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Konkona Sensharma's 'A Death in the Gunj' is among the films we're looking forward to at the Toronto International Film Festival
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The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) announced its official selections last night. This year’s line-up is a great mix of big names and fresh voices, festival favourites and upstarts. Here are 10 films premiering at the festival that we’re excited about:
Queen of Katwe
This story of a Ugandan chess prodigy who overcomes tremendous odds seems perfect for the empathetic, level-headed gaze of Mira Nair. Starring Madina Nalwanga, David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o.
Snowden
Oliver Stone may not be the frontline filmmaker he once was, but that doesn’t mean Snowden—starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the world’s most famous whistleblower—doesn’t have the potential to be as provocative and supercharged as some of his best political film-making.
La La Land
The trailer for this musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone had everyone swooning when it released earlier this month. The director is Damien Chazelle, who made the Oscar-nominated Whiplash.
A Death in the Gunj
Besides Nair, Konkona Sensharma is the only Indian director on the TIFF programme this year. A Death in the Gunj looks quite promising, with its ensemble cast of Ranvir Shorey, Tillotama Shome, Om Puri, Kalki Koechlin and Gulshan Devaiah, and its blackly comic murder mystery premise.
I Am Not Madame Bovary
A café owner looks for legal remedy after being duped by her ex-husband in Feng Xiaogang’s film. The trailer suggests something caustically funny.
The Edge of Seventeen
This coming-of-age high school drama, directed by Kelly Fremon Craig and starring Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick, is giving out serious Short Term 12 vibes.
Their Finest
The trailer hasn’t arrived yet, but the central premise—a group of filmmakers struggling to make an film to boost morale during the Blitz of London in World War II—sounds intriguing. Lone Scherfig (An Education, The Riot Club) directs a stellar cast, which includes Bill Nighy, Jack Huston, Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and Richard E. Grant
A Monster Calls
As The BFG hits theatres this week, J.A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls seems to offer a darker take on the child-meets-giant story. If the trailer is anything to go by, this will be a hypnotically beautiful film.
Daguerrotype
Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata) directs this French-language film about an aging photographer who becomes obsessed with the ancient photographic technique of daguerreotypy.
American Pastoral
In his directorial debut, Ewan McGregor takes on Philip Roth’s Pulitzer-winning novel. He stars along with Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning in this drama about an American family falling apart in the 1960s.
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