Festival Daily






September 13, 2021
The Old, the New and the Innovative: Breathing Fresh Life into the Western Genre
Posted By Festival Daily At 9:01 AM
By Neil Karassik With such a wide range of content at the Festival this year, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that there are three films playing in different programmes that all happen to be westerns. And all three are in many ways throwbacks to some of the major cycles within the genre. From Galas to Special Presentations and even to the after-hours Midnight Madness programme, there seems to be an underlying frontier theme at this year’s Festival. So grab your cowboy hat and come along for the ride. The first film is a major Hollywood adaptation of a novel...

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THAT’S A WRAP! A look back over TIFF08
Posted By Festival Daily At 9:01 AM
By Ghita Loebenstein   As TIFF nears its curtain call for 2008, Festival programmers tell us what shocked, who enthralled and what kept them up all night.   Jane Schoettle (International Programmer)   I was impressed by how many actresses wore towering sadistic heels and yet managed to stay upright. I was inspired by how articulate Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy) is about filmmaking. I was star-struck by Shohreh Aghdashloo from The Stoning of Soraya M. because of her dark beauty, husky voice and deep passion for art. I was surprised that the content of the Q&A; for...

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A Round With... Piers Handling
Posted By Festival Daily At 9:01 AM
Who: Piers Handling, Director of the Toronto International Film Festival and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival GroupWhere: The Library Bar at the Royal York Hotel, 100 Front Street WestWhen: 6:15pmWhat: A glass of shiraz and a cranberry spritzer Kate Lawrie sits down with Piers Handling in the hush of the Library Bar to chat about the role of film festivals, the atomization of culture and why silent filmmakers are still the bomb. KL: What has changed with the Festival since you first joined? PH: The attention. Everything’s just gotten bigger, with more attention on every part of the Festival: the...

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Sweet Dreams
Posted By Festival Daily At 9:01 AM
File under: Directors
By Ghita Loebenstein Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made a stunning debut with Half Nelson, and now the indie powerhouse have combined forces to make Sugar, the story of a young baseball player from the Dominican Republic whose dreams of making it big in the United States do not transpire as he had hoped. The writing-directing duo sits down with the Daily to talk about turning big dreams into successful films. GL: This is your first time with a film at the Festival. What are your expectations? RF: We’re hoping to have fun and hang out. We have a distributor for the film,...

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