TIFF is off to the races!
The 44th Annual Toronto International Film Festival, running from September 5th to the 15th, is not only the destination of Hollywood’s biggest stars and glitterati, but a showcase of Canadian films and talent, including fresh talent from Atlantic Canada.
This year, 26 Canadian features will screen at TIFF, consisting of an almost egalitarian split of established stalwarts such as Atom Egoyan, Barry Avrich, and David Cronenberg (this time attending as an actor rather than director), and rising talent such as Albert Shin, Elle-Maija Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, and Aisling Chin-Yee.
Atlantic Canada has its fair share of representation at this year’s festival. Saint John native Donald Sutherland stars in Guiseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, one of TIFF’s Gala Presentations. Sutherland acts alongside Elizabeth Debicki, Claes Bang and Mick Jagger in a tale about an ambitious art dealer who is hired to steal a rare painting.
Halifax filmmaker Heather Young will have her full-length directorial debut Murmur, a docufiction character study set in an animal shelter, will have its World Premiere in TIFF’s Discovery programme.
Nicole Dorsey’s Black Conflux, about the unexpected connection between a teenage girl and troubled man in small-town Newfoundland in the 1980s. Dorsey has strong family connections to Newfoundland and her feature debut was shot entirely in the province; the film will also have its World Premiere in the Discovery programme.
Oscar-nominated Haligonian actress Ellen Page gets behind the camera co-directing with Ian Daniel the documentary There’s Something in the Water which will have its World Premiere in the festival’s TIFF Docs programme. The documentary examines the environmental and social damage inflicted in remote, low-income, often Indigenous or Black communities in rural Nova Scotia.
Even in a TIFF attended by mega-stars Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks and Renee Zellweger, Canadian talent stands out on their home turf.
