oz. It also starred child star Margaret O’Brien who would receive a Juvenile Academy Award for her work in this picture, though it was stolen from her and lost for nearly 50 years before collectors found it at a swap meet and returned it. Cast alongside Garland and O’Brien were Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, and Tom Drake.

Based on a series of short stories titled “5135 Kensington” by Sally Benson and published in The New Yorker magazine, Meet Me in St. Louis was nominated for four Oscars in 1944 including Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Musical Score, and Best Original Song for “The Trolley Song,” and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for its cultural significance in 1994. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” won an ASCAP Film and Television Music Award for Most Performed Feature Films Standard in 1989.

Time magazine is quoted as calling it “one of the year’s prettiest pictures” saying, “Technicolor has seldom been more affectionately used than in its registrations of the sober mahoganies and tender muslins and benign gaslights of the period. Now and then, too, the film gets well beyond the charm of mere tableau for short flights in the empyrean of genuine domestic poetry. These triumphs are creditable mainly to the intensity and grace of Margaret O’Brien and to the ability of director Minnelli and Co. to get the best out of her.”

Arthur Freed’s voice can actually be heard on the film as he dubbed the voice for Leon Ames in the song “You and I,” written by Freed and Nacio Herb Brown.

The last of this magical, musical trifecta was a crowning point in Freed’s career and MGM’s musical history. Singin’ in The Rain was released in the U.S. on April 11th, 1952, and starred Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds as silent actors trying to transition to “talkies” in 1920s Hollywood. Directed and choreographed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, it was nominated for two Oscars that year including one for Jean Hagen for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lena Lamont, and one for Lennie Hayton for Best Music and Score in a Musical. Donald O’Connor won a Golden Globe for playing accompanist and self-proclaimed funnyman Cosmo Brown. This topped the most successful of all of the “Freed Unit” musical spectaculars churned out by MGM, the brainchild of producer Arthur Freed.

There is much about this beloved classic that is not commonly known. For example, while most of us recognize all of the songs only from Singin’ in the Rain, and probably assume they were written specifically for this movie, all but one song, “Moses Supposes”, was an original at the time of the movie’s release. Its namesake song, for example, was featured in 1929’s Hollywood Revue of 1929, and the famous “Good Morning,” which outed Lina Lamont as a terrible voice, was from 1939’s Babes in Arms.

Most have heard that the iconic scene with Gene Kelly’s Don Lockwood splashing through puddles while singing in the rain was filmed over the course of three days, and Kelly was running a high fever the whole time, but not many would guess that Debbie Reynolds, playing Kathy Seldon, didn’t have much dancing experience before Singin’ in the Rain, and was even criticized to the point of tears by Gene Kelly. Rumor has it Fred Astaire found her off-set crying and began tutoring her. It might explain why her feet were bleeding at the end of the shooting of the “Good Morning” dance scene.

TIFF has truly picked some gems to showcase in their Dreaming in Technicolor series, but these three are not only masterful in their cinematic scope. They are also wonderfully told stories, with beautifully sung songs, and feature some of film’s most talented treasures. These movies are essential viewing to anyone interested in mastering their understanding of the movie musical oeuvre.

MGM and Arthur Freed had a period in film history, and our history, that colored the big screen with light, paint and spectacular music. Through World War and famine and stark reality, they made something wonderful beyond escapism, and to this day have provided us worlds we can escape to.

It’s Christmas in June for cinephiles at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Starting this Friday, TIFF will be launching their new summer series “Dreaming in Technicolor.” For those unaware of the Technicolor process, if you’ve seen any of the films in this series, you should already know about the gorgeous images and colours Technicolor produces. And for all of us here at Way Too Indie, we couldn’t be more excited about this series. TIFF has put together a fantastic lineup of classic films, along with an impressive list of special guests who will introduce special screenings, along with a master class from filmmaker Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg).

The series runs from June to August, and if you happen to be around the TIFF Bell Lightbox this summer, you shouldn’t have any excuse for missing out on these legendary films. Check out the full line-up below, and keep your eyes peeled throughout the summer for some features we’ll be writing about a few of our favourites in the series. To buy tickets, and find out more information about the series, be sure to visit TIFF’s website.

June 19th, 6:30pm – Singin’ in The Rain (35mm print)

“One of the most famous and beloved musicals of all time, Singin’ in the Rain is set in a 1920s Hollywood on the cusp of the sound era, where a swashbuckling matinee idol (Gene Kelly) falls in love with a bright-eyed newcomer (Debbie Reynolds) while trying to duck his jealous, narcissistic onscreen romantic partner (Jean Hagen), whose parrot-squawk of a voice makes her distinctly unsuited for the new talking pictures.”

June 20th, 2pm – Lawrence of Arabia (4K restoration introduced by Grover Crisp, head of film restoration at Sony Pictures)

“Peter O’Toole became an instant star in David Lean’s sprawling adventure epic as the eccentric and inscrutable British officer who rallies the nomadic desert tribes against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.”

June 20th, 7pm – Rope

“Filmed on a single set in a succession of long takes to simulate the sensation of one continuous shot, Alfred Hitchcock’s insidious drawing-room (or rather, dining-room) thriller was one of the director’s most stylistically daring endeavours.”

June 21st, 4pm – Becky Sharp (restored 35mm print)

“Miriam Hopkins received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress as William Thackeray’s indomitable heroine in this sumptuous adaptation of Vanity Fair, which was the first feature film shot entirely in the newly developed three-strip Technicolor system.”

June 21st, 6:30pm – Meet Me in St. Louis

“Minnelli’s much-loved musical classic spans a year in the life of the sizable Smith clan in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, whose youngest members — preening beauty queen Rose (Lucille Bremer), winsome, romantic Esther (Judy Garland), and pint-sized firecracker Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) — are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair in their city.”

June 23rd, 6:30pm – Bonnie and Clyde (35mm print)

“Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway became instant icons as the famed Depression-era outlaws in director Arthur Penn’s zeitgeist-altering masterpiece.”

June 25th, 8:45pm – Heaven Can Wait (35mm print)

“A recently deceased playboy recounts his lifetime of amorous adventures to a bemused Satan, in Ernst Lubitsch’s charming comedy-fantasy.”

June 27th, 3:30pm – The Wizard of Oz (archival 35mm print)

“The classic fantasy film looks even more spectacular in this magnificent 35mm print, struck during the last revival of the Technicolor dye-transfer process in the 1990s.”

June 28th, 3:30pm – Fiddler on the Roof (introduced by director Norman Jewison)

“Norman Jewison’s beloved, Academy Award-winning adaptation of the internationally acclaimed musical has become a classic for film and theatre lovers alike.”

June 30th, 9pm – All That Heaven Allows

“Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman star in this classic May-December romance which is considered the summit of director Douglas Sirk’s magnificent Technicolor melodramas.”

July 2nd, 6:30pm – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

“Baby-voiced blonde Marilyn Monroe and brash brunette Jane Russell embark on a European cruise in search of love and loot in Howard Hawks’ classic musical comedy.”

July 2nd, 8:30pm – Charade

“Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn luxuriate in early-’60s chic in Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian comedy-thriller.”

July 4th, 1pm – The Black Pirate (35mm print)

“The third feature to be shot in the early, two-strip Technicolor process, this high-seas adventure is one of the last great action epics from the swashbuckling sovereign of silent cinema, Douglas Fairbanks.”

July 4th, 4pm – The Adventures of Robin Hood (35mm print introduced by Scott Higgins, author of Harnessing the Rainbow: Technicolor Aesthetics in the 1930s)

“The incomparable Errol Flynn stars as the bandit of Sherwood Forest in the definitive Golden Age swashbuckler.”

July 5th, 3:30pm – The Naked Spur (35mm print)

“A driven bounty hunter acquires unwanted partners as he tries to escort a wanted killer out of the wilderness, in the third and best of five classic westerns pairing director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart.”

July 7th, 6:30pm – Black Narcissus

“A young Mother Superior (Deborah Kerr) struggles with a maelstrom of carnal passions in a mountaintop nunnery near Darjeeling, in this glorious Technicolor fever dream from legendary writing-directing duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.”

July 11th, 6:30pm – The Red Shoes (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman, VP of Marketing and Public Relations for Technicolor)

“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s tale of a beautiful ballerina caught between her art and her love for a young composer is simply one of the most gorgeous colour films ever made.”

July 12th, 6pm – The Tales of Hoffmann (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman)

“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s dazzling cinematic envisioning of the Jacques Offenbach opera is even more ambitious and formally adventurous than their celebrated The Red Shoes.”

July 16th, 8:45pm – Bigger than Life

“A gentle schoolteacher (James Mason) is turned into a malevolent monster by the side effects of a cortisone treatment, in Nicholas Ray’s searing critique of 1950s conformity.”

July 18th, 6pm – Magnificent Obsession (Technicolor Master Class taught by filmmaker Guy Maddin)

“A spoiled playboy (Rock Hudson) finds redemption when he sets out to cure the blindness of the woman he loves (Jane Wyman), in this first of Douglas Sirk’s luscious colour melodramas for producer Ross Hunter.”

July 25th, 3:30pm – Rear Window (archival 35mm print)

“James Stewart and Grace Kelly star in Hitchcock’s nerve-wracking study of voyeurism, obsession and murder.”

July 26th, 5:30pm – Apocalypse Now Redux

“Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam epic is one of the most ambitious and awe-inspiring war movies ever made.”

August 1st, 3pm – The River (restored 35mm print)

“Jean Renoir’s Technicolor masterpiece chronicles the everyday lives and growing pains of three young women growing up on the Ganges.”

August 2nd, 1pm – The African Queen (4K restoration)

“Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn star in director John Huston’s classic comic adventure film.”

August 2nd, 6pm – The Godfather

“Marlon Brando won (and famously refused) his second Best Actor Oscar as the dignified Don Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s Shakespearean portrait of a powerful Mafia family.”

August 9th, 1pm – Ohayo (Good Morning) (35mm print)

“A remake and update of Yasujiro Ozu’s marvellous silent I Was Born, But…, this delightful satire of fifties consumerism is one of the great Japanese director’s best-loved films.”

August 13th, 8:45pm – The Four Feathers (35mm print)

“Charged with cowardice by his friends, an upper-class non-conformist adopts a native disguise and plunges into the maelstrom of the Madhist war in Sudan, in this spectacular Technicolor adaptation of the venerable adventure novel by A.E.W. Mason.”

The auteur label is becoming more and more of a taboo, since it implies a belittling attitude towards the hundreds of people working on a given film. In this way, Swedish maestro Roy Andersson is something of a relic; while his movies must be meticulously crafted by hundreds of participants, it’s his inimitable vision that perseveres. He’s got his authorship stamped all over his films, with such surgical precision that you can tell an Andersson film from miles away. It takes the man about 7 years to release a new movie, which has become yet another trait that adds to his auteur status. To call the director anything else feels discrediting. This year, he caps off his trilogy “about being human” with a mouth-watering, mouthful of a title; A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence.

The film made Way Too Indie’s Top 15 Most Anticipated TIFF Films, and that was before news came that Andersson walked away with top honors from this year’s Venice Film Festival. As promised on paper, the film is a celebration for cinephiles, and follows in the footsteps of its predecessors; 2000’s Songs From The Second Floor and 2007’s You, The Living. Fans of either of those will fall for A Pigeon the instant it begins. A man walks around a museum, looking at reminders of our futile existence, and reflects on a stuffed pigeon sitting on a branch. Andersson’s impregnable camera lingers on the slightly bamboozled bird until we get three short vignettes thematically connected as “three meetings with death,” each more ridiculous than the last but all equally acidic in their comical disposition.

Along the way, we are introduced to various characters who will cross paths or reappear again in the background. Thanks to Andersson’s definitive choice of having an immobile camera angled with exactness, each scene a single unit with no intercuts, one gets time to scan the screen from top to bottom and left to right, noticing a baby in the corner, or a tearful dance instructor behind the window panes. In this way, Andersson’s cinema is very much made with the spectator in mind; the framework becomes all the richer for it, because there’s a familiarity with the interiors of a café or certain characters, which fill one with unexpected nostalgia. How do you capture nostalgia on film? Roy Andersson knows.

Not all the vignettes work in flawless unity as they do in the previous two installments. But, the ones that don’t interlock seamlessly are the shorter, seemingly more random, ones. Two scenes, running close to 15 minutes (if not longer) in length, are instant classics; a travel back in time to a heavily featured café where a patroness sings a song about paying for shots, and a serendipitous moment when two centuries collide in another café, in the middle of nowhere. These scenes are technical marvels, while simultaneously promoting Andersson’s themes on the human condition, mainly on the subject of war, women’s place in a “man’s world,” and the impact of history on the present.

An assortment of people talking on the telephone and saying how happy they are to hear the person on the other end of the line is doing fine, is one of the comedic underscores and gets a new shade of meaning upon each repeat (whether it’s a woman scrubbing the floors, or another woman in the middle of electro-shocking a monkey). In fact, in its succinct running time of just over 100 minutes, Andersson manages to cram in a wealth of contemplative themes; people’s fear of loneliness, Darwinian principles of survival, society’s dependence on money, and implications behind various commodities, whether they are clown masks or human beings.

