Whats happening at TIFF: An Obsession victory lap, MIA studios and a taxidermy musical

Toronto, Sep 13 (AP) The 51st Toronto International Film Festival is underway, with steady parades of premieres running like traffic jams through downtown Toronto.

"Obsession" returns from whence it came. A year after Curry Barker first premiered "Obsession" at TIFF, the filmmaker and his star, Inde Navarrette, returned for a victory lap.

In the midnight section of last year's festival, "Obsession" first hit audiences, quickly prompting a bidding war. Focus Features landed the USD 750,000 indie horror film for about USD 15 million in what would become one of the most lucrative festival acquisitions ever. This year, "Obsession" grossed USD 512 million worldwide.

"What a difference a year makes!" said Peter Kuplowsky, TIFF Midnight Madness programmer.

Their return was partly strategic. Focus is now gearing up for an awards season campaign for "Obsession," running the film in many categories, including best picture and best actress for 25-year-old Navarrette.

"Everything changed for me. I am now in rooms that I could not even imagine," Navarrette said. "I'm now pitching my own projects and am hopefully able to produce and direct my own stuff. It's been really, really exciting because I love cinema and I love filmmaking and being a part of Midnight Madness last year lit that fire for me."

Barker, 26, and Navarrette spoke in a staged talk at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, not far from the theater where "Obsession" debuted. In the year since, Barker said he has realized that his movie now belongs to audiences.

"It starts to feel like it's not mine anymore," Barker said. "It's not mine anymore."

The major studios generally don't produce the kinds of movies that launch at fall festivals anymore. And for the few adult-driven, non-franchise studio movies that get made, the downside of a festival - unpredictable critic response; an inconvenient release date - has sometimes meant festivals aren't worth the risk. Just ask the producers of "Joker: Folie à Deux," which was immediately slammed at its Venice Film Festival launch in 2024.

"I hope the studios will come back," Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux said.

This fall, Warner Bros' anticipated "Digger," directed by Alejandro G Inarritu and featuring Tom Cruise, is bypassing festivals. But it's not the only big title to do so. Also missing in action are Sony's "The Social Reckoning," Aaron Sorkin's Facebook follow-up to "The Social Network," and Netflix's "The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth," from David Fincher and Brad Pitt.

At the same time, the potential attention-grabbing showcase of a festival has rarely had more obvious upside. A small, surprise screening at the Telluride Film Festival of A24's "You Can See Everything," Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's documentary on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, was enough to make it one of the most buzzed-about movies of the year.

TIFF has traditionally been home to the kind of populist, midbudget movie that Hollywood now seldom produces. To make up for that absence, the festival has increasingly programmed movies up for sale, in the hopes of luring studios to acquire something that pops with Toronto audiences. This year, the festival officially launched a movie market.

Companies like Netflix, Apple, Amazon MGM, Neon, A24 and Mubi tend to be the dominant players at festivals - so it can depend where you're looking and how you define "major studio." On Thursday night, the top brass of Warner Bros. was at TIFF, too. Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairs and chief executives of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, attended. They were on hand to trumpet the studio's new specialty label, Clockwork.

A taxidermy musical, with Jodie Comer and Harry Melling. As the saying goes, the best way to start a film festival is with a taxidermy musical.

One of the first premieres this year was "Stuffed," and it's sure to remain one of the most peculiar, macabre and oddly sweet entries of the festival. Theo Rhys' debut feature, the opener of TIFF's Discovery section, stars Jodie Comer as Araminta, a reclusive taxidermist. (AP)

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