The first press conference for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival begins at 10 a.m. today, but the Hollywood trade mag Variety went ahead and unveiled all the confirmed TIFF titles online earlier this morning. There’s tons of great-looking stuff, the most notable inclusion being Terrence Malick’s top-secret To the Wonder, starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Rachel Weisz. Malick has averaged about one film per decade over the course of his career, so unveiling a new film a year after his last (The Tree of Life) is kind of astounding. The movie is listed as an “international” premiere, not a “world” premiere, which means the Venice Film Festival will likely be showing it first.
Not that there’s a shortage of prestigious world premieres. Toronto audiences will be the first to lay eyes on Rian Johnson’s long-awaited sci-fi action film Looper, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. It’s slated to be the fest’s opening night film. We’ll also be the first to see the star-packed Cloud Atlas by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer; Ben Affleck’s ’70’s-set hostage crisis film Argo; Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, starring muse Ryan Gosling as a motorcycle stunt driver; David O.Russell’s comedy-drama The Silver Linings Playbook, about a man (Bradley Cooper) freshly released from a sanitarium; Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; Laurent Cantet’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ Foxfire; Noah Baumbach’s totally under-the-radar Frances Ha, starring girlfriend Greta Gerwig; and Joss Whedon’s low-budget Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing, which was shot entirely within his own home in twelve days.
One title notable for its absence (at least among this first wave of films) is P.T. Anderson’s highly anticipated The Master, due in theatres on Oct. 12. The film, which looks at the origins of Scientology and stars Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, was heavily rumoured to be heading to TIFF. It may still appear, but it could be that the New York Film Festival (which takes place early October) managed to snag the world premiere.
Here are the 62 films set to be announced today:
World Premieres:
A Late Quartet (Yaron Zilberman)
A Liar’s Autobiography (Ben Timlett, Bill Jones, and Jeff Simpson)
Argo (Ben Affleck)
At Any Price (Ramin Bahrani)
Byzantium (Neil Jordan)
Capital (Costa-Gavras)
Cloud Atlas (the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer)
Dreams For Sale (Nishikawa Miwa)
End Of Watch (David Ayer)
English Vinglish (Gauri Shinde)
Foxfire (Laurent Cantet)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch)
Ginger And Rosa (Sally Potter)
Great Expectations (Mike Newell)
Hannah Arendt (Margarethe Von Trotta)
Hyde Park On Hudson (Roger Michell)
Imogene (Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman)
Inescapable (Rubba Nadda)
In The House (Francois Ozon)
Looper (Rian Johnson)
Love, Marilyn (Liz Garbus)
Midnight’s Children (Deepa Mehta)
Mr. Pip (Andrew Adamson)
Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)
Quartet (Dustin Hoffman)
Thanks For Sharing (Stuart Blumberg)
The Attack (Ziad Doueriri)
The Deep (Baltasar Kormakur)
The Impossible (J.A. Bayona)
The Last Supper (Lu Chuan)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)
The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance)
The Silver Linings Playbook (David O Russell)
The Time Being (Nenad Cicin-Sain)
Twice Born (Sergio Castellitto)
Venus And Serena (Maiken Baird)
Writers (Josh Boone)
Zaytoun (Eran Riklis)
International and North American Premieres:
Anna Karenina (Joe Wright)
A Royal Affair (Nikolai Arcel)
Caught in the Web (Chen Kaige)
Dangerous Liaisons (Hur Ji-Ho)
Dormant Beauty (Marco Bellocchio)
Everybody Has a Plan (Ana Piterbarg)
A Few Hours Of Spring (Stephan Brize)
Jayne Mansfield’s Car (Billy Bob Thornton)
Kon-Tiki (Espen Sandberg)
Lore (Cate Shortland)
No (Pablo Larrain)
Outrage Beyond (Takeshi Kitano)
Reality (Matteo Garrone)
Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard)
Tai Chi O (Stephen Fung)
The Company You Keep (Robert Redford)
The Hunt (Thomas Vintenberg)
The Iceman (Ariel Vromen)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair)
The Sapphires (Wayne Blair)
Thermae Romae (Hideki Takeuchi)
To The Wonder (Terrence Malick)
Canadian Premiere:
The Sessions (Ben Lewis)
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Scott MacDonald writes about cinema for Toronto Standard.
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