A Pigeon is anchored by two of the most often seen characters; a couple of entrepreneurs who walk around trying to “help people have fun” by selling masks and fake vampire fangs. One of them is going through an existential crisis, and at one point listens to the same song on loop, declaring “It’s so beautiful, but so horribly sad too.” That’s as good a description as any of the existence presented in Andersson’s world of beige, powder-white figures. Much like the melancholic 16th century painting “The Hunters In The Snow,” by Pieter Bruegel The Elder, that inspired the film’s title. An acerbic punch to the gut, a comedy of human errors, and a treasure chest for the philosophically inclined; A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence is the work of an auteur on top of his game.

Originally published on September 23, 2014 as part of our TIFF coverage

Stephane Lafleur’s Tu Dors Nicole (literally translated to “You’re sleeping, Nicole”) takes place over one languid, youthful summer, shot gorgeously on black and white 35mm film. The 22-year-old title character (Julianne Côté), does nothing but aimlessly wander the neighborhood when not working at a thrift store, looking forward to summertime. With her parents away on vacation, and a brand new credit card in her name, Nicole can’t wait to party with her friend Veronique (Catherine St-Laurent) and spend to her heart’s content.

Things don’t go the way Nicole expects. Her older brother Remi (Marc-André Grondin) brings his bandmates Pat (Simon Larouche) and JF (Francis La Haye) to the house unannounced to record a rock album. Remi promises they won’t disturb her, a line followed by a cut to his band rocking out full-blast at night. Nicole and Veronique impulsively buy plane tickets for a trip to Iceland, but as the hot summer continues, things change for Nicole, suggesting she’s on the brink of moving into the next chapter of her life.

Lafleur nails down a hazy, lethargic summertime atmosphere with the help of cinematographer Sara Mishara, taking full advantage of the grainy film stock. Lafleur also knows how to take relatable experiences and beautifully tie them into his film’s themes. At one point Nicole and Veronique walk their bikes through a field before suddenly stopping, wondering where they’re heading to. They were just following each other, despite neither of them knowing exactly what they were doing. Lafleur punctuates the scene with a long shot of the two women standing alone in the open field.

It’s that kind of low-key, thematically relevant humour that proves to be Tu Dors Nicole‘s greatest strength. Lafleur throws in funny, surreal touches throughout as well, a series of bizarre moments surprisingly delightful in their oddness. The strangest, and funniest, part takes the form of Martin, a 10-year-old boy infatuated with Nicole. When Nicole first sees him she explains how, now that Martin’s voice dropped, he thinks he has a shot with her. Sounds cute, until Martin actually speaks; all of his lines have been dubbed over by a grown man, giving him the voice of someone in their 30s or 40s not a pubescent pre-teen. Martin’s scenes are a highlight, but the joke has more of a purpose than a silly, absurdist touch. It underlines Nicole’s feelings, showing how a 10-year-old’s life has more assuredness and direction than her own.

All in all, Tu Dors Nicole adds up to something pleasurably off-beat, a funny take on the coming-of-age film. Its quirks surprisingly entertain rather than grate or annoy, largely because of Lafleur’s assured direction and Mishara’s gorgeous cinematography. Films dealing with characters in their early to mid twenties trying to transition into the adult world aren’t exactly dealing with fresh material. Therefore, it’s something of a minor triumph that Tu Dors Nicole finds a way to wring something new and refreshing out of such familiar content.

Originally published on 9/15/14 as part of our TIFF coverage.

Like their previous film Lenny Cooke, sibling directors Benny and Joshua Safdie focus on a true story in Heaven Knows What, only this time they shoot it as a feature narrative instead of a documentary. The story behind it is unbelievable. While researching another project, Joshua ran into a young woman named Arielle Holmes and soon discovered her heartbreaking story of being a former homeless heroin addict who nearly died from a suicide attempt. So the Safide’s convinced Holmes to write a book about her life and then decided to have her play herself in the film. The result is an honest portrait of the heroin subculture found within the streets of New York City.

Heaven Knows What opens with a haunting exchange between Harley (Arielle Holmes) and her abusive boyfriend Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), who is screaming that if she really loved him, she’d have killed herself by now. Neither of them are in a right state of mind, both being gaunt heroin junkies living on the streets of New York City. Harley eventually takes Ilya up on his wishes and slits her wrist, nearly killing herself right in front of him. After miraculously surviving her suicide attempt, Harley ends up in a psych ward at the Bellevue hospital.

The film doesn’t spend much time showing her stay at the hospital, lasting only as long as the opening credits, but cinematographer Sean Price Williams (The Color Wheel, Somebody Up There Likes Me) makes the most of it. This visually stunning scene involves frequent camera movement and focusing to mimic the disorienting state of a heroin addict’s mind. On top of that, a dizzying synth score completely drowns out all other noises, making these moments feel more fragmented than cohesive. It’s a spectacular montage all aspiring filmmakers should watch.

Sadly, Harley ends up right where she left off after being released from the hospital. Even though Ilya isn’t around to manipulate her anymore, Harley continuously makes poor decisions. She trades a physically dangerous boyfriend for a slightly more stable yet equally addicted one named Mike (Buddy Duress). But because Mike is a drug dealer, Harley remains on her path of self-destruction.

The Safdie brothers paint a hopelessly depressing picture by focusing on her dangerous urge to receive the next rush of heroin. Furthermore, just when opportunities of escape begin to surface–such as Ilya finally finding a way off the street for a trip to Florida–they’re crushed as fast as they can develop.

Caleb Landry Jones is the most recognizable name in the cast and one of the few professional actors, but that doesn’t mean he puts on the best performance. Two of the best performers are non-actors off the street, Holmes and Duress. Both use their real life experiences to provide a level of authenticity that transcends basic acting. Not being able to distinguish real actors between non-actors is a testament to everyone involved.

Heaven Knows What tends to wander exactly like its characters do, without a predefined destination or sense of urgency. Showing that life is only worth living until the next high makes it all the more discomforting to watch. Their relentless determination for the next heroin fix–even resorting to such dismal means as stealing mail in hopes of finding a gift card to sell–is what keeps us transfixed to the screen. Like the wayward lives of its characters, it’s never knowing what’s going to happen next that makes for a fixating film.

Originally published on 9/7/14 as part of our TIFF coverage

Adapted from Robb White’s novel “Deathwatch”, The Reach comes from sophomore filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Léonetti. Léonetti’s debut feature Carré blanc played at TIFF several years ago, and despite its flaws it showed a filmmaker with a great sense of atmosphere and visual style. Now the French director makes a crossover to the United States, directing a thriller with Michael Douglas in one of the lead roles. But The Reach shows all the usual signs of a foreign filmmaker making a clumsy transition to America.

Douglas plays Madec, a rich businessman wanting to hunt for bighorn sheep in the Mojave Desert. Young Ben (Jeremy Irvine) is assigned as his guide for the hunting trip, and the two set out in Madec’s massive, six-wheel SUV. Ben’s moral purity clashes with Madec’s greedy capitalist way of life, a tension that finally explodes when Madec mistakes an old prospector for an animal, shooting and killing the old man. Ben wants to go to the authorities, but Madec, who’s in the middle of selling his business to China, refuses to let anything compromise his business deal. Madec turns on Ben, forcing him to strip and walk through the desert until he succumbs to the heat. From there it’s a cat and mouse game, with Ben using his knowledge of the area to repeatedly do his best to escape Madec.

If that premise sounds stupid, that’s because it is. Ben finds one possible way out after another, but Madec continually manages to stop him from succeeding, and this structure is insanely boring. Madec’s reasons for forcing Ben to slowly cook under the sun are flimsy at best, and idiotic at worst. Léonetti throws some nice shots of the desert in, but aside from that his work is surprisingly ugly to watch. Irvine shows off his body quite a bit (something Léonetti clearly enjoys, given how much the camera ogles Irvine’s abs), but he’s as bland as a 2×4 and can’t fake an American accent very well. Michael Douglas makes the most of his role, playing up the seediness of Madec, but he can’t do a single thing to fix the atrocious lines he has to deliver. He acts like a villain in a video game, at one point literally hurling dynamite from his SUV similar to Donkey Kong throwing barrels at Mario, and the quality of the screenplay is about on par with a video game. Case in point: At one point Douglas says “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…I KILL YOU!” If Jeff Dunham ever needs someone to fill in for him, Michael Douglas wouldn’t be a bad pick.

An overbearing score doesn’t help make things better, but the biggest offense comes in the final act. From there, The Reach goes from banal thriller to something hilariously awful, starting with one character’s random escape on a helicopter (I thought that sort of thing stopped in the ’80s?). The ending, significantly different from the source material, feels tacked on, like a move from producers to ensure a closer that will please audiences. If that’s the case, then their attention should have went to the rest of the film instead. Too inept to be taken as a good B-movie thriller, The Reach’s entertainment value is just as dry and empty as its vast desert location. It’s a film bound to rot in VOD purgatory, a fate it fully deserves.

Published under the original title The Reach on September 8th as part of our TIFF coverage.

For their follow-up to Resolution, Justin Benson and Aaron S. Moorhead ditch the meta qualities of their debut feature for straight storytelling in Spring. Their film opens with Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) watching his mother succumb to cancer while taking care of her. A bar cook with only one friend in town, and now one enemy after viciously beating up a gang-banger, Evan takes the advice of people around him to leave town and start over. He packs his things, grabs his passport and calls an airline telling them to book a flight for him anywhere out of the country.

Evan winds up in Italy, wandering around until he befriends two British tourists. He follows them to a small, seaside village where he finds work as a farmhand for Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti). Spending his time off exploring the town, Evan meets Louise (a perfectly cast Nadia Hilker), a beautiful, mysterious woman. Evan convinces her to go on a date, and within a short amount of time the two appear to fall madly in love with each other. And then one night Louise wakes up and eats a stray cat outside her apartment.

Yes, Louise isn’t exactly the perfect girl. She’s keeping a dark, bizarre secret from Evan, the specifics of which don’t get revealed until later. Her body changes and transforms into strange, Lovecraftian creatures that she can only hold off by injecting herself with some sort of custom-made medication. Credit to Moorhead and Benson: the reason for Louise’s bizarre, seemingly supernatural affliction is completely original. It also ties directly into the film’s themes of rebirth, moving on and love.

The natural, comedic banter seen in Resolution makes up most of the (surprisingly superior) first half. Lou Taylor Pucci, a chameleonic character actor, gets to show off his skills with a sympathetic leading role, but Nadia Hilker feels like the real discovery in the film. Hilker, a German-born actress with a hard to place accent, possesses the seductive, well-traveled qualities making Nadia captivating presence from the second she shows up. Moorhead and Benson also find a way to work within their low-budget to pull off some inventive shots, presumably using drones or miniature helicopters to swoop through the city’s narrow alleyways and over the gorgeous ocean view.

The problem is that, even with the originality on display, some of it isn’t necessarily good. Once Moorhead and Benson lay everything out, including a fairytale-esque twist on Louise’s condition, the mystery disappears, only to get replaced with something more on-the-nose and messy. It makes the final act — a spur of the moment road trip — come across as hasty, a sort of exhausting sprint to the finish line. And the ending, a nice low-key way to close the film, still feels too abrupt considering the time spent on the build-up beforehand.

But it’s hard to dwell on the problems with Spring, even though they do exist. No one else in the horror genre is really trying the sort of material Moorhead and Benson work with here. Their influences appear vast (a few examples: An American Werewolf in London, Before Sunrise, From Beyond, and Possession), casually mixing genres without fumbling the transitions. There’s plenty to admire about Moorhead and Benson’s work in Spring, just not as much to love. It’s a slight misstep, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

This review was initially published as part of our TIFF 2014 coverage. Spring is available today March 20 in limited theaters and VOD.

In writer/director Adam MacDonald’s feature debut Backcountry, things seriously go wrong for happy city couple Jenn (Missy Peregrym) and Alex (Jeff Roop). Going on a camping trip to Northern Ontario, the two end up losing their way, walking straight into bear territory. Backcountry tackles the survival thriller, and surprisingly succeeds. With two great performances, a smart screenplay, and impressive cinematography, Backcountry avoids falling into clichés, delivering a taut, tense, and all around good genre film.

Before the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, we briefly chatted with Adam MacDonald about Backcountry. The film hits theaters Friday March 20th, you can read our review here.

The promotional materials mention that Backcountry is based on a true story. Could you tell us what story the film is based on?
After I came up with the idea of an Open Water in the woods, I started to do quite a bit of research on black bears as well as first hand accounts of campers and hikers who have been attack by these animals. I came across a story of a couple who were savagely attacked in the backcountry by a predatory black bear nearly ten years ago, I found the story both heroic and tragic, it made me very emotional. The couple being young and alone made it all the more compelling to me.

You shot the film on location in Northern Ontario. How was that experience, especially for your first feature film? Did you have any of your own problems with Mother Nature during the shoot?
She’s a bitch! NO! Just kidding. Well there were definitely two sides to her. The crew would always joke that I had a direct line to God while shooting because the weather would always match the script. For instance, we needed it to be dark and overcast for certain scenes at the start of the shooting day and that’s what we got BUT I needed sunshine for the last scene and you know what? That sun broke through the clouds right on time! This happened a lot, it was a little spooky to be honest. As for her other side, when it was cold it was cold! Some night shoots we were all pushed to the limit.

