TIFF ’24: We’ve Noticed Themes… Many Interesting, Intersecting Themes
By Liam Lacey
The Toronto International Film Festival, this year happening September 5 to 15, is a time for movie stars, parties, and taking the measure of things, not just film trends but the zeitgeist, those collective worries, judgements, and hopes buzzing about the hive mind. Some are dark, some joyous and, at best, some are unclassifiably fresh. To that end, some titles of note, corralled by theme.
40 Acres
The End of the World
Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and end though not necessarily in that order, said Jean-Luc Godard. A lot of this year’s films focus on the end. The escalating threats of pandemic, nuclear war, AI and climate catastrophe make end-times themes notably prevalent at this year’s festival, including a couple of Canadian entries.
In director R.T. Thorne’s 40 Acres, a Black family of farmers retreat to Canada following a future American civil war, and struggle to protect themselves against roaming militias. In a world shrunken by an environmental catastrophe, a mother (Sandra Oh) and daughter (Keira Jang) survive in a place where no one is allowed to live past 50 and young people artistically document their elders’ final moments in Vancouver filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming’s Can I Get a Witness?
In German director Carolina Hellsgárd’s Endzeit - Ever After, a plague has reduced the world to two German cities, where surviving humans battle reanimated corpses in a zombie movie imbued with weltschmerz, literally “world pain.” And in Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’ animated eco-fable Flow, the world’s waters rise as a cat, dog, lemur, bird and capybara join together to seek common, higher ground.
The Exiles
“We live in the age of the refugee the age of the exile,” said playwright Ariel Dorfman, anticipating the migrant crises that have shaped both U.S. and European politics.
Displacement is the subject for several personal dramas. The Exiles, is about a Chilean woman taxi driver in Barcelona. Also, two films about African migrants in Europe, including Souleymane’s Story, the story of an undocumented Guinean immigrant in Paris, and Anywhere Anytime, about a young undocumented immigrant from Senegal in Turin, Italy.
See also To a Land Unknown, about Palestinians stranded in Greece. In Under the Volcano, a Ukrainian family holidaying in the Canary Islands is unable to return home because of the Russian invasion. And Beloved Tropic finds a pregnant Columbia immigrant, harbouring a secret, becoming caregiver to a Panamanian woman.
Death and Dying
As Leonard Cohen asked, you want it darker? Brace yourself.
This year’s festival features two films about grief and death, both by late career major directors, both of which played Cannes earlier this year. The Shrouds, by David Cronenberg, takes body horror to a new depth in a drama starring Vincent Cassels as a widower who develops a technology called GraveTech, which allows mourners to monitor the buried dead, wrapped in radioactive shrouds, as they decompose in real time.
Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, First Reformed) brings us home with Oh, Canada, based on a novel by Russell Banks (Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter) about a terminally ill filmmaker (Richard Gere), who moved to Canada to avoid the draft years ago, and is now recounting his life for a documentary crew. Co-stars include Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, and Jacob Elordi.
Not that death need be so serious. There’s the musical tragicomedy They Will Be Dust, about a Spanish couple planning to go to Switzerland to seek medical assistance (yes, there’s comedy) and the Taiwanese horror comedy, Dead Talents Society, in the Midnight Madness program, in which the ghosts vie for work permits to scare the living, have agents, and a star system as they vigorously compete to win the Golden Ghost Awards.
Elton John: Never To Late
Musical Interludes
“Without music, life would be a mistake,” said Frederick Nietzsche, or as James Brown might say, “Hit me!” Spurred by the streaming services’ appetite for name-brand celebrity content, we’re in a golden age of music documentaries and dramatic biographies.
This year’s festival includes documentaries on Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli (Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe), pop star Elton John (Elton John: Never Too Late), hitmaker Paul Anka (Paul Anka: His Way), Bruce Springsteen (The Road: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band), Randy Bachman (Takin’ Care of Business), and the four-part series, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal. There is also a spotlight on the life of singer-producer Pharrell Williams told through LEGO (Piece by Piece).
In addition, we have a biopic on Brit pop singer Robbie Williams (Better Man) and two films directed by musicians: Anderson .Paak's K-Pops and K'naan Warsame's Mother Mother. Plus, Australia’s comic actress Rebel Wilson (Pitch Perfect) brings her directorial debut, the musical The Deb, which will close the festival.
Beastie Besties
“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read,” said Groucho Marx, though fortunately you can watch movies in the dark.
Some animal-friendly entries this year include The Friend (based on Sigrid Nunez’s National Book Award–winning novel, a fictitious grief memoir) starring Naomi Watts as a Manhattan writer left to care for a Great Dane when her mentor (Bill Murray) dies. The “friend” of the title is the dog, played by a good boy named Bing, already the subject of a lengthy New Yorker profile.
The animated DreamWorks film The Wild Robot is a survival film in which a robot (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) lands on a deserted island and makes friends with the animals, becoming the surrogate parent of a gosling. Also, The Penguin Lessons, starring Steve Coogan as a British teacher in Argentina whose life is changed when he adopts an orphaned penguin.
Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, comes from director Mariel Heller (2021’s terrific Can You Ever Forgive Me?), based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel about a frustrated stay-at-home mom who sometimes turns into a tail-wagging, lawn-pooping, raw-meat eating dog. Sounds fun.
Sporting Chances
“You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you,” observed baseball catcher Yogi Berra. But between winning and losing, there’s a lot of inherent dramatic potential in sport.
This year’s fest includes one gala entry, Unstoppable, about real-life college-wrestling champ Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome), who was born with one leg, co-starring Jennifer Lopez and co-produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s company.
We also have tennis from Belgum (Julie Keeps Quiet), horse racing from Argentina (Kill the Jockey), competitive ice dancing in Japan (My Sunshine), English channel swimming (The Swedish Torpedo), and Sunshine, a Filipino drama about a national team gymnast who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy.
Winnipeg
“It must be the sleepiness that keeps Winnipeggers here,” said Guy Maddin in his para-documentary, My Winnipeg, about the city of his dream life. It’s old news that Winnipeg film community punches above its weight in the film world (the Winnipeg Film Group celebrates its 50th anniversary this year). This year there are other things to celebrate than usual: Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, Canada’s official Oscar nominee in the international category and playing TIFF.
Set in Winnipeg and Montreal, in French and Farsi, the film pays homage to the poetic realism of Iranian cinema with an experimental, whimsical touch that sounds somewhere between heart-warming and food-spittingly funny. It won the audience award in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at Cannes this year and Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri called it the best film of the festival.
This year’s also includes Rumours, directed Guy Maddin along with Galen Johnson and Evan Johnson. The film, which showed out of competition at Cannes, stars Cate Blanchett, Alice Vikander, and Charles Dance as world leaders meeting at the G7 summit who get lost in the fog in the woods and encounter a giant brain and zombies.
Sometimes even travelling to Winnipeg in winter can be… interesting. Chinese Canadian director Johnny Ma’s comedy-drama The Mother and the Bear finds an anxious Korean mother jetting to Winnipeg in mid-winter to tend to her daughter, who has slipped on the ice. You’ll have to see the film to find out what Mom discovers in her daughter’s apartment and on her dating app, but given this city, almost anything is possible.