TIFF had its first press conference yesterday. Piers Handling (CEO & Director of TIFF) and Cameron Bailey (Artistic Director of TIFF) announced the first round of titles premiering in the Gala and Special Presentations programmes.
There’s never any telling what the super savvy Toronto audience will be excited about, but here’s what we think will be all the buzz.
1. Jean-Marc Vallé’s Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon.
2. Ed Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice, starring Tobey Maguire.
Image via Rope of Silicon
3. David Cronenberg’s Cannes hit Maps to the Stars.
4. Canadian director Shawn Levy’s This is Where I Leave You, starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda and Adam Driver.
5. Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington and Chloe Grace Moretz.
6. Mike Binder’s custody drama, Black and White, starring Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer.
Image via Collider
7. Olympic-themed drama Foxcatcher starring Channing Tatum and Steve Carell, it previously bowed at Cannes, where Bennett Miler picked up the best director prize for the film.
8. David Dobkin’s family drama The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Vera Farmiga
9. Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos, starring Rickman, Kate Winslet and Stanley Tucci.
Image via Daily Mail
Special Presentation films include movies starring Maggie Smith (My Old Lady), Kristen Stewart (Still Alice), and James Gandolfini in The Drop. Some other highlights (via Toronto Star):
– Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell star in Swedish actor/director Liv Ullman’s adaptation of the August Strindberg play, Miss Julie.
– The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart makes his directing debut with Rosewater, about imprisoned Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, starring Gael García Bernal.
– Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill, about a fighter pilot turned drone pilot starring Ethan Hawke and January Jones.
– Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young, starring Ben Stiller, Amanda Seyfried and Naomi Watts.
– Barry Levinson’s adaptation of the Philip Roth novel The Humbling, starring Al Pacino as an aging actor who becomes involved with a much younger woman played by Greta Gerwig.
– The directing debut of Captain America star Chris Evans with romantic drama Before We Go.
– Top Five, directed by Chris Rock, starring a comedic who’s who, including Tracy Morgan, Jerry Seinfeld and Whoopi Goldberg.
– Jason Reitman’s exploration of sexual frustrations among the generations, Men, Women and Children, starring The Fault in our Stars’ Ansel Elgort alongside Judy Greer, Adam Sandler and Emma Thompson.
– Paul Dano plays a young version of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, while John Cusack plays the older musician in Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy, about the life of the reclusive and often-tormented musical genius.
– Reese Witherspoon stars in another film by a Quebec director, Philippe Falardeau’s The Good Lie.
– Daniel Barnz’s Cake, starring Jennifer Aniston as an acerbic woman obsessed with a suicide in her chronic pain support group. Sam Worthington and Anna Kendrick also star.
– Jake Gyllenhaal plays a freelance reporter looking for a steady gig covering the L.A. crime beat in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler.
Fun fact: King St. W will close to traffic from University Ave to Peter St. Thus creating Festival Street for the first weekend of TIFF. It’ll be a place to “just hang out on the street to meet friends, relax between screenings,” said Bailey. Block party here we come!
Further film announcments, including the Canadian films at TIFF, will roll out for the rest of the summer. The list of stars coming to TIFF is announced mid August.
For a full list of films and ticket info, check out tiff.net.