How did you work with cinematographer Christian Bielz to establish the film’s look and mood?
Christian was amazing, I love that guy. I called him the eye of my soul because he captured my imagination. When I first met him for an interview I asked him what came to mind when he read the script. He said The Place Beyond The Pines. That was exactly it! I love Derek Cianfrance, and the mood his films put you in. They’re organic and alive and nothing seems forced. We set up a lot of the scenes where the actors could turn 360 degrees and not see one crew member. As for the mood, to me it’s a balance of music, performance, camera work, editing, and even colour temperature. You’ve got to find that balance until you feel it and then you hope others do as well.

Survival thrillers, or more generally films dealing with man against nature, have been around for quite a while. Did you have any hesitations or concerns about tackling such a familiar genre, and if so how did you address those concerns?
My only concern was making it feel as real as possible and make that bear attack the most visceral of attacks ever seen. I want people to feel it. I love nature, I have huge respect for her. I spent a lot of my life in the Laurentians north of Montreal. Being attacked by a large predatory animal is no joke.

Missy Peregrym and Jeff Roop are both excellent in this. They nail a kind of natural chemistry that’s hard to pull off. You have a background in acting, so now that you’re behind the camera, how much does that experience influence how you work with the cast?
I’m very fortunate to have had a lot of experience in front of the camera, so I know what it’s like be in the arena. I know how I like to be approached when I’m working with a director. But Jeff and Missy are professionals first and foremost. My gut knew that these two were the ones to play these roles. Missy is out of this world, her work is so intense and immediate. I love them both.

Could you talk about some of your filmmaking influences, not only on Backcountry but in general?
Rob Zombie and Derek Cianfrance are two big influences on me. I study their work and it definitely inspired me on Backcountry. I hope fans might see a bit of both in the film. I’m also a huge fan of South Korean horrors and thrillers. They go right to the bone on those! I absolutely love The Chaser!

One of the things I enjoyed about the writing was how hard it was to predict exactly what would happen. There are warnings from the park ranger, the unsettling encounter with the wilderness guide, bear tracks on the trail, the feeling of somebody watching them (just to name a few). Did you intend to do this as a way to keep viewers on their toes? 
Yes! 100%! I wanted to keep it subtle and avoid the “jump scare” tactic that has been done to death lately.

Your film seems intent on scaring people out of camping. Are you personally a fan of camping?
Yes, I’m a fan of camping until a six hundred pound black bear comes looking for me. It’s nature and it can be so beautiful beyond belief only to turn into the most terrifying experience one can face. That’s life.

What are you planning to work on next? 
I’m developing a new feature called The Wolf At The Door. It’s a story where a secret is revealed over a long weekend cabin getaway that ends up in murder.

This interview was originally published on September 9, 2014 as part of our TIFF 2014 coverage. 

With filming wrapped all the way back in 2013, it almost feels like Liv Ullmann’s grand return behind the camera has come a year too late. While this can mess with people’s anxieties and expectations; the most important thing is that Ullmann is back, directing an adaptation of masterpiece Swedish play Miss Julie by August Strindberg, a playwright regarded as something of a demigod in Scandinavian culture. Ullmann’s choice of setting the story in Ireland gave her the opportunity to cast Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, and Samantha Morton in the three roles. This is at once a blessing and a curse; shaky accents and stringent Anglophone translation (by Ullmann herself) make for a tiring watch, at times, but it also gives three familiar actors a chance to give it their 110%. Besides, Miss Julie has been adapted so many times; it’s nice to have it set in the beautiful Irish hillsides for a change.

The story goes as follows; on the eve of Midsummer’s Night, in a famous Baron’s castle, three people contend with escalating passions, desires, and prejudices on subjects of love, lust, and class. There’s the “kitchen wench” and handmaiden Cathleen (Morton), the educated, treacherous valet John (Farrell), and the center of attention whether off-screen or on, the Baron’s daughter Julie (Chastain). The Baron is never seen, but his presence is felt in almost every scene. Julie is presented as a lonely woman, trapped within the confines of her enormous and mostly empty castle, while the relationship between John and Cathleen is purposefully muddled between flirtatious colleagues and engaged lovers. The two servants are the first to meet, and it’s not long before the gossip starts about what the latest scandalous, improper thing Miss Julie has done. Speaking of the devil draws her out of the shadows, and it’s not long before Cathleen is dismissed.

Much of the time is spent listening to the voluptuous, impassioned, monologues between Farrell’s John and Chastain’s Julie. Make no mistake about it; Miss Julie is theatricality wiping the sweat off of the highest brow. If some viewers aren’t prone to fulfillment by way of violent performances, their time would be best spent elsewhere. That’s not to say that Ullmann’s direction doesn’t seep through the emotional cracks of the volcanic exchanges. Barring some fly-on-the-wall angles, elegant exterior shots by the brook or Julie’s garden, and a couple of truly fantastic reflections of Julie against the window superimposed with the only escape out of the castle; Ullmann decides to keep her camera firmly pointed at the actors, in medium shot, reminiscent of her old mentor and friend Ingmar Bergman. Appropriately framed, as if posing for a Venetian portrait, the actors are photographed in resplendent play of light and shadow by DP Mikhail Krichman.

Then there’s Ullmann’s choice of music, utilizing Schubert (his popular “Andate Con Moto” made cinematically infamous in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) and Bach to exceptionally powerful effects. The music reflects the character’s moods, at times revealing feelings they aren’t aware of, or are trying to hide. It’s stunning. But, Miss Julie never lets you forget that it’s an actor’s showpiece; Strindberg was infamous for his naturalistic style and free-spirited dialogue, which carved multiple dimensions into his characters. Ullmann’s translation feels clunky at times, and some of the delivery (especially from Farrell and Morton) feels too affected to resonate as anything genuine, but only to a small degree. Chastain on the other hand, whose accent does slightly waver but never to egregious levels, truly gives it her all here. She tears the roof off as Julie, going through a whole array of emotions and ranges to near exhausting altitudes. And yet, whether it’s instinct, Ullmann’s inspiration, or a bit of both, she pulls back in the right moments and grounds Julie, making her relatable and never larger-than-life.

This movie may not be the critical darling one would expect from an austere adaptation of Strindberg, by Liv Ullmann, starring Jessica Chastain. People looking for some easy entertainment won’t be praising it any time soon. Despite all of this, if the viewer properly prepares for a bit of a mental and emotional workout, there is much to be gained from the pain here. Three actors at the very top of their games, even with two of them being shaky at times, and a director who is clearly passionate and deeply respectful towards the material. Miss Julie is high-octane, visceral, cinema, raising intensity not with a kiss or a gunshot, but with vile, inebriated, human emotions.

Originally published on 9/22/14.

Nighttime vultures circling around the cynical, cruel world of newsworthy accidents and tragedies are depicted with delectably compelling malice in Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut, Nightcrawler. Hitting home runs with feature debuts seems to run in the Gilroy family, with older brother Tony’s excellent Michael Clayton coming out of the woodwork in 2007. With his own debut, Dan has channeled the very best from big brother’s repertoire, and written one of the year’s standout screenplays; full of razor-sharp dialogue and nail-biting suspense. But the spoils don’t stop there, because there are two guys who help Gilroy raise Nightcrawler to deliciously deviant levels in the form of leading man Jake Gyllenhaal and Director of Photography Robert Elswitt.

Things kick off in the dead of night, where petty thief and all-around scumbag Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) scavenges the L.A. streets for ways to make a dime. His game is usually to steal and pawn, though he does ask for jobs and a chance to prove himself any chance he gets. One night, while jammed in traffic because of an accident on the highway, he sees freelancer Joe (Bill Paxton) taping the brutal scene, and finds out what “nightcrawlers” like him do. Armed with a police scanner, a camera or two (if there’s an assistant to film different angles), and a vehicle, these people tape crime scenes and sell the footage to whichever news station coughs up the highest pay. Louis is hooked on the spot and proceeds to get into the game himself; pawning a bike for a cheap camcorder and “hiring” bottom feeder Rick (Riz Ahmed) as his intern and GPS navigator.

Louis’ fearsome determination and resolve to be the very best nightcrawler he can be starts to pay dividends when he begins to foster a working relationship with Nina (Rene Russo), news director of a local station and as desperate for ratings as Louis is focused for success. Starting off with petty home invasions and dog attacks, and moving up to heavier crimes, Bloom realizes that he’s finally found his vocation. How far will he go to make sure his videos are the first thing people see in next morning’s breaking news? What lines will Bloom cross, dragging whoever stands in his way, in order to get the best angle? The lines dividing and connecting ethics, morals, and professional conduct don’t just get blurred; they get smeared in blood.

Jake Gyllenhaal has outdone himself here, slithering under the skin of Louis Bloom to create a compelling anti-hero for the ages. As introverted as Travis Bickle, as ambivalent as Patrick Bateman, and as greedy as Gordon Gekko, Gyllenhaal’s Bloom joins the seedy ranks of charismatic anti-heroes who inadvertently glue the viewer in; unsure whether one wants him to succeed or fail, or whether it’s hatred or admiration that draws one to this strange man. Gyllenhaal has been on a roll since 2012’s End Of Watch but Louis Bloom is, without a doubt, his greatest performance. Amusing, menacing, and wacko in more ways than one, the character is Gilroy’s spawn as much as Gyllenhaal’s. Gilroy has made his previous work (Bourne Legacy, Reel Steal and The Fall, most notably) look like child’s play compared to his Nightcrawler screenplay. A dual character study of the modern American entrepreneur and the cutthroat world of contemporary media, Nightcrawler is the apex of the year’s original screenplays; brimming with intelligence, humor, and tension.

Elevating the picture that much further is the exemplary work of master cinematographer Robert Elswitt, regular Paul Thomas Anderson collaborator. Choosing to shoot on film, the establishing shots of L.A. nights haven’t looked this attractive in ages, almost surpassing Michael Mann’s signature visuals. While the film is a little slow in its first act, and before Bloom begins to truly flower, we have Elswitt’s keen eye to nurture our senses and immerse us into the belly of this beast. The supporting cast, lead by an inspired Rene Russo unseen in this form for what feels like decades, and rounded off by the excellent Ahmed and Paxton, almost make Nightcrawler into an ensemble piece, if it wasn’t for Gyllenhaal stealing scene after scene.

Much of the film’s appeal comes from the fact that it’s so many things all at once; a showcase for Gyllenhaal’s evolutionary maturity since the early days of Donnie Darko, a reminder that Rene Russo can act circles around her peers when the material is right, and an astonishing feature debut by Dan Gilroy, who may not direct as seamlessly as he writes, but whose imperfections here are almost too minute to count. This is cryptic twilight moviemaking of the highest order, and the result is a ferocious film predestined for cult status.

Review originally published on 9/24/14

Nightcrawler trailer

Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund seems to have found a breakthrough hit with his fourth feature Force Majeure. Östlund’s two previous films, Involuntary and Play, gained some popularity on the festival circuit, neither of them coming close to the success of his latest work (in fact, Play and Involuntary don’t have US distribution). Force Majeure focuses on the 5 day vacation of a family in the French Alps. A controlled avalanche near the resort appears to go terribly wrong, and with a wall of snow barreling toward them Tomas, the father, impulsively runs away, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. The avalanche turns out to be a false alarm, stopping before it hit the resort, and now the family must deal with the fallout from Tomas’ actions. Force Majeure incisively picks apart gender roles and societal expectations, exposing them for the absurd, hilarious archetypes they really are.

Force Majeure premiered earlier this year at Cannes to critical raves, and since then the film has only gained momentum. Sweden selected the film as its submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and in the eyes of some it’s a frontrunner in the category. To promote Force Majeure’s Canadian release, we sat down with Ruben Östlund for a brief chat about what inspires him, his connection to the film’s location, and much more.

Force Majeure will open in Toronto this week before expanding across Canada. If you’re in the US, you can currently catch the film in select theatres before an eventual VOD release.

You said the idea for Force Majeure came from hearing an anecdote by a woman who had a similar experience with her boyfriend. Your previous film Play is based on a series of real-life crimes. Do you tend to find inspiration from real-life incidents?
For Play, when it came to the robbery in itself, what I got interested in was the image of five black boys robbing three white boys. It had so many questions in it. It was a racial question, [a question of] class, society…This was a topic that we have such a problem handling, so we tend to look in another direction. For me it was a provocation in a way that forced us to talk about what we have seen.

In a way Force Majeure is the same thing. It’s a man acting in a way he is not expected to. It is totally forbidden to abandon your family when you’re supposed to stand up for them. There was something about Tomas’ behaviour that is opposite to the whole of film history. The most reproduced character in film history is probably the man as a hero. Maybe the woman as a sex object is more reproduced than the main hero, but Tomas is acting in a way that is really forbidden.

