TIFF 2020: What to See and How to See it During The World’s Weirdest Year
By Original-Cin Staff
It’s not exactly an oasis on a barren plain. But the incoming Toronto International Film Festival is a cactus flower at the end of a long, strange summer with a near-total absence of screaming blockbusters, quaint neighbourhood screenings, even Shakespeare in the Park. That TIFF 2020 is even happening feels kind of tremulously tremendous.
The 45th edition of the Festival is billed as a hybrid, offering digital and in-person screenings, notably drive-ins and open-air cinema: Visa Skyline Drive-In at CityView, RBC Lakeside Drive-In at Ontario Place, and West Island Open Air Cinema at Ontario Place (ranging from $38 to $69 which permits multiple people).
For those on fewer wheels or mere legs, indoor screenings are set for reduced capacity at TIFF Bell Lightbox and Isabel Bader Theatre ($19 for regular film screenings, $26 for premium).
The Best Is Yet to Come.
Meanwhile — and falling into that eerie/awesome bucket that coloured public life throughout the pandemic — organizers have announced that “Festival-goers will be able to watch Festival films at home on their television screens by using Chromecast, or a newly developed digital TIFF app, which was created for the Festival and will be available in the Apple App Store on September 9.” (Also $19 for regular film screenings, $26 for premium).
And what of the films in this “reimagined” Festival, happening September 10 through 19? Well, there are fewer of them: 50 new features, five short films programs, a couple of prime-time series plus interactive talks, film cast reunions, Q&As with cast and filmmakers and virtual red carpets. For perspective, in 2019 there was 333 titles in the Festival: 245 features, 82 shorts, six series.
Even with 50 films, distinct categories emerge. There are multiple marquee actors in first-feature director roles —Viggo Mortensen with Falling, Halle Berry with Bruised, plus Regina King with the wildly imaginative and timely One Night in Miami... and David Oyelowo's The Water Man.
Top 3 Films We Most Want to See at TIFF 2020
There are some keenly awaited follow-ups from filmmakers previously feted at the Festival, such as Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland which shadows an aging and newly itinerant woman (Frances McDormand no less) who sets off to the American West, plus Spike Lee’s David Byrne's American Utopia, documenting the musician’s 2019 Broadway show, and family drama True Mothers from Japan’s Naomi Kawase.
Consistent with past years, gay and lesbian experiences are diversely depicted. See Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan in period piece Ammonite (Francis Lee), and Summer of 85 (François Ozon), set on the Normandy coast in the 1980s and chronicling an intense affair between teenage boys.
The starry Good Joe Bell (Reinaldo Marcus Green), with Mark Wahlberg, Connie Britton, and Gary Sinise, tells the true-life story of a father walking across the U.S. to raise awareness about the bullying plaguing his gay teenage son.
As usual, there are multiple riveting-sounding documentaries: Festival mainstay Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall, which surveys Boston’s city government; MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard) about the U.S. government’s campaign of harassment against Martin Luther King, Jr.; and, aptly 76 Days, which follows the emergence of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan as frontline medical workers struggle to make sense and keep up.
Nearly half of the films this year are made by women, and some of the most anticipated of those are Canadian. Indigenous filmmaker Michelle Latimer is a double threat with two entries at TIFF — a documentary adaptation of Thomas King’s book The Inconvenient Indian and her Twin Peaks-ish TV series Trickster (based on The Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson).
Madeleine Sims-Fewer is a quadruple threat, co-writing, co-producing, co-directing and starring in the disturbing Midnight Madness revenge feature, Violation. And Jennifer Abbott co-directs The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, a follow-up to the groundbreaking 2003 doc about the sociopathic behavior of corporations.
Again the question remains: which films to see?
In the before days, some lucky journalists were able to get the jump on the TIFF’s over-whelming selection by seeing films in advance, during earlier festivals such as Sundance, Tribeca, Cannes, Venice or Telluride. Most of those festivals were closed this year but we can get some useful tips from looking at films that made the competition cut at other events.
Gaza mon amour.
In particular, there’s a lot of overlap with Venice (which started on September 2) this year. For example, early reviews are already available from the Venice screening of Pieces of A Woman, the English-language debut for Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s with raves for Vanessa Kirby as a young mother who takes her midwife (Molly Parker) to court.
Where Are the Stars at TIFF 2020?
Other world filmmakers having double premieres at TIFF and Venice include Chronos director Michel Franco’s New Order, about a group of poor protesters who crash a fancy wedding; Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno, a documentary shot over two years of people living in the war zones of the Middle East. Also, from the Middle East, we have the middle-aged romance Gaza Mon Amour by the brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser.
TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey has promoted Chaitanya Tamhande’s The Disciple, which follows a young man struggling to follow a career as a classical singer. Bosnian-born director and former Berlin Golden Bear winner Jasmila Zanic brings Quo Vadis, Aida?, set against the backdrop of the Srebrenica genocide. Critics have been keen to see The Best is Yet to Come, a drama about a Beijing journalist and the first feature of Jia Zhang-ke’s protégé Wang Jing.
Also included at Venice and Toronto are a couple of films likely to be on North American viewers’ radar: Nathan Grossman’s I Am Greta, a close-up doc following the extraordinary ascendancy of the teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg.
Chinese-American director Chloé Zhao’s (The Rider) Nomadland may be in awards competition with Francis Lee’s Ammonite, which made the exclusive competition list for the Cannes competition, though the festival never actually happened.
Other Cannes films heading to TIFF include the documentary Downstream to Kinshasa, the first Congolese film to be an official selection in the history of the French festival. Another Cannes pick is Memory House which follows a black native from Brazil’s rural north who moves to a former Austrian colony in the south of the country to work in a milk factory and finds an abandoned house that connects him to his past.
From last January’s Sundance film festival, we have three films about old men — and in every case, you can find reviews online. The Father stars Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman; Falling, starring Viggo Mortensen as a gay man dealing with his homophobic father (David Cronenberg has a cameo as a proctologist). Finally, there’s the doc The Truffle Hunters, set in Northern Italy, following a group of elderly men and their dogs, in a film that Variety says “serenades the eyes and appeals to sophisticated taste buds,” which sounds like something your eyeballs might want to listen to.
The Truffle Hunters.
TIFF’s going digital this year opens the door to TIFF events that can be notoriously tough tickets to score, such as the In Conversation With… talks where A-list actors and filmmakers spill about on-set experiences. These are often a revealing window on their work and personalities.
In Conversation With… guests this year include Halle Berry, at TIFF with her directing debut, Bruised, Ava DuVernay (Selma), and Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird). There are some interesting paired guests with directors including Claire Denis (High Life) and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), Rain Man director Barry Levinson and Denzel Washington (Fences) and D-Nice (Instagram Live Club Quarantine founder) and music-video director Anthony Mandler.
Tickets are available through tiff.net.
The Best of TIFF Reunion screenings get you in the TIFF mood September 8 with a Twitter watch party (the movie can also be screened on CRAVE) of Greta Gerwig’s delightful coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird. TIFF is teasing special appearances from “surprise guests.”
There’s also a 20th anniversary reunion screening of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream September 13, with a discussion with Aronofsky and star Ellen Burstyn. TIFF’s first People’s Choice Award winner, Girlfriends, screens September 11, with a post-screening discussion with director Claudia Weill and star Melanie Mayron.
Like the city of Venice — this year without gargantuan, polluting cruise liners hulking over its delicate shores —TIFF has a moment to breathe and reflect on whether the aggressive more-is-more blueprint of preceding years is the way to go in the future. Like everything else in 2020, this is all going to be very interesting.