By Jim Slotek, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Liam Lacey and Bonnie Laufer

Exhausted yet?

The Toronto International Film Festival forges ahead until Sunday (Sept. 18) with hundreds of exciting titles spread across multiple programs. Original-Cin writers are previewing as many films as possible to help you build a can’t-miss schedule of screenings.

Check out our TIFF preview piece and watch for incoming ephemera such as interviews, including today’s spotlight on the filmmakers behind sports documentary Black Ice. Note that because of TIFF embargoes, our capsule reviews are tied to a film’s second public screening, not its first.

Aftersun (Contemporary World Cinema)

Tues, Sept. 13, 3:15 pm, Scotiabank 13; Sat, Sept. 17, 12:15 pm, Scotiabank 10.

Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells’ poignant feature debut delivers a profound meditation about the abiding wonder of life — and love and family — in the guise of a breezy story about a father and daughter holidaying together in Turkey. Calum is about to turn 31; Sophie has just turned 11. Together, they’re a spirited team, whether shooting pool or shooting handheld homemade movies of each other. Bit by bit, it’s revealed that Calum is split from Sophie’s mom. A palpable darkness nibbles at the edges of his joy. The Turkey trip is portentous, as flashbacks of the adult Sophie confirm, but it’s not clear why until the final frame. Wells uses reflections on surfaces (a switched-off TV, a glass tabletop) to highlight her theme of our ephemeral nature, and how precious moments emerge, then dissolve, in a heartbeat. KH

All The Beauty and the Bloodshed (TIFF Docs)

Tues, Sept. 13, 3 pm, Scotiabank 2.

Two families in denial shape the latest documentary from Laura Poitras (Citizenfour). One is a personal history of the 68-year-old activist and photographer Nan Goldin, most famous for her portraits of friends in the gay and transgender subcultures in Boston and New York’s East Village from the late 70s through to the AIDS era. The first family in the story is the artist’s own Boston suburban parents and their tragic mistreatment of her brilliant, troubled older sister, Barbara, who died by suicide at 18. The second is the Sackler family against whom Goldin led a campaign to hold them responsible for the opioid crisis through their company, Purdue Pharma, eventually succeeding in uncoupling them from their prestigious presence in the world’s most famous museums. Goldin’s unusual combination of traumatized vulnerability and insightful self-reflection makes for a remarkably compelling subject. LL

CHARCOAL (Platform)

Tues, Sept. 13, 6:45 pm, Scotiabank 9; Sat, Sept. 17, 6:45 pm, Scotiabank 9.

As crafty premises go, CHARCOAL is hard to beat. It’s also twisty as heck. A small family — wife, husband, son, and elderly, infirm grandfather — are asked by a conspiratorial local intermediary to secretly host a drug lord who has faked his own death and needs a bulletproof hiding spot. A private home in the Brazilian countryside with a poor family seems ideal. Problem is, grandpa will have to go, the fragile family dynamic is upended, and nine-year-old Jean is witnessing nefarious things his otherwise struggling parents are not. All that, plus the neighbours are growing suspicious — where’s the family’s newfound money coming from, and where the heck is grandpa? Propelled by black humour and biting social commentary — thus equal parts funny and bleak — writer-director Carolina Markowicz’s debut feature is terrific, offering a glimpse into a rarely seen world in the most unexpected of ways. KH

Decision To Leave (Special Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 15, 7:30 pm, Scotiabank 2.

The long shadow of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the film noir tradition get a richly atmospheric, convoluted treatment from Korean master Park Chan-Wook (Old Boy, The Handmaid). Hae-Joon (Park Hae-il) is a respected middle-aged homicide cop in Busan, married to a pretty and practical scientist wife who insists that a vigorous sex life is good for their cognitive health. When a man is found at the bottom of a nearby mountain, suspicion falls on the victim’s beautiful, much younger Chinese wife, Seo-Rae (Chinese star Tang Wei), who works as an eldercare nurse. Hae-Joon keeps up surveillance long after her innocence seems to have been established, and an apparently mutual if unconsummated obsession forms between the cop and his suspect. Superbly shot, using reflections, geometric settings, and anxious montages — as well as a baffling number of switched smart phones, files, and linguistics misdirection — Park keeps the viewer off-balance even on familiar ground: the good, fallible cop, an irresistible and ambiguous siren and the pervasive sense that Fate has stacked the deck. LL

Moonage Daydream (Special Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 4 pm, Scotiabank 12.

It’s supremely fitting that Brett Morgen rewrote the rules of documentary filmmaking while spotlighting a visionary like David Bowie who, in death as in life, pushes us to consider the reciprocal relationship between art and life. Dispensing with traditional talking-head interviews with colleagues and admirers, the highly impressionistic Moonage Daydream instead quotes only Bowie (and occasionally, interviewers teeing up questions) as the songwriter walks us, archivally and chronologically, through his career and artistic life. Morgen relies heavily on snippets from films to contextualize the impetus of the so-called starman in live performance, acting, painting, and giving breathtakingly candid interviews across the decades. Taken together, it’s remarkable just how grounded Bowie comes off despite the many otherworldly personas he meticulously cultivated. His abiding philosophy of life — basically, don’t forget to live while you are living — is resounding and as striking as his way-progressive attitudes towards gender fluidity. The takeaway is unimaginably powerful. One suspects this is a doc Bowie himself would have adored. Moonage Daydream screens exclusively in IMAX at TIFF. Miss it at your peril. KH

Nanny (Special Presentations)

Tue, Sept. 13, 7:35 pm, Scotiabank 11; Sat. Sept. 17, 3 pm, Scotiabank 2.