For my friend in kind of the same situation, where he was acting cowardly…He didn’t try to protect his girlfriend. It created a chain reaction of problems, and they were really close to splitting up. They’re still together and have kids now. When I heard their story, I understood something about the set-up of Force Majeure that connects itself to deeper questions. I also got a hold of a sociological study of airplane hijackings where you could see the frequency of divorce is extremely high afterward. And of course it’s because you see a side of your partner that makes you say “I don’t want to continue living with this person.” There was also an investigation about survivors of ship catastrophes from the Titanic to the MS Estonia, and you can see the percentage of survivors are highest with men in a certain age. This is the total opposite from what we’ve learned. We have learned that women and children are first in the lifeboat, but they are actually the ones that die the most. The crew is more likely to survive than the passengers as well. So there was something about catastrophic crisis situations and expectations of how humans behave that was not true at all, and that really interested me.

Your films are bringing things to light that people don’t want to talk about. Do you feel inclined to take from real-life incidents because of this? If this was entirely a creation, if wasn’t based on something real, people may use that as an excuse to say “That’s not real, that’s an invention.” Because you’re taking inspiration from something that actually happened, it’s harder for people to dismiss what you portray.

Exactly. In a way the family, the mother and father and kids in the film are representing the nuclear family. That was very important to me, so it couldn’t be a specific incident. I wanted it to reflect the roles and expectations of a man and a woman in a nuclear family. The kinds of roles that we just, without being aware of it, start to play and engage ourselves in when we are starting a relationship or going into a family.

Why the location in the Alps?
I started out as a ski filmmaker. I was making ski films in my 20s, so I wanted to find a way to get back to that environment. It’s also interesting at a ski resort because there’s a struggle between man and nature. Civilization tries to control the power of nature with controlled avalanches, making tracks in the snow, having all those lifts go up and down. It’s a good place for this kind of drama.

Did you always want to approach this with a comedic tone? What made you want to put comedic elements in the film as opposed to treating this as a straight drama?
I think there’s a lot of comedy in Play also, but they are situations that we’re not used to handling, so we are not allowed to laugh about the kids in Play. But people that are wealthy, living in a luxury hotel, we’re allowed to laugh at them. Life is a comic tragedy. [Laughs] It’s a comedy with a tragic ending; we’re all going to die. I really like when scenes are horrifying in one moment, and humorous in the next. The audience often doesn’t know how to react.

You’ve said your previous films are more conceptual, but this one appeals more to emotions. What made you decide to go down that road with this film?
I guess there are so many things happening inside the characters in Force Majeure that I had to get closer to them. I had to focus on the face more. In my other films the directing was like “If you go over here or stand over here, do this,” but here the actors had to take much more responsibility over the characters. So I guess it was something natural with the topic of the film.

There’s a level of intense precision to the film. I wanted to know about your preparation process. Are you very meticulous about preparing the film in advance?
Yes, I do quite [a bit] but…I mean, every day on set we’re shooting a new scene. I have to rethink and re-evaluate what I thought before and make new decisions. For me it’s very important that I know what the framing should be, and which location and actor that we [use in] the scene, and the acting. I must have a clear view on that, but as soon as we start shooting I immediately understand, “Okay, I have to rethink.” So no matter how much you prepare, shooting is a struggle because you [can be] so insecure. And if you’re not true to your sensibility then it’s a very dangerous moment in filmmaking. You have to be true to your sensibility. If you feel something is wrong here, you can say “I don’t know what it is, maybe try to play it more in this way.” Shooting is a very hard process, it takes a lot of energy. It’s like a war. [Laughs]

Now that TIFF 2014 is officially over and we’ve caught our breath from festival fatigue, we discuss our favorite films from the festival as well as some of the duds we saw. Also during this special TIFF edition of the Way Too Indiecast, we highlight a few titles that generated buzz that we didn’t get a chance to see, but you should totally keep on your radar. And now that we experienced the festival, we continue the conversation from our previous episode by giving our final thoughts on TIFF’s New Premiere Policy.

Topics

• Best of TIFF14 (1:50)
• Worst of TIFF14 (33:10)
• Final Thoughts on TIFF14 (41:55)

Subscribe to the Way Too Indiecast on iTunes and leave us a rating. Join our conversation by leaving a comment below!

Coming off a disappointing previous film (Touchy Feely), director Lynn Shelton returns with Laggies to what she does best —examining likable but flawed characters at a crossroads in their life. Working from a script she didn’t write (a first for the director) and her largest budget to date, Shelton ditches her typical improvisational approach for a more conventional structure. But even with a more refined technique, Laggies still obtains excellent chemistry between its cast, giving off the authentic vibe that we’re used to seeing in Shelton’s work.

It’s been over 10 years since Megan (Keira Knightley) graduated from high school, and while her friends are getting married, having babies, and starting up their own restaurant, Megan twirls signs on the street for her father (Jeff Garlin). It slowly dawns on her that she’s lagging behind her peers and just floating through life. She needs some time away from her social group and her boyfriend Anthony (played by Mark Webber, who always gets typecast for these kind of roles) to clear her mind and to find herself.

This is when the film begins to test your ability to overlook and roll with the nonsensical developments. After buying beer for a group of underage high schoolers, Megan forms a close friendship with one of them named Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz). Megan decides to cash in her I-O-U from Annika for the beer and devises a plan to get away from her routine for a while. So she tells everyone she’s going on a weeklong self-development seminar, but instead stays with Annika at her father’s (Sam Rockwell) house. Like the audience, her father questions Megan’s motives but it doesn’t take much arm twisting before he allows her to stay. Everything goes according to plan until Megan develops feelings for Annika’s father, which threatens to ruin her relationships with Annika and Anthony.

Shelton continues to show her extraordinary ability to get the best performances out of her cast. Knightley puts on the best performance of her career by dominating her own scenes and enhancing everyone else’s around her. Moretz is very much in her comfort zone playing a snippy teenager and pairs well with Knightley. Rockwell has the luxury of getting the best material to work with, playing both the cool dad and the love interest with the effortless charm he’s known for.

There are some great life messages in Laggies, namely about gaining perspective on life while helping others avoid making those same mistakes. Another theme throughout is on the nature of relationships, their fragility and the constant attention needed to make them last. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of predictable moments in Laggies. It’s far too easy to guess how the story’s plot points will turn out before they happen. A predictability that is of course dissatisfying. Filled with solid performances from everyone involved, and an enjoyable original soundtrack by Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), Laggies is Lynn Shelton’s most accessible and crowd-pleasing film to date. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of believability and few moments that contain her unique style, making the film feel overly familiar and generic.

The story behind indie filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What is simply fascinating (read our review). While researching a completely different project, the siblings unintentionally met a woman named Arielle Holmes, who they discovered lives a pretty interesting life on the streets of New York City. So they convinced her to write a memoir of her life and were so impressed with it that they decided to make a film out of it. The filmmakers knew from the very beginning they wanted Arielle to play herself in the film, despite the fact that she had never acted before. Because of this, Heaven Knows What provides a genuine portrait of the New York City street life.

I caught up with Josh, Benny, and Arielle at TIFF right after the North American premiere of Heaven Knows What to talk about their film. During our conversation, we touched on the invisible line between documentaries and feature films, how they blended professional and first-time actors, how long it took to accomplish a continuous 4 and a half-minute moving shot and much more.

How did the premiere here at TIFF last night compare to the one in Venice?
Benny Safdie: The European audience accessed the film in different ways. They loved it and felt it, but just being in a theatre with people that speak English is a different experience. Not that one was better than the other, it’s just different.

Arielle Holmes: Not everything gets translated properly because of subtitles.

Josh Safdie: They language is so nuanced, even in English. Europeans accessed it on a more emotional level. But I’m surprised in general that people find it such an intense, horrific movie. I’ve known Arielle now for about 15 months and it feels like a cakewalk.

You guys sort of just discovered this story while working on a different project, tell us how you met Arielle Holmes.
Josh: I met her not as a street kid but as diamond designer apprentice. As I got to know her a little better, her life story absorbed me and climaxed when she attempted to kill herself. That was when we shifted gears and left the other project on a shelf.

Arielle, even though this was based on your own life, was it difficult for someone who hasn’t acted before to portray it on screen?
Arielle: Honestly, it wasn’t for the most part. It wasn’t as strange as I thought it would be beforehand. It was like I was recreating another experience and new emotions.

Benny: A lot of time people say, “Oh, you’re just playing yourself.” And it’s not easy to re-access emotions and then tell them in a more heighten way. If you can do that, you can do anything.

Josh: After we finished principle photography, we knew we had to still shoot the end of the movie and we assumed we were going to get to it sooner than we did. As part of the agreement with us, she was going to go to rehab after shooting the film, but after three months passed and we knew we couldn’t ask her to come back and act in those scenes again. I knew that she was a performer from day one, but morally it didn’t feel right to ask that upon her.

As directors, how did you guys pull off such a seamless blend of professional and non-professional actors?
Josh: Well whenever we would include an actor, they were always introduced in character. Caleb Landry-Jones spent weeks getting into the character and really immersing himself. Arielle really set the bar for everyone else though. It’s important to create a vibe where everyone immediately feels comfortable on set. You don’t want to director someone, you want to see where they’re going and then tell them what they need to do.

Benny: I don’t look at it as blending actors and non-actors. I look at as a first–time actor who never got the chance fore. And this requires a little more work on our part. But when we approach a scene, we know that we have an anchor of an actor. Though we had to treat Maynard differently to get him to say his lines.

Josh: Yeah, we knew we only until a certain time at night before his alcohol intake was too much. You couldn’t go near him because he would start a fight with you.

Arielle: Then he would threaten to not give back equipment.

Josh: He didn’t know Caleb was an actor, he thought it was actually Ilya He went up to Caleb and said, “Hey, lets fuck these guys up and take their equipment.”

Really?
Josh: There’s a wide shot in that party sequence in the back of the band shell that if you pause it on your screen you can see him fighting his own shadow.

Coming off the wonderful sports documentary Lenny Cooke why did you decide to make this a feature film rather than a straight up documentary?
Josh: Streetwise was a big influence on us. I wanted to make a film that Polanski would be proud of and impress the Polish tragic scene. This film was never a reality to me. It was always an opera. We couldn’t get through that by presenting it as reality. We needed to twist things up.

When I saw The Wolf of Wall Street, I sent Scorsese a tweet asking why didn’t he cast the real Jordan Belfort. Because he’s sooo interesting. If you watch one interview with the real Jordan Belfort you’ll see this guy is filled so many nuance details that even Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t [match].

Benny: A lot of times documentaries are looked at as a separate thing. Oh, that’s a documentary. But they can be movies as well. Documentaries tend to be a social thing, like something that you can learn from. With Lenny Cooke we were going against that idea. We wanted it to be a real movie, so in a way were fictionalizing a lot of reality.

You guys crossed that line in Lenny Cooke, with the edited part when Lenny goes back in time to talk to his younger self.
Benny: Yeah, we took a lot of liberties with the editing and the ending. So in Heaven Knows What, we took the source material and fictionalized it, really heightening it. We changed things to make you feel a certain way.

Yeah. You’re right. If you think about it, the difference between documentary and a feature movie isn’t all that different after all.
Josh: Exactly. I mean The Wolf of Wall Street was a documentary. Basically any biopicture is a documentary. Take Taxi Driver. What’s happening there? It’s essentially a documentary on Paul Schrader’s time as a taxi driver in New York City, it just indulges in his fantasies. I think every movie is a documentary. I think you could make an argument that Lord of the Rings is a documentary. Documenting emotions that happen in that moment that will never happen again.

Considering this mostly takes place on the streets and is based on true events, I was surprised by the lack of handheld cinematography.
Benny: Yeah, that was a conscious decision. It would have made too much sense to do handheld. It would have given off a different vibe. Doing on a tripod allowed us to counteract what the world was given us.

The majority of the film was shot up close but there are a few wide shots too.
Josh: Yeah. I actually had a long talk with our cinematographer Sean before we started the movie and told him you have to push me to go wider sometimes. So every once in a while he would look at me and ask if we should go wide now.

Benny: There was one wide shot that was added late, which is when they leave the first pharmacy that they steal from, and it adds suspense because you’re not sure if [the store owners] are going to come out.

My favorite shot of the film is the opening one in the psych ward—long continuous take, no audible dialog, set against disorienting synth music.
Josh: Yeah, it’s a 4 and half minute shot.

Benny: Art department wise, it took a full day to get. It took us about 4 hours to get the shot.

Josh: We’ve been dying to work with a proper Steadicam operator for a while.

Benny: It was funny because each person wanted to out-do the other guy, I can go on a bigger lens, etc. It just got better and better.

Without giving too much away, why did you choose end the story where you did?
Josh: It’s strange because we had a totally different scripted ending. I remember the first time I told Arielle about this story she was like, “Okay. I guess that works.” That meant a lot to me that she wasn’t really into that ending. So we knew it wasn’t right. We knew we needed to go as far as possible with the Arielle nightmare and then come back to Mike’s character.

Arielle always talks about how much she hates repetition in her writing. We always thought that was ironic because that lifestyle is all repetition. But that’s why she goes back to Mike, it’s the same old thing.

Arielle: When I was in that lifestyle I didn’t realize how repetitive it was. Even though you’re doing the same thing every day, you still have the little subtle dramas that go on.

