The race for next year’s Oscars is officially on. On Tuesday, the Toronto international film festival (Tiff) revealed the first tranche of films to make the cut for the October event. On Monday it was announced that Danny Boyle’s surefire Academy Award contender Steve Jobs will screen at the New York film festival a month later.
The NYFF also has Robert Zemeckis’s 3D drama The Walk and Don Cheadle’s directorial debut, Miles Ahead, on its slate - both considered awards season heavy-hitters. And before Toronto even kicks off, the Venice and Telluride film festivals will take place, debuting films we’re sure to hear more about in the coming months.
Although Toronto’s schedule announcement is just the first of many, its early slate still presents a nice primer for the films which will excite audiences and critics over the months to come.
The Venice and Telluride effect
So far Venice has revealed its opening night film, the Jake Gyllenhaal-led survival drama Everest, and an out-of-competition screening for Scott Cooper’s Johnny Depp vehicle Black Mass, while Telluride won’t announce its lineup until shortly before the annual event launches on 4 September. However, a close look at the initial Tiff slate offers a clear indication of where many of this year’s potential Oscar players are choosing to premiere – and it’s not Toronto.
Tom Hooper struck it huge by debuting The King’s Speech in Toronto in 2010, going on to win the best director and picture Oscars months after taking home the festival’s audience award. As for The Danish Girl, his timely period drama about the first known trans person, Focus Features – the company distributing the film – has by all accounts made the surprising decision to debut the film in Venice (it’s listed as making a North American premiere in Toronto). Reviews will have already leaked about the film’s Oscar chances before it arrives in Canada.
Other films that have chosen to show in Telluride (with a possible first stop in Venice) include Cary Fukunaga’s Netflix drama Beasts of No Nation; the Brie Larson-starring Room, based on Emma Donoghue’s bestseller; Tom McCarthy’s ensemble drama Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams; Legend, in which Tom Hardy plays the Kray twins, who ruled London’s gangland during the 1950s and 1960s; and Remember, which, ironically, is directed by one of Canada’s most famous auteurs, Atom Egoyan. All the films are making their Canadian premieres in Toronto.
The major world premieres
Despite the likes of The Danish Girl deciding to debut elsewhere, a number of potential Oscar players have chosen the tried-and-tested Toronto launchpad for their campaigns.
Of the world premieres, the major gets for Toronto include Freeheld, Peter Sollett’s LGBT drama starring Julianne Moore and Ellen Page; Stonewall, Roland Emmerich’s drama about the birth of the gay rights movement; Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van, which is rumored to feature an awards-worthy performance from Maggie Smith; Jay Roach’s film Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston as the famed Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in the 1940s; Terence Davies’s anticipated follow-up to The Deep Blue Sea, Sunset Song; Charlie Kaufman’s first stop-motion film, Anomalisa; and Eye in the Sky, Gavin Hood’s thriller about piloted aircraft warfare, starring Aaron Paul and Helen Mirren. All the films are screening in either the galas or special presentations sections.
Stephen Frears will also be heading to Toronto with his latest, the Lance Armstrong thriller The Program, starring Ben Foster as the cyclist. The director is known for premiering his work at either Venice (The Queen, Philomena, Dirty Pretty Things) or Telluride (Tamara Drewe), so his film’s inclusion comes as a small surprise. The same can be said for Ridley Scott’s star-packed sci-fi epic The Martian. The film isn’t taking the route traveled by Gravity, which debuted in Venice followed by a Toronto bow. Instead, The Martian’s world premiere will be in Toronto.
Under the radar
Every year, Toronto ambushes critics with films that failed to factor into the industry chatter in the weeks leading up to the major announcement.
One such surprise was Toronto’s opening night selection: Jean-Marc Valee’s Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The drama, about a recent widowed man struggling to cope with his wife’s death, was seemingly primed for a 2015 awards run, before distributor Fox Searchlight recently announced an April 2016 release. Given that it’s now debuting at Toronto, more than seven months before its slated theatrical rollout, an Oscar campaign seems unlikely – unless it plays like gangbusters in Toronto and is given an awards-qualifying release into select cinemas, months before opening.
One film sure to garner a lot of attention that few saw coming is Michael Moore’s first documentary in six years, Where to Invade Next. Previously unreported, the stealth project was discreetly shot in several countries, “under the radar of the global media”, according to Toronto. The documentary has Moore “tell[ing] the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ [as] he will do the invading for America from now on”.
Finally, writer/director Rebecca Miller’s first film since 2009’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Maggie’s Plan, wasn’t expected to make it on to this autumn’s circuit because it finished principal photography just a few months ago. The romantic comedy, starring Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore and Bill Hader, seemed like a good fit for Sundance in January, but it will be making its world premiere at Toronto following a remarkably tight turnaround.