The story of Aisha, a Senegalese nanny trying to earn enough money to bring her young son over to the United States by working as a nanny for wealthy New York urban professionals, Nanny combines elements of African lore and the disparity of wealth of the American immigrant experience. A supernatural horror from director Nikyatu Jusu, Nanny seeks to give its audience an equal number of social cringe and horror moments. A talented cast and an insightful look into African mythology and folklore make this film stand out in this year’s selection. JK

Pearl (Midnight Madness)

Tue., Sept. 13, 9:30 pm, Cinesphere IMAX Theatre.

Director Ty West—one of the best currently working in the horror genre—follows up on his 70s influenced slasher X with Pearl, an origin story that answers the question, ‘Why is Pearl so darn angry?’ In West’s latest film, Pearl is a young girl stuck on her parents’ farm. Her father is confined to a wheelchair and her mother comes across as cold and unforgiving. All Pearl wants is a chance to dance like the Ziegfield Girls she sees in the movies. Pearl thinks her chance has finally come when the cool, attractive bohemian type, who runs the projection at the local movie theatre, invites Pearl to a private late-night screening. But when things don’t go quite to plan, Pearl sees no choice but to take matters in her own hands—especially if her hands are holding an axe. What begins as a weird tribute to The Wizard of Oz turns into a genuinely creepy horror. West chooses deliberate methodic movement rather than jump scares to terrify the audience, and the film is all the better for it. TE

Riceboy Sleeps (Special Presentations)

Tues, Sept. 13, 3:45 pm, Scotiabank 9; Sun, Sept. 18, 1:30 pm, Scotiabank 13.

Taking its title from the debut album by the Sigur Ross spinoff group Jonsi & Alex, Riceboy Sleeps is the sophomore feature from Anthony Shim (Daughter) partly based on his childhood growing up in an immigrant Korean family in British Columbia, and the struggles of a mixed identity. The film centres on single mother So-Young (Choi Seung Yoon). She toils in a warehouse job to raise her teenage son, Dong-Hyun (Ethan Hwang) who, in his rebellious teens, dyes his hair blonde, wears blue contact lenses, and tries to fit in with his slacker friends. While performances are strong (as well as a turn by the director as So-Young’s awkward suitor), the film jumps in tone erratically, from a fairy-tale opening to a section about Dong-Hyun’s difficult beginnings in grade one. After some devastating news, So-Young and her son travel back to Korea to forge a link to the past, where Dong-Hyun has a rapid change of perspective. There’s an interesting idea about a young man embracing the roots he once scorned but the division of acts here feels unconvincingly out of balance. LL

Theatre of Thought (TIFF Docs)

Tues, Sept. 13, 5:30 pm, Scotiabank 1; Fri, Sept. 16, 10 am, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Fri, Sept. 16, 8 pm, Scotiabank 12.

The human brain is a marvel. And while attempts to better understand it and mimic its astounding capabilities have led to glorious breakthroughs, there have also been troubling ethical stumbles along the way. Advances in neurotechnology render these tetchy issues increasingly fraught. That’s the baseline of legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog’s latest documentary, which sits down and queries the planet’s most innovative scientists and thinkers working across the spectrum of neural science. Though conceptually thrilling, the film fails to rouse. Herzog’s deliberately folksy interview style — genuinely funny in both execution and respondent outcome — is great. But the science explored here is incontrovertibly dry, as it must be. The highly charged issue of animal experimentation, apparently cornerstone to this research but also morally repugnant, goes shamefully unaddressed. KH

The Umbrella Men (Discovery)

Wed, Sept. 14, 10 am, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Wed, Sept. 14, 9:30 pm, Scotiabank 14; Fri, Sept. 16, 11:55 am, Scotiabank 11.

Who doesn’t love a good heist movie? The Umbrella Men, written and directed by South African filmmaker John Barker, takes bank robbery to a whole new level. Set in Capetown, the film follows Jerome (newcomer Jaques De Silva) who discovers that his late father has left him his Goema Club, his beloved minstrel troupe. Trouble is there’s no money for upkeep. Also, there are enemies afoot. So, Jerome comes up with a plan to rob the local bank. He enlists the help of his best friend Mortimer (Kennan Arrison) who had just spent 10 years in prison, along with a few others to help pull off the heist, using the annual Minstrel Carnival as cover. Mixed with suspense and humour, The Umbrella Men starts off slow but once the heist gets into motion you are rooting for this band of ragtag thieves. Jazz pianist extraordinaire Kyle Shepard is a highlight as is a glorious performance by a Minstrel Choir. BL

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