Every time something gets written about Lav Diaz, an explanation of the director’s unusual, tough filmography feels necessary. When it comes to length, Diaz is one of the most maximal directors around. It says something when Diaz’s last film, the 4 hour Norte, the End of History, is one of his shortest works. From What is Before runs 338 minutes long, another short film for the director (some of his other films run between 8 and 11 hours), but still packing plenty of power.

Taking place over several years in the 70s, From What is Before follows the lives of several people in a remote village in the Philippines. Itang (Hazel Orencio) takes care of her disabled sister Joselina (Karenina Haniel), who the town believes has healing abilities; Sito (Perry Dizon) and his nephew Hakob (Reynan Abcede) look after a herd of cows in the village; the barrio’s priest (Joel Saracho) doesn’t care for Itang and Joselina’s role as healers, but feels compelled to look after them; saleswoman Beding (Mailes Kanapi) goes around sticking her nose into other people’s business, spreading rumours. These are some of the characters we come to know over the epic length, all of them fully embodied and fleshed out through Diaz’s patient approach.

The first three and a half hours focus on the villagers’ and their way of life, their rituals and quotidian tasks. Diaz is only a difficult filmmaker when it comes to his length and pacing. His narratives tend to be easy to understand, same with his films’ themes. In From What is Before, Diaz looks at the time when a “cataclysm,” specifically the rise of Ferdinand Marcos to power, along with his declaration of martial law in 1972, laid waste to everything in its path. The emphasis on the villagers’ lifestyles makes the last two hours, when Marcos’ soldiers come in and take over, all the more tragic as the barrio’s residents flee or suffer a terrible fate.

The tragic ending looms over the first half. Cows are found hacked up in the forest, a man is found dead with a bite mark on his neck, and several huts mysteriously burn down, just to name a few of the odd occurrences plaguing the village. Diaz’s style acts as a sort of teleportation device, slowly immersing viewers into his film’s world to the point where it’s easy to imagine living right alongside the villagers. It’s the biggest benefit of the slow-paced approach, of letting scenes play out longer than usual. It creates a unique rhythm viewers need to adjust to. But once they do, it’s quite easy to get lost within what’s shown on screen.

With Toronto now in our rearview mirror, we’ve had time to reflect on which films at the festivals left the greatest impression on us as well as ones that left us with a bad taste (check out our coverage hub). Unlike last year’s 12 Years a Slave or Gravity, the lineup this year seemed to lack a headliner film that everyone flocked towards, but this allowed us to put on our exploring gear to discover some hidden gems. And we certainly found some surprises. We compiled our favorite and most disappointing films of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, listing any films we already saw at other festivals like Cannes and SXSW as part of our honorable mentions.

Favorite Films of TIFF 2014

Bird People

Pascale Ferran’s film defines whimsy, but don’t take that as a red flag. Split into two parts, Bird People (review) tells a similar story through two slightly connected lives. An American businessman on a trip in France makes a major, life-changing decision in the first part, and in the second one of the cleaners at the hotel the American stays at has a life-changing decision made for her. It’s best to go into Bird People not knowing too much, because the shock of where Ferran takes her film is a large part of what makes the experience so pleasurable. By finding an utterly audacious way to tell the same story twice, Bird People serves as a reminder of the limitless possibilities of storytelling. [CJ]

The Duke Of Burgundy

Wonderfully acted, sumptuously shot, vibrantly edited, Peter Strickland’s The Duke Of Burgundy (review) was one of those festival films that floored most critics, and became the unofficial recipient of the “Critic’s Choice Award.” You can count me among those who fell ecstatically in love with this intoxicating and deliciously spirited picture. Tracing the waning stages of a relationship, it may sound conventional on paper but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single conventional frame here. Chara D’Anna and Sidse Babett Knudsen play lesbian lovers Evelyn and Cynthia, deeply involved in a relationship founded on BDSM and Cynthia’s profession in lepidoptera, and the emotional core of the film is the lovers’ attempt at holding on to the passion that binds them. It’s creative in every imaginable cinematic way, and with US rights secured by IFC Midnight, I urge readers to keep a look out for release date because this is one you won’t want to miss. [Nik]

In the Crosswind

Director Martti Helde’s debut, based on Stalin’s purge of Baltic residents to Siberia, was one of the fest’s more surprising discoveries. Shot in black and white tableaux vivants, the camera slowly floats around each meticulously staged scene (each shot took months of preparation) while the protagonist narrates her experiences. It’s a bold stylistic move that pays off in spades, providing one moving image after another. At its worst, In the Crosswind (review) can be admired for its exquisite cinematography, but it’s much better than an excuse to show off some terrific camerawork. Helde merges the story’s emotional impact with the meticulous staging, delivering something completely unique and awe-inspiring. [CJ]

La Sapienza

Eugène Green’s newest work sounds trite on paper. When a famous architect loses the passion for his livelihood, along with his marriage, he sets off with his wife to study a famous Baroque architect’s work in Italy. A stop along the way has them crossing paths with two young siblings, and their experience with the brother and sister cause the couple to fall back in love again. But leave it to Green, whose formal approach is something entirely his own, to make La Sapienza (review) a thought-provoking, altogether pleasant experience. Even if one can’t adjust to Green’s habit of placing the camera directly in front of his actors, the inventive and evocative ways he films Baroque architecture will surely wow viewers. [CJ]

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a creepy thief who stops at nothing to earn himself a buck in Dan Gilory’s directorial debut Nightcrawler. Shot by the extraordinary Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), the film shows a side of Los Angeles that you’ve never seen before. Eager to get into any job field that will accept him, Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) stumbles into the dark and dirty world of racing ambulances to crime-scenes to capture gruesome footage for local television stations. Gyllenhaal plays a perverse anti-hero who somehow has us rooting for him in more times we care to admit. Nightcrawler keeps you on the edge of your seat with twists and turns down to the very end. For my money, it’s a better version of American Psycho. [Dustin]

Phoenix

Christian Petzold returned to the festival circuit this year, to remind us why he’s one of Germany’s most accomplished and leading directors working today. In a sixth collaboration with his muse Nina Hoss, he has directed the most sophisticated film I saw at TIFF. Phoenix (review) tells the story of Nelly, a Holocaust survivor who returns to her native Berlin to try and piece her broken life back together. She searches for her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld, also fantastic) who may or may not have betrayed her to the Nazis, and in an intricate narrative, ends up pretending to pretend to be herself. It’s a brilliant storytelling move by Petzold, who explores an identity crisis and symbolizes it in the context of post-war Berlin. The ending is probably the greatest thing Hoss and Petzold ever achieved together; it will eat you alive. [Nik]

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence

Featured in our Top 15 Most Anticipated films for TIFF, it’s safe to say that Roy Andersson’s Golden Lion winner did not disappoint in the slightest. With a title you just want to hug, A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence begins in typical Andersson style; a stationary camera angled at a beige-colored museum room, and a pasty-white overweight man walking around, looking at fossils and relics, with his wife impatiently waiting in the background. One of these fossils turns out to be a dusty pigeon, sitting on a branch, frozen in stuffed reflection. A series of vignettes proceed to flow and connect in Andersson’s philosophizing world full of contemplative, existentialist, and often hilarious, characters and actions. Some of the scenes, including one where two eras meet in a café, are reminiscent of the superior Songs From The Second Floor in their astounding choreography and technical fortitude. For the third part of his trilogy about “being human,” Andersson has proved yet again that he is one of the most fascinating directors working today. [Nik]

The Theory of Everything

Here’s a challenge for you. Try watching the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (review) without shedding a tear. Based off the memoir of Jane Hawking, the film chronicles the life of famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking from the time the two met at Cambridge and the difficulties they faced after Stephen was diagnosed with the paralyzing Lou Gherig’s disease. Most people only hear the scientific side of Stephen’s achievements, but this film sheds light on his personal life and the emotional struggles he and Jane went through trying to raise a family while battling a vicious disease. Don’t be surprised if you hear Eddie Redmayne’s name called come Oscar time. Portraying Stephen Hawking before and after the disease required a difficult physical transformation that Redmayne brilliantly performs. It may be a little sappy and conventional at times, but The Theory of Everything remains an incredibly uplifting film about love and hope. [Dustin]

Tokyo Tribe

Sion Sono tops himself yet again which his biggest and most ambitious film to date. Taking place over one night in a dystopian Tokyo run by 23 different gangs, Sono’s hip-hop musical/action/comedy/horror/whatever-you-want-to-call-it throws everything it can on the screen at once. At times overwhelming and exhausting, Tokyo Tribe (review) is nonetheless frequently hilarious and twisted, filled with incredible scenes and violence galore. This might not be the best introduction to Sono’s insanity (last year’s Why Don’t You Play In Hell? might work better for that), but fans of the Japanese madman have no need to worry. Sono continues to fire on all cylinders, and for all we know this could be his masterpiece. [CJ]

Wild Tales

The Argentina film Wild Tales (review) was easily the most fun experience I had at the festival. Consisting of six completely insane short stories, director/writer Damian Szifron takes these episodic segments to hilarious levels by combining pitch-black humor with creative ways to show vengeance. Each story begins with an ordinary situation most people can relate to, but as they unfold Wild Tales shifts into overdrive with exaggerated circumstances filled with irony. For example, one of the stories involves a slow driving hillbilly who serves across lanes so that they only other car on the country highway can’t pass him. When the guy finally manages to pass the slow driver, he makes an explicit gesture towards him and speeds off, only to get a flat tire a few miles later. The scene becomes chaotic and ends on an epic note. Wild Tales is packed with a lot of laughs, claps, visual style, and plenty of shock value that you would expect from a film produced by Pedro Almodóvar. [Dustin]

Most Disappointing Films of TIFF 2014

Cub

Ever read a synopsis for a movie and thought “that sounds so fantastic, it’s almost impossible to mess up,” only to walk away totally disillusioned and disappointed? That’s pretty much exactly what happened to me and this promising Belgian horror film about a 12-year-old boy scout caught in a booby-trapped forest with his troop, trying to avoid the fatal antics of a “wolf-boy” called Kai. Playing in the Midnight Madness, promoted with a tasty festival trailer, Jonas Govaerts’ Cub is, sadly, a neutered, declawed and defanged puppy, completely harmless in terms of true horror. With a unique setting in the woods, in the context of scouts and their “be prepared” motto’s, and the deliciously-sounding booby trap techniques, Cub has all the potential to be an inventive, visceral, experience. It’s nothing of the sort; relying on conventional scares, uninteresting characters, and a painfully flat finale. [Nik]

Mommy

Xavier Dolan wants you to know he’s a serious director. The Quebecois filmmaker with many job titles to his name (including actor, director, writer, producer, and editor, to name a few) made a huge splash this year when Mommy received a rapturous response at Cannes, getting a 12-minute standing ovation and a Jury Prize. Count me as someone who doesn’t get the fervent support around Dolan. With almost no plot or story, Mommy follows a mother and her troubled teenage son around as they befriend their new neighbor. Dolan shoots in a 1:1 aspect ratio, a completely useless gimmick, and tends to repeat a formula of shrill, violent fights between mother and son before dancing the pain away to a poorly chosen pop song played in full. Mommy is bad melodrama, plain and simple, a surprising step down for Dolan after his previous two features, Laurence Anyways and Tom at the Farm, showed a lot more promise. [Nik]

The Voices

The only time I felt the urge to walk out of the theater at the festival was during incredibly underwhelming The Voices. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave early thinking (nay hoping) the film would get better, a decision I would later regret. Jerry Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) plays a seemingly normal blue-collar worker, but his home life reveals a dark secret behind this disturbed man. He hears the incredibly silly voices from his evil cat and angel-like dog who convince him to do unthinkable things. None of the performances are especially good in the film, which is disappointing considering Ryan Reynolds, Anna Kendrick, and Jacki Weaver were involved. The tone of The Voices is completely inconsistent, beginning with an overly playful musical then shifting into a dark comedy, and eventually ventures to nonsensical horror, without an ounce of cohesiveness. During moments when the film was trying to be funny I found myself laughing at it instead of with it. Despite being a rather stylish film, The Voices is an awkward mess of genre mashing gone horribly wrong. [Dustin]

Honorable Mentions

Other films that are definitely worth checking out that played at TIFF (and other festivals): Adam Wingard’s rapturous and playful The Guest, Palm d’Or winner Winter Sleep, latest from master filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Two Days, One Night, 3 and a half hour epic Li’l Quinquin, harrowing street life portrait Heaven Knows What, ambitious and transcending Jauja, and Mike Leigh’s exemplary Mr. Turner.

“The traps were like Goonies gone horror,” explained Belgian director Jonas Govaerts. Only blocks away from the theater where his debut feature Cub would soon premiere, Govaerts was easy-going but likely ready for his movie to finally screen for audiences. “It’s daunting,” he said of being at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival with his first feature, a Flemish-language horror film about a troupe of Cub Scouts being stalked by a psychopathic huntsman and feral child who have set up elaborate, deadly traps in the woods.

What was the initial conception for this project, why did you want to make this movie?
Well I was a cub scout myself, and two things actually: one thing, I learned in film school is write what you know, and that’s kind of hard when you’re doing horror films. I’m not a killer or a serial killer. But I was a cub scout, I have an arena there. I know the world, and I remember being 12, being a scout and being incredibly fascinated by whatever my leaders would come up with. I thought this is interesting because if you mesh a real horror story with whatever your leaders, they’re pulling your leg basically. And if those stories are converted, I thought there was something there, so that’s what the film is basically, a scout camp gone horribly wrong.

