North America’s largest film festival opens this evening in Toronto with a spotlight on music, the rise of women directors, illegal immigration and 9/11.
“It’s a strong year for music documentaries, and there are some very provocative films by women,” festival co-director Cameron Bailey said in an interview with AFP.
And “there’s a noticeable response to the immigration crisis in Europe”, he said. “We’ve seen documentaries on this subject in the past, but this year we see several (fiction) film-makers dealing with people banging on Europe’s door, and how Europe is responding to that.”
The Toronto film festival opens with a documentary and runs until September 18 showcasing 268 feature films, and 68 shorts from 59 countries, including 123 world premieres.
The opener From The Sky Down, directed by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth on climate change featuring former US vice president Al Gore, tells the story of the popular Irish band U2.
U2 will be in town for the event, as will Pearl Jam and Neil Young - both also subjects of new documentaries.
On Sunday, a four-minute short film “looking back at what happened” will mark the 10-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
“9/11 happened during our festival 10 years ago, and it was horrific and overwhelming for a lot of people, especially Americans who were stranded here,” said Bailey.
The festival will also see new works by William Friedkin (Killer Joe) and Francis Ford Coppola (Twixt), and feature North American premieres of films by Pedro Almodovar, George Clooney, Madonna and controversial Danish director Lars von Trier.
Astounding interest in Mr Clooney’sThe Ides of March, set in the days leading up to a fictional presidential primary, led to false reports that the entire festival had sold out, but organisers insist there are still tickets to be had.
In the female director category, the festival is featuring Andrea Arnold’s “revisionist adaptation” of Emily Bronte’s classic novel Wuthering Heights, Chantal Akerman’s Almayer’s Folly, based on Joseph Conrad’s debut novel, and Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness, about Jews hiding in sewers in World War II Poland to escape deportation to death camps, as well as Julia Leigh (Sleeping Beauty) and Jennifer Westfeld (Friends with Kids).
Kathryn Bigelow became the first female director to win an Academy Award last year for Hurt Locker, which was screened in 2008 at the Toronto film festival, beating out her ex-husband James Cameron’s Avatar.