Samba Gala Samba is a beautifully crafted film that explores the illegal immigrant experience and its impact on human dignity through humour and heartbreak. Directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache re-unite with actor Omar Sy following their critically acclaimed comedy-drama Les Intouchables. Here, the story focuses on a Senegalese man named Samba Cissé (Sy) who has sought refuge in […]
The third program of TIFF’s Short Cuts International focuses on the everyday decisions and words we use and how the impact of those decisions and dialogue, or lack of them, can be just a world shaking as the ones we agonize over. In The Tricycle Thief director Maxim Bessmertnyi takes us to Macau and into […]
Waste Land Vanguard A character drama about a Belgian homicide detective struggling to maintain his humanity, Pieter Van Hees’ Waste Land doesn’t end up amounting to much, but it’s well acted and made by an assured filmmaker. Jérémie Renier gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as Leo, a cop assigned to high profile, often grisly murder […]
The Price We Pay TIFF Docs Ever wanted to know how tax shelters and offshore banking works and why you as an average jane or joe could never have enough money to use them? That’s what’s being explored in the latest documentary from Harold Crooks, the man behind The Corporation and one half of the […]
Beats of the Antonov TIFF Docs Politics, identity and music converge in South Sudan in this offering from war reporter and filmmaker Hajooj Kuka. Kuka’s subjects are the Sudanese of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions. The people of this area have long suffered under the Al-Bashir regime out of Khartoum in the north. […]
The Yes Men Are Revolting TIFF Docs Director Laura Nix and The Yes Men tackle climate change in their latest documentary, The Yes Men Are Revolting. The duo of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano, activists cum pranksters who stage phony press conferences, impersonate executives and commit various forms of fraud all in the name of […]
Wild Tales Special Presentations Wild Tales, an anthology film, has a mixed definition of what makes something wild. It begins with something that’s easily considered its wildest element, an massive EC Comics-style revenge plot that begins and ends in a few joyfully sadistic minutes. Other times, and for a bulk of its duration, the tone […]
Actor and first time filmmaker Adam MacDonald is what I like to call a smart, badass, nerd. Chilling out on a rooftop patio in Downtown Toronto on one of the hottest days of the year, the warm , chatty, and enthusiastic MacDonald starts off by slightly nerding out about the bar’s choice of Interpol on […]
Rosewater Special Presentations As a first time feature director, television personality Jon Stewart still has a bit to learn. As a writer, however, he has constructed a taut and thoughtful drama based on the true story of imprisoned British journalist Maziar Bahari. Bahari (played here in an understated and dignified turn from Gael Garcia Bernal) […]
I am chatting with Bang Bang Baby director Jeffrey St. Jules on the day he’s actually completing his first feature length effort prior to its debut at TIFF this coming Monday. One would think that his film would have been completed by now since he has worked on it for the better part of a […]
The Connection Gala For those of you who ever saw The French Connection and wondered, “hey whatever happened to the French side of that connection?” then TIFF has a movie for you. The Connection (amusingly, the original title is La French) turns back the clock to a time when the country was one of the […]
Bang Bang Baby Discovery One of the most delightfully loony movies to come out of Canada in ages, this assuredly kooky, gorgeous, and surreal take on 1960s values is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s a perfect example of a completely original film that has no comparison and throws everything at the audience including several kitchen […]
The Last Five Years Special Presentations One of the festival’s biggest surprises is Richard LaGravanese’s sparsely staged, but lushly orchestrated and perfectly acted adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s tightly constructed off-Broadway musical. Jumping back and forth through time between ages 23 to 28 for a pair of young lovers – budding novelist Jamie (Jeremy Jordan) […]
Corbo Discovery With a breakout performance by its young lead, Corbo follows sixteen-year-old Jean Corbo as he explores his own ideals and beliefs about the future of Quebec, breaking away from his political family and joining a militant cell of the FLQ in the decade before the October Crisis. Already a troublemaker at school, Jean […]
The second program in the Short Cuts International program features films that revolve around desire and the lengths some will go to fulfil them, from looks at forbidden love to the quest for an elusive ice cream cone. Kaveh Ebrahimpour’s debut short from Iran, A Ceremony for a Friend drops us in the middle of […]