So is this a story that’s been with you for a while then? Have you been thinking about it since you were a cub scout?
Yeah, actually, I think some scenes [came] from when I was 12 and being there like, “what if this is real what they’re telling me?” Yeah, so the idea of it sitting there has been kicking around for a while, but to actually get a real story out of it… Around 2011 when I was co writing with Roel Mondelaers, also a director from Belgium, but he co-wrote ‘cause I couldn’t do it alone. Because I had wild ideas and ideas for killings and traps, but to make an actual construct.

The film feels similar in ways to some American films, whether it’s Deliverance or Home Alone even, I was wondering if there were any films in particular that influenced your movie?
Yeah, but maybe not the obvious ones. There’s a little known, it’s Japanese, a film called Evil Dead Trap. It’s from the 80’s, it has like a rip-off Dario Argento soundtrack, but it has traps that are amazing, and they’re amazingly staged, and it has like that Argento/Brian DePalma fetishistic kind of thing. I definitely wanted that in the film.

Then I’m also a big Guillermo del Toro fan, and what he does with the sounds, the way he directs kids like in The Devil’s Backbone. Usually kids are like the cute sidekicks, or the evil one in horror. Either one of two, but no, if you find the right people, they can be the main characters, and carry the story. So that gave me the idea to actually tell it from the perspective of a 12 year old.

I feel like that must have been one of the big challenges, finding the appropriate kids to portray this kind of stuff, what was that casting process like?
Yeah, Belgium is a very little country as people probably know, so when writing I thought this is hopeless, we’re never going to find… I mean, it’s hard enough finding one kid that’s good, I needed 11 of them. And then I was shooting something with the cameraman, some music video, it had to render, so we were doing nothing. He said come take a look at this, I did a video called “The Gift,” and a kid showed up, and I was like “who is that?” He looked like River Phoenix in Stand by Me. So I was like, “ok, if he can act.” And he could act, we brought him in, and sometimes you don’t need to look, it comes to you. We mixed and matched for the rest. It was easy once we had the protagonist in place.

So what’s it like directing children in material that gets so dark and mature? Do you have to explain what’s going on to them?
Well, it’s not that different. Actually I asked for some advice before I started shooting there’s a director from Belgium who works with children a lot. I was like, “what’s the trick?” and he said to think about it. Acting in Flemish is “spill.” Which means “kids play,” so actors are big children basically, so keep it simple, give them a metaphor that they can think, “ok, this is what I’m supposed to be doing”. It’s not that different from directing adult actors, if anything it’s easier.

Make it about playing pretend?
Yeah, I had in my head, I was thinking I should scare them on set, and play the Suspiria soundtrack. But then, there’s no time for that. They know what to do if you find the right people. There’s nothing worse than a bad kid actor.

So the score felt very influenced by Carpenter, I was wondering an intentional homage?
Well, I wrote the script and I only played three albums and those were all by Zombie, the band leader, Steve Moore did the score, and they are very influenced by Goblin who did the all the Dario Argento soundtracks. It was so in my head that this should be the music for the movie that it thought lets find him on Facebook and send him a message. He was like, “Yeah, cool, I’ll do it.” He’s doing The Guest as well, which is playing at TIFF as well, and it’s interesting to compare scores when you put it next to each other, and he’s a huge Carpenter nut, and I really wanted that sound.

So you mentioned all those traps also, so how do we go about designing them? Was that a lot of your work?
That’s why I was saying I needed a co-writer to get a decent story out of all this, but the traps were like Goonies gone horror basically, so that was the fun part. I just woke up in the middle of the night like “what if there’s a wasp nest and a crossbow?” I mean, that’s in my head anyway.

Is that your favorite one?
No, that’s got a little bit of CGI, I wanted to do practical. I like the opening one, because it’s such a horror cliché to have a girl running through the woods and then have the headlights come on. So we played with that idea a little bit, hopefully that pays off.

The production design has certain elements that are really interesting too, the villain’s lair in particular, how did you go about that design?
That went through a few stages. A friend of mine who’s a playwright, he wrote a play [that took place] in the underground bus systems, and I asked him where did you get the idea? He said it’s real, there’s something called the Ark or the Ark 2. There were some nutcases in the 80’s who made a fallout shelter made from 40 school buses buried underground, and they had a dentists chair in there, it’s very creepy, it was closed down by the government, you can find it online. I don’t know how much I can give away, but there’ an extra layer to the buses where the final fight is, and that was a rip from Phenomena, the Dario Argento film, there’s a pit full of maggots, I kind of pulled from there.

So the ending in Cub leaves a few things unresolved, what was your intention with that? Why did you go for an ending that didn’t feel as clean?
I wanted a bleak ending, for some reason I’m attracted to those, and there’s a glimmer of hope in it, but I thought it was the most interesting journey for the little kid, who you think he’s just going to be the hero, but it turns out a little differently at the end. It was just a way of getting there. I had that final image of them walking, I had that in my head, and I just needed to get there in writing, so it was never, for me, if you want, there’s a little glimmer of hope, but to me that’s just a beat in the story.

This is your debut feature, what’s it like to be at a prestigious festival to debut it?
It’s daunting. I was hoping it would play a week in Belgian cinemas, and now it’s premiering here. I was at a Q&A for Tusk by Kevin Smith, and I remember in film school, they asked us to redirect a scene from a movie, and I did 37 dicks from Clerks. To be on the same stage as him, is just, how did this happen? I’m sure it will be more daunting when we premiere.

You mentioned you went to film school, but at what point in your life did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker?
Well, there was the fun of films and watching films actually came in the cub scouts, my leaders were always talking about Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, but my dad wouldn’t allow me to see them. And I didn’t have a VHS player, so in my mind, those films were way more gruesome and out there than they actually were. So that kind of kicked it off, and then when I was 16 or 17, I found Evil Dead II, and what’s great about that film is that it’s not only a fun film to watch, but you can tell they’re having fun making it. And that’s when it clicked, you go get some friends together, you go off in the woods, get a 2 by 4, I didn’t know what it was but then I found out that it’s if you don’t have money for a steadicam, you get a beam. And just the fun of filmmaking is so clear, when watching a film you just think, oh, this is a job, ok let’s do that. It took a while for me to get there but…

So you’ve always been a horror nut, really into the classic scare films?
That’s where my love with cinema started, but as you grow up, you do realize that if there is one genre with a lot of crap in it, it’s horror. So you kind of broaden your perspective a little. I’ll watch any movie, any genre, but that big kick in cinema, I usually find in good horror.

You mentioned Evil Dead II, but any other particularly big influences?
There’s one in my head that’s like everyone’s favorite film, but it’s not that well known it’s Dellamorte Dellamore, or Cemetery Men. It’s an Italian, mid-90s. It’s actually a rom-zom-com before Shaun of the Dead. It’s set on a cemetery, it’s got Rupert Everett, and the most beautiful woman in Italy called Anna Falchi, she’s like a model. It s a weird film that doesn’t really work, but to me it’s perfect. But that one, its like Italian Terry Gilliam.

So what are your future plans? Are you already considering a follow up?
I’m just beginning to write something that we could do in Flemish, and that’s also got a very Flemish subject. And there’s one comic I found, but I can’t say too much about that we’re trying to get the rights to that would be very dark and very interesting. I’m staying in the genre for now.

Watch Cub trailer

Like the film’s 70 minute runtime, I’ll be brief. Jean-Luc Godard tackles three dimensions in his latest film, a complete sensory assault that, like his other recent works, can only be attributed to the legendary filmmaker. Narrative and characters don’t truly matter here; something one character explicitly states at one point. There are two couples and a dog (Roxy Mieville, Godard’s own pet), that much is clear.

The real reason why anyone should see Goodbye to Language 3D is for the 3D effect itself. Love him or hate him, the screen has never looked deeper the way Godard films it. Using canted angles and placing objects close to the camera, the level of depth in some of Godard’s compositions almost hurt to watch because of how much they push the illusion. He also uses the fact that 3D shoots through two side-by-side cameras to mess with audiences’ eyes, usually moving one camera and leaving the other in its place. The result is an image best seen not told, like watching two shots laid on top of one another. One shot in the left eye, one shot in the right. Godard repeatedly goes back to this technique, sometimes setting up shots so one camera is slightly off compared to the other. It might drive people mad. It’s also the first time 3D feels exciting and not a gimmick for theatres and expensive TVs.

I’m not a particularly big fan of Godard’s work, but Goodbye to Language might be my favorite out of what I’ve seen from him. It’s not the kind of attack on the senses I’m fond of (see Leviathan for that), but I had fun with all the nonsense hurled at me from the screen. It’s a really funny film as well, with plenty of cheeky jokes thrown around (my favorite: as a young man starts defining philosophy, Godard abruptly cuts him off right after he says “Philosophy is…”). Enjoy it if you can, or flee in the other direction if you can’t. Chacun son cinéma.

In Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, the title character (played by co-director Ronit Elkabetz) spends 5 years trying to divorce her husband Elisha (Simon Abkarian). In Israel, divorce cases are only handled by the Rabbinical Court, and religious laws state the husband must approve the divorce in order for it to be final. Elisha stubbornly refuses to give Viviane the divorce she wants, and the Rabbis won’t force Elisha’s hand because they see no grounds for the two of them to split (Viviane says they’re just incompatible as a couple).

Ronit Elkabetz and her brother Shlomi set their film entirely within the courthouse, starting each sequence with on-screen text explaining the amount of time passed since the beginning of the trial. It’s a bland location, with all white walls and several windows, but amazingly Ronit and Shlomi make the most of it. Gett is a compelling, theatrical drama with three excellent performances at its centre. Elkabetz and Abkarian, working together for a third time (this is the final part of a trilogy by the two directors), do terrific jobs, and Menashe Noy’s turn as Viviane’s lawyer is so good he feels like a main character.

Some tonal changes lead to a few awkward, melodramatic moments, but at its core Gett impresses with its low-key, affective mode of storytelling.

After making The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer goes back to the same subject matter for his follow-up The Look of Silence. A brief background: In The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer followed several people responsible for slaughtering hundreds, if not thousands, of suspected communists in the 1960s military coup of Indonesia. Oppenheimer was shocked to see that, not only did the military get away with murdering over one million people, the perpetrators continue to stay in power, bragging openly about their war crimes.

Oppenheimer’s ability to let the killers indulge led to sickening profound results, but for The Look of Silence the perspective switches from criminal to victim. Adi, an optometrist in a small village, wants to expose the reality about his country’s past, his motivation being the brutal murder of his older brother by death squad leaders. Since these war criminals are Adi’s neighbours, he’s able to see them under the pretense of checking their eyes for new glasses. Oppenheimer films Adi as he gently probes and confronts the men responsible for his brother’s death, something that causes plenty of resistance from the interview subjects.

Scenes of Adi confronting the men responsible for his brother’s death are inherently compelling, but compared to Act of Killing, a complete masterpiece, The Look of Silence doesn’t come close to matching its predecessors’ greatness. Oppenheimer focuses on the denial and excuses people make for their past atrocities, but this was already covered effectively in The Act of Killing. The confrontations end up providing exactly what one would expect: constant denials, lies and anger at the line of questioning from Adi. The Look of Silence definitely packs a lot of power, but it feels more supplementary to Oppenheimer’s brilliant first film.

Two years ago Noah Baumbach charmed Toronto audiences with Frances Ha, although fans of the whimsical free-form narrative in his last film might be disappointed with the concise structure and fastened script found in his latest film While We’re Young. Forty-something married couple Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) begin to notice the signs of growing older–close friends are having babies, arthritis settles in, and bed time is always at 11 o’clock sharp. Though it’s when they meet a spontaneous mid-20s couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) that they really start to question their own lives.

There’s a huge age gap between the couples which accounts for how differently they act and think from each other. Though ironically, it’s the older couple that has the CD collection and prefers digital films while the younger one enjoys antiquated technology like vinyl records and VHS tapes. Spending time with the impromptu hipster couple makes Josh and Cornelia feel young again, envying the way they show unconditional love towards each other. But they soon realize it’s easy to take for granted what already you have and that everyone has their own problems.

Unlike Frances Ha which pleased critics and the arthouse crowd, While We’re Young tightens things up on all levels, making it appeal to a wider audience. While the comedy is more conventional, it’s nonetheless a very funny film thanks to a wonderful cast led by Stiller and Driver. Baumbach continues to show he has a knack for creating relatable characters, this time in the form of relationship routines and the act of growing old. Despite a formulated script and an awkward rant on Fair Use policies, While We’re Young remains a very watchable film that many people will find enjoyable.

At the precipice of the Algerian War between France and Algerian independence fighters, a reserve soldier for the French military, living in Algeria as a schoolteacher (Viggo Mortensen), is enlisted to escort a prisoner (Reda Kateb) on a two-day trek to Tanguit to stand trial. Shot in expansive rocky deserts of Morocco, writer/director David Oelhoffen’s second feature film (following In Your Wake) is a story of survival adapted from the Albert Camus short story “The Guest.”

After debuting at the Venice Film Festival, Loin des Hommes, or Far From Men, made its North American debut this week during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

In addition to Jauja, Loin des Hommes is one of two French-language dramas playing at TIFF with Viggo Mortensen in the lead role; however, in Oelhoffen’s film, Mortensen speaks some Spanish and both speaks and writes Arabic for a brief stretch showing off the breadth of his linguistic skills.

French distributor Pathé owns the French distribution rights without current plans for an international release.

Trailer for Loin des Hommes/Far From Men

Whiplash has been one of the biggest hits on the festival circuit so far this year, getting rave reviews from Sundance, Cannes, and from many audiences here in Toronto as well. And it’s pretty easy to see why: An impressive cast makes for an entertaining watch. But the film ultimately keeps its focus too shallow and stays within its comfort zone. A flimsy attempt at a love story could have been explored further for maximum impact, but it might as well have been nonexistent. One thing’s for sure; Whiplash will be the best film about drumming that you’ll see all year.

The up-and-coming Miles Teller portrays an aspiring drummer who will do whatever it takes to earn a spot on an élite ensemble. But to do that he must impress the unforgiving and impossible-to-please instructor, played by J.K. Simmons (who gives his best impression of the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket). One of the primary messages of Whiplash is about pushing people to their limits (and sometimes over their limits), that much is clear. But a particular “rushing or dragging” bit in one scene grew tiresome and repetitious despite its poignant intentions. The film’s energetic soundtrack and performances inspire an appreciation for the art of drumming, but as a whole Whiplash misses more than a few beats.

Jonas Govaerts’ Cub feels all too familiar, a significant problem given its promising concept and imagery. On a Cub Scout trip to the woods, young scout Sam (Maurice Luijten) sees a feral child with a bizarre mask running around in the forest. He repeatedly warns his fellow campers, only to get made fun of. The counselors, vaguely alluding that Sam has some sort of dark past, don’t believe him until it’s too late. The feral child, along with his hulking father figure, live in a secret lair in the woods, setting up booby traps all around to kill unsuspecting people wandering into their territory.

There isn’t much to say about Cub because it really doesn’t do much to make its slasher in the woods premise refreshing in any way. The usual elements are all here, as if Govaerts goes down a checklist: abandoned vehicles strewn about, scenes that end with a cut to the villain discreetly hiding nearby, late realizations by supporting characters of the severity of their situation, someone stumbling upon the killer’s secret, elaborate lair, just to name a few. It also suffers from an incredibly abrupt ending, one that gives Sam a completely unbelievable arc and bafflingly leaves the fates of several characters open for no reason. The poor writing and characterization ruin everything, leaving Cub as nothing more than a middling genre effort.

Austrian filmmakers Veronika Franz (wife of auteur Ulrich Seidl) and Severin Fiala first present Goodnight Mommy as a mystery with a horror film premise–two nine-year-old twin brothers question their mother’s identity after a facial surgery leaves most of her face covered with bandages. The boys notice their mother acting out of the ordinary, she never shows them any affection and seems to favor one brother over the other. Though to be fair, the mother was never shown before the surgery, so it’s hard to say how much she has changed. The first two acts of the film keeps things ambitious, never knowing if the mom is really someone else or if the kids are right. Goodnight Mommy escalates into the torture film variety in the last act, making the film difficult to stomach when it switches from psychological suspense to physical horror.

Goodnight Mommy is a promising start for this Austrian duo, who take us to haunting places using shock value and atmospheric visuals. Though the film works best when its carefully manipulating the audience’s emotions and suspicions. A twist near the end will either come as a welcoming surprise or a cheap trick, but either way it’s not quite enough to compensate for the excessive and disturbing violence.

At one point during Still the Water, a character says one has to “keep a humble attitude towards nature; it’s impossible to resist it.” That line might be the most succinct summary of what writer/director Naomi Kawase shows throughout her film. Taking place on the gorgeous island of Amami-Oshima, Still the Water delves into themes that have run throughout all of her films: the cycle of nature, life, death, love, humanity’s relationship with nature. Kawase tackles these large-scale motifs with a calm, zen-like approach, making Still the Water a pleasant viewing experience.

After a nearly wordless prologue of shots showing various aspects of life, death, and nature (a ritual dance, a goat getting slaughtered, and gorgeous shots of the massive sea surrounding the tiny island), 16-year-old Kaito (Nijiro Murakami) discovers the washed up body of a man covered in tattoos. Kaito freaks out and runs away, while his girlfriend Kyoko (Jun Yoshinaga) doesn’t react at all. The next day she expresses frustration at Kaito for running away instead of meeting with her as he was supposed to. The mystery over the washed up body soon vanishes from the film altogether, only to come up again briefly in the final act, and Kawase keeps her camera’s focus on Kaito and Kyoko.

Kaito lives with his hard-working single mother Misaki (Makiko Watanabe), their relationship a distant one due to her constantly being at work. Kyoko’s mother Isa (Miyuki Matsuda) is dying, and with only a short time to live she leaves the hospital to spend her final days at home. Kaito’s loss of a family unit from his parent’s divorce and Kyoko’s imminent loss of her mother force the two adolescents to come of age, and as they fall in love with each other they confront both the beauty and harshness of the natural world.

Kawase tends to get a bum rap from critics, mainly because she doesn’t get much recognition or notoriety outside of Cannes. Undeniably, Kawase’s style can rub viewers the wrong way. Characters tend to spit out one sentence philosophies and life lessons, and the leads’ youthful naiveté lets Kawase get away with lines like “Why do people have to be born and why do they die?” Her pacing, seemingly nonexistent, could be seen as meandering. I’ll admit that Kawase lends a little too much self-importance to her work (case in point: before her film screened at Cannes she called it a masterpiece deserving of the Palme D’Or, a statement giving her detractors plenty of ammo), but I tend to enjoy her films. She knows how to create a gentle rhythm, one that makes it easy to embrace her optimistic worldview. The strengths of Kawase’s style tend to show themselves most in small, self-contained chunks. The best examples in Still the Water come when Kaito visits his father in Tokyo, a sequence highlighting the connectedness between humans and their environment, along with Isa’s death scene, a long and ultimately moving moment in the film.

Regrettably, Kawase can’t sustain the highs generated from those scenes throughout her film. The return of the washed up body at the beginning makes a dulled impact because, by this point, the larger themes have taken over, making the resolution nothing more than an afterthought. But even during the more restless moments of its 2-hour runtime, Still the Water showcases the gorgeous, subtropical landscape of its location. Kawase may not have the kind of support other international auteurs get from audiences and critics, but Still the Water is yet another example of how she’s a distinct and undervalued filmmaker.

Two Shots Fired opens with teenager Mariano (Rafael Federman) dancing at a nightclub, going home, doing the chores and then, after discovering a gun in the garage, casually shooting himself twice. The first shot grazes his head, and the second goes into his stomach, the bullet lodged somewhere doctors can’t find. One week later Mariano gets sent back home, and Two Shots Fired spends its time following Mariano, his friends and relatives as they react to his suicide attempt.

Martin Rejtman’s film certainly has a unique tone. Mariano shows no signs of depression or mental issues, apparently shooting himself out of boredom more than anything. Other characters, all of whom act disaffected and speak in droll anecdotes, also make impulsive, life-altering decisions throughout. When Mariano recruits a young woman to join his Baroque, flute-playing quartet, she immediately decides to move to Buenos Aires and get a job in order to afford joining the group. The strange, awkward tone running throughout Two Shots Fired provides it with a bone-dry sense of humour.

The impulsive acts of the characters extends itself to the narrative as well, with Rejtman suddenly changing focus from Mariano to his mother when she goes on a vacation. It’s a surprising move, and like most everything else in the film, it’s hard to see the point. Rejtman creates a bizarre mood, but it’s not an especially appealing one. Two Shots Fired is certainly well-made, but its “light as a feather” demeanor works against it by the end, making it too forgettable to care about.

Hong Sang-soo has made yet another film (his 16th one, to be exact), and for those aware of the filmmaker it should come as no surprise Hill of Freedom shares similar qualities to his other works. Hong’s films, usually dealing with a director, some sort of romance, miscommunications, a lot of drinking and some sort of structural trickery, have gotten a bit of a following over the years, and it’s easy to see why: they’re breezy and resonant at the same time, dealing with deep themes while never feeling weighed down for a second. Hill of Freedom is yet another strong entry in the director’s consistent output.

Mori (Ryo Kase) is a Japanese man still enamored with his former Korean workmate Kwon (Seo Young-Hwa), and 2 years after a failed proposal Mori flies back to Seoul to find her again. The film structures itself around a series of letters Mori sent to Kwon describing his quest to find her, and as Kwon begins reading the first letter she drops all of them. Without any dates or markers on Mori’s writing, Kwon has no idea of the letter’s original order, and neither does the film; flashbacks to Kwon’s trip are shown out of order, leaving viewers to figure out where each segment of Mori’s trip fits within the narrative.

Hong just knows how to create fun, likable characters that appear truly human, and even with almost every line delivered in broken English (Mori doesn’t speak Korean) he still makes the different character interactions enjoyable to watch. Mori begins making new friends during his stay, even starting an affair with a waitress (Moon So-Ri) at a cafe he frequents, and Hong creates plenty of entertainment out of watching Mori discuss topics like time, love, and happiness with the supporting cast. It’s also consistently funny, the highlight being a subplot involving another house guest having an issue with her temper. At 66 minutes in length, Hill of Freedom is a perfect entry point for people new to Hong Sang-soo’s unique, charming style.

Shinya Tsukamoto tackles Shohei Ooka’s 1951 novel in Fires on the Plain, a graphic, borderline-exploitative take on the classic anti-war book. Tsukamoto, the extreme Japanese director responsible for Tetsuo: The Iron Man, casts himself as a soldier suffering from tuberculosis in the Philippine jungle. His company kicks him out, finding him useless due to his illness. The nearby hospital also won’t have him, so he wanders through the jungle, enduring its brutal conditions and hoping to make it out alive.

Tsukamoto knows how to make a truly visceral viewing experience (see the vastly underrated Kotoko, for example), so working on a film meant to highlight the horrors of war sounds like a perfect match. And while Fires on the Plain piles on the gore, decomposing bodies, and even cannibalism, the grotesqueness feel more like B-movie nastiness than something gritty and real. Tsukamoto also plays his role as a blank slate more or less, a significant problem when the film is telling a personal and highly subjective story. The final result is something awkward and dull, an anti-war film that never hits its intended mark, but at least Tsukamoto tries his damndest to succeed. It’s best to stick to Kon Ichikawa’s 1959 take on the source material rather than put any hope in this clumsy misfire.

The opening scene of Saverio Costanzo’s first English language film Hungry Hearts defines the meaning of situational irony. It begins with Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) discovering she has walked into the wrong bathroom at the restaurant she’s dining at, after nearly entering a stall occupied by a man, Jude (Adam Driver). As she frantically tries to leave the door gets jammed, locking them both in the claustrophobic bathroom together. To make matters worse, Jude has the stomach flu, making the smell nearly unbearable for them both. A call to the restaurant is their only way out of this hilariously awkward single take scene. In the face of a painfully awkward moment, the two seem oddly attracted to each other. While this opening scene has a charming vibe to it, Hungry Hearts quickly shifts into a romance but ultimately settles for something much darker, skirting the line between intense thriller and straight-up horror.

The film jumps ahead to show that they’re now a couple and, after a positive pregnancy test, they eventually decide to get married. Everything is peachy until the baby arrives. Which is when the tone shifts and laughs get replaced with shouting disagreements on how to properly raise their child. Mina doesn’t trust doctors and insists on keeping their newborn as “pure” as possible, meaning vegan diet only and no unnatural medicines like antibiotics. Jude realizes his son isn’t growing like he should so he sneaks his child to a doctor who tells him the baby suffers from malnourishment. This is when the film should get real interesting, but it turns into an exasperating watch instead.

Hungry Hearts starts and ends with a bang, but the lack of substance in between doesn’t match up to these hefty bookends. Both Rohrwacher and Driver recently received acting awards at the Venice Film Festival for their outstanding performances, but they aren’t enough to save the film from feeling like a missed opportunity.

Set in the American South in 1865, two rogue Union soldiers (Sam Worthington and Kyle Soller) scout and pillage everything in their path as the Union army lags behind them. Setting the tone early, The Keeping Room opens with them brutally murdering two innocent women, as well as setting a horse-drawn coach on fire with yet another victim at the helm. Their next stop is a small farm-house belonging to two sisters and their African-American slave (Muna Otaru). With their parents gone, it’s up to Augusta (Brit Marling) and her sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld) to protect their property, and more significantly themselves, at all costs.

Based on the screenplay featured in 2012’s Black List, Daniel Barber gives a rare perspective of the Civil War era, telling it from a female point of view. A time when woman were often left alone as the men fought. The Keeping Room is a disturbing but powerful watch at times, especially as the women’s experiences get more and more horrific during this old-fashioned home invasion. The film’s biggest names, Marling and Stenifeld, are both serviceable, if not a touch middling, in their performances, but it’s Otaru that impresses the most with her courageous and cheerful performance. The Keeping Room walks a fine line between unpredictable and questionable moments, ones that only tend to happen in movies, but its unique focal point makes for an intriguing watch nonetheless.

Prominent Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer returns to the festival in the Masters program with his latest film 1001 Grams. The film isn’t about drugs, but the premise is equally fascinating. Marie (Ane Dahl Torp) dedicates her life to measurements, carefully maintaining Norway’s national kilo at the perfect kilogram weight, the standard unit for which all other measurements in the country are based from. Her life is extremely structured and rigorous, rarely deviating from her daily routine and only showing emotions when it’s practical. Marie’s co-workers share the same monotonous personality. Even pick-up lines fall within their limited purview – “Do you prefer to wash before weighing the kilo?”

1001 Grams doesn’t come across quite as serious the characters seem to be trying so hard to make it. Witty puns and weight metaphors make the film surprisingly funny at times. Hamer neatly assembles each frame of the film in a way fitting the particularities of its characters’ sensibilities, but it’s so slow-moving that it feels over-calculated. By the time a love story develops later into the film, the pace has already led to plenty of clock-watching. While the message behind 1001 Grams is valuable–that no matter how scientific one’s approach to love, it simply can’t be measured on a scale–the film is equally scientific in its formula leading to predictable outcomes, though at an unfortunately slow pace.

As Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait opens, a title card claims “1,001 Syrians” helped make the film. The reason for such a bold and unconfirmed claim is because of co-director Ossama Mohammed’s reliance on footage from online sources. Mohammed, a Syrian filmmaker, left his country in forced exile back in 2011 as the Syrian Civil War broke out. Now living in Paris, Mohammed’s only window into the turmoil of his homeland comes from uploads on sites like YouTube and Liveleak.

The footage Mohammed includes is, unsurprisingly, horrific. Some of the first images we see are a teenage boy, tied up and beaten by (presumably) soldiers in Assad’s army before getting sodomized. Protestors march the street in peaceful protests, only to get shot at by soldiers. The clips range wildly in quality: blocky pixels, garbled sounds, frantic and blurry movements as cameramen run for their lives. There’s no need to delve further into the horrors shown on-screen; Mohammed wants these videos to awaken viewers to what’s going on in Syria. Describing them would take away from their intended impact.

Mohammed narrates over the footage, explaining with just enough information to give proper context while talking about his own inner conflicts. He dreams about a young boy shot and killed for stealing his camera while he was in Syria. Mohammed films rain hitting his window from outside his apartment in Paris. He moves his camera along a sidewalk, down a staircase, and films outside the window of a moving train. The camera’s restlessness shows Mohammed’s life as an unsettled one, his turmoil constantly felt. Mohammed can only watch from a distance, his cries of anguish going unheard from an apathetic international community. The low quality of the footage shot by Syrian civilians and soldiers serve as a cruel reminder of how limited Mohammed is in getting a proper view of what’s going on. His perspective will always feel as blurred and blocky as the footage he relies on. What he sees is literally compressed.

At this point, co-director Wiam Simav Bedirxan enters the picture. Bedirxan, a filmmaker still in Homs, contacted Mohammed to ask him what he would film if he were still in Syria. The two filmmakers exchange messages while Bedirxan films as much as possible. The footage is harrowing and heartbreaking, especially when Bedirxan starts teaching children in her (now destroyed) neighbourhood. Some of what Bedirxan films may feel manipulative, like a sequence of injured animals roaming around the city. The choice to include a sequence like that may not be agreeable, but it’s perfectly understandable. Mohammed and Bedirxan are focused on civilian suffering as a result of the war. Seeing people try to drag bodies off of loved ones off the street with sticks so snipers won’t kill them is the sort of image where politics can’t justify the acts shown on-screen. And Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait is full of these moments.

Bedirxan herself is the inspiration for one of the film’s titles; her name “Simav” translates to “Silvered water” in Kurdish. The second half of the title refers to Mohammed’s involvement. Mohammed and Bedirxan use their collaboration to loudly protest what’s going on in their country, but Mohammed brings another fascinating element into the film. As he watches from afar, Mohammed tries to understand and deal with everything happening back home (at one point he even starts analyzing the found footage as if it were a film). Mohammed uses the film as a means to cope with his situation.  It’s another example of how rich of a film Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait is, a difficult but essential film.

Finnish filmmaker J.-P. Valkeapää comes up with a wild take on a boy-meets-girl story in They Have Escaped, which appropriately premieres in the offbeat Vanguard section of the Toronto International Film Festival. Using intriguing camera techniques, the film expends an excellent atmospheric tone, especially during key dream sequences. Though it’s a pleasure to look at, They Have Escaped falls apart due to its wobbly story and over-familiar subject. Memorable moments are few and far between, resulting in a middling film that feels more experimental than anything else.

A stammering young man named Joni (Teppo Manner) gets assigned to live in a juvenile detention center after fleeing from a mandatory military service. Joni is a man of few words because of his embarrassing speech impediment. However, it’s not long before the introvert crosses paths with a loud bleached-blond punk named Raisa (Roosa Söderholm). She’s an attractive girl but always seems to be running from trouble and causing a scene. Although their personalities are miles apart, the two share the same urge to escape from the troubled youth center and free themselves from any kind of rules.

The title of the film makes it pretty clear what happens next. Given Joni’s history of fleeing, it’s bewildering why counselors give him access to a vehicle in the first place. But for some reason they do and that makes it easy for the two outcasts to embark upon a cross-country journey. Raisa claims to have a large stash of cash in a box somewhere at home and manages to convince Joni to join the treasure hunt. Together they’re free from authority figures and conduct which allow their animalistic to shine through.

One area They Have Escaped excels in is with impressive cinematography, used to transform reality into fantasy. In a haunting slow motion dream sequence, a fierce warrior charges towards the camera with an ax as if he were hunting prey. Taking this idea one step further, the two dress up as a bear and deer during a drug induced scene, thus sort of becoming animals. Red shows up more prominently as the film progresses to symbolize love, blood, and death. These stunning visuals end up being best trait of the film.

Teppo Manner’s lines are kept to a minimum due to his stutter, which in return gives the film a natural subdued ambience. While there’s no problem with limited dialog, his character feels largely underwritten. Aside from one scene early on when the entire cafeteria makes fun of his stammer, there is no emotional investment into the character–which is problematic for a lead character. Söderholm’s character on the other hand doesn’t need as much exposition because her uncompromising spirit speaks for itself. Plus, Joni seems to be attracted to her mysterious motivations, so it actually works in her favor.

At first it’s fascinating to watch the young couple act out their primordial instincts to be free and uncaged. However, the bulk of They Have Escaped involves them wandering around in search for treasure that likely doesn’t even exist. On top of that, it’s hard to care about the characters because they’re both so shallow. There is a brutal late development which disrupts the status quo, but it occurs too late in the film to make the appropriate impact. Valkeapää shows off his capabilities in the visual department, but his ability to craft an engaging narrative remains mostly unseen here.

Opening with the camera tracking towards an unseen but, based on the sound design, grisly sight, Backcountry immediately foreshadows a nasty outcome for its characters. Corporate lawyer Jenn (Missy Peregrym) reluctantly tags along with boyfriend Alex (Jeff Roop) on a weekend camping trip in Northern Ontario. He wants to show her the old hiking trail he used to take as a kid, but she’s clearly the type who prefers to stay in the city rather than venture into the wilderness. Things immediately start on the wrong foot. Jenn over-prepares, bringing bear spray and a road flare, while Alex stubbornly refuses to take a map, bragging about how he knows the area. Question: Do you think Alex will come to regret that decision? (Answer: Yes)

With an early reference to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, writer/director Adam MacDonald similarly spends his time slowly but surely building up discomfort and tension. The film keeps its options open, presenting more than several grisly endings for the seemingly happy couple. Should they heed the park ranger’s warnings about “yahoos” wandering the trail? Or should they watch out for black bears, given that they’re known to wander the area? And what about their unsettling encounter with a park guide (Eric Balfour) on their first night camping? It’s hard to guess what exactly will occur as Jenn and Alex go deeper into the woods, and this unpredictability only adds to the film’s underlying tension.

With lean, smart pacing and no hesitation to get nasty in its showcase of nature’s cruelty, Backcountry is a strong entry in the survival thriller genre. MacDonald’s script certainly follows a lot of familiar story beats, but he cleverly subverts expectations more than once. Missy Peregrym and Jeff Roop are convincing as the main couple, putting a lot more depth into their roles than one would expect in this kind of genre-based film. But it’s Peregrym who steals the show, using her charm and physicality to carry the film on her shoulders by the final act. Wild may be the survival in the wilderness movie everyone will be talking about at TIFF this year, and while Backcountry is a completely different beast of a film, it should be admired for how well it pulls off such a familiar genre. It’s good filmmaking all-around.

Wild Tales consists of six twisted short stories, all written by writer/director Damian Szifron. Most anthology films tend to use different directors for each story, but Szifron handles every single one here. Having one writer and director gives Wild Tales the benefit of a strong thematic core linking each segment together. What’s surprising is that, even with a singular vision, the results are just as hit and miss if multiple filmmakers tackled each part.

Things do start off quite strong. The first short, the smallest in length, involves a plane trip and a series of coincidences going from surprising to hilariously absurd. There’s no point going into detail about the plot of each short, as most of the fun comes from watching the surprises play out. To put it in general terms: usually each tale involves a person feeling wronged by someone (or something) else, resulting in an act of vengeance or catharsis with harmful results. Refreshingly, none of these stories share any connective tissue through narrative. Instead they unite through themes of vengeance and destruction, and that thematic thread gives Wild Tales an edge over other anthologies.

The writing also helps Wild Tales, even if it’s for a short time. The first three stories are deranged, morbidly funny segments, with surprisingly satisfactory endings. The problems start in the latter half, with the fourth and fifth stories as nothing more than predictable shorts with unsubtle political and social commentary. The final tale, about what might be the worst wedding in the world, tries to right the ship for a big finale, except it’s too obvious in its attempts to shock audiences. Wild Tales is a mixed bag, not especially surprising considering its genre, but when it works it’s undeniably great entertainment.

It’s hard to discuss what exactly goes on in The Duke of Burgundy because it might ruin writer/director Peter Strickland’s surprises. Following the relationship between two entomologists, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and the younger Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), the film shows the unconventional partnership between the two women. They go through a daily ritual, Cynthia ruthlessly barking orders at Evelyn to clean around the house and punishing her if she doesn’t do her job right. It’s a dominant and submissive relationship, but how those roles are assigned, along with how those roles shift throughout, make for captivating viewing.

Inspired by the 70’s erotic films of Jess Franco, The Duke of Burgundy’s style is at once familiar and yet completely odd. Taking place primarily at a gorgeous estate, covered in vines and surrounded by trees, Strickland uses the setting to establish the film’s fairytale-like atmosphere as well as Evelyn’s intense love for Cynthia. Strickland pushes the intimacy between the two women to the breaking point, and when Evelyn’s passion consumes her the film goes into several astoundingly abstract sequences, much like the climactic freak out in Strickland’s last film Berberian Sound Studio. The tactic works much more effectively here because of how closely the form ties into the characters’ emotions.

And amazingly, for a film dealing with a BDSM relationship, Strickland never shows a hint of judgment or negativity towards Evelyn and Cynthia’s preferences. Yes, some of their dialogue, including a discussion over whether or not they want to buy a “human toilet,” is naturally funny to hear. But the humour comes from the absurdity of what’s being said; the film never laughs at Cynthia or Evelyn for their desires, nor does it try to explain their kinks. It’s the most refreshing part of a wonderfully off-kilter experience. The Duke of Burgundy is sensual (kudos to Strickland for showing how nudity isn’t needed to make something erotic), stunning, and riveting from start to end. It’s one of the festival’s real discoveries, and should continue to elevate Peter Strickland’s status in cinema.

It’s been seven years since Alex Holdridge directed the Independent Spirit Award winning film In Search of a Midnight Kiss. His latest film, Meet Me in Montenegro, is about just that–a filmmaker who hasn’t made a film in nearly a decade. Coincidence? Not likely. The film unfolds like an autobiography for the director, who stars as an indie filmmaker desperately trying to break into Hollywood. Or at least make a film that can pull him out of the massive amount of debt he has accrued.

The film centers around a breakup between him and a girl named Lina who spontaneously leaves him during a stay in Montenegro. She ends up being his kryptonite because in spite of the pain she caused him, he still can’t get her off his mind. While traveling to Berlin for an important business meeting on his upcoming film, he unexpectedly runs into Lina and sparks begin to fly despite their better judgement. Eventually he must decide between his career or his love life.

Meet Me in Montenegro isn’t ashamed of showing clichés often found in movies, especially at the end where Holdridge flat-out acknowledges the movie-like ending. These meta moments are constant reminders that you’re watching a movie, occasionally removing you from the story. While Holdridge makes some huge advancements as a filmmaker, most noticeably in cinematography and editing, the story feels too familiar make a lasting impression. While Meet Me in Montenegro isn’t Holdridge’s best work, it’s welcoming to see him return to filmmaking. Hopefully it’s not another seven years before his next one.