Other Festivals
Cloudburst is the story of Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dot (Brenda Fricker), a lesbian couple who have been living, loving, and aging together for more than 30 years. When the mostly blind Dot has a small accident, her granddaughter maneuvers her into a nursing home, effectively leaving Stella alone and soon to be evicted from the home she’s lived in for decades. Stella sneaks into Dot’s new home and they steal away, embarking on a road trip to Canada to make their unofficial union legal. On their way, they pick up a young hitchhiker named Prentice (Ryan Doucette) who is...
For a movie about how no obstacle can stand in the way of true love, Morgan is awfully depressing. When we first meet the title character in Michael D. Akers’ latest love story, he’s waking up to a pretty meaningless existence. He’s recently handicapped and, after wheeling himself to the fridge for a beer, he plops himself on the couch and just starts piling them back while watching television. The man just got up and the movie just got started. I miss the days when gay meant happy. Structurally, Morgan is extremely straight-forward. Morgan, played by sweet-faced, Leo Minaya, used...
At the 2012 Oscars, much of the buzz in Canada was about Monsieur Lazhar, the French-Canadian film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. This attention was, of course, well deserved, but may have taken attention away from some of the other nominees. One such nominee that may have slipped under your radar is Bullhead, a Belgian movie directed by Michael R. Roskam. Starring Matthias Schoenaerts, who gained over 50 pounds of muscle to play Jacky Vanmarsenille, Bullhead follows Jacky and his family as they raise cattle on their farm, while taking part in the illegal animal growth-hormone trade. While Jacky...
The last time many of us saw Kåre Hedebrant, it was in Let The Right One In. He’s grown up quite a lot and is now starring in Cupid’s Balls, screening at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival. Directed by Kristoffer Metcalfe, the film follows Lucas (Kåre Hedebrant) as he moves from Sweden to Norway with his mother. Most of the youth in town play soccer, hoping to get another shot at winning the Norway Cup. Even though Lucas is terrible at sports, he decides to try and join the team, but that’s just to impress the team captain’s girlfriend...
Names like Skrillex, Mark Ronson, and Pretty Lights may be familiar to the generation of kids out there now, but what about Martha Reeves, or Ralph Stanley? Those aren’t likely to be musicians that anyone under 20 has ever heard of. In an idea formed with the Grammys, six DJs were given different genres of music and asked to create a song blending their style with a older form of music. Screening at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, Re:Generation Music Project, directed by Amir Bar-Lev, goes behind the scenes with DJ Premier, Skrillex, Pretty Lights, Mark Ronson, and duo The...
Inspired by true events and screening as part of the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, 17 Girls is the story of a group of teen girls who decide to all get pregnant at the same time. Camille (Louise Grinberg) is the first of the group to find out she’s pregnant. Fear is her first thought, but her reaction changes as she begins to think about having someone who will love her unconditionally forever, something she seems to lack in her own family. One by one, her friends get caught up in the idea that having a baby will change their...
Is it even possible to imagine driving down the highway without seeing a huge billboard? What about walking through the city without passing a wall covered in posters? At every turn, we’re bombarded with advertising, but has it become too much? These are just some of the ideas explored in Gwenaelle Gobe’s documentary This Space Available, screening as part of the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival. The documentary examines a growing movement of people who are against the large amount of outdoor advertising, calling it visual pollution. Covering 11 different countries, we witness the different levels of advertising and even...
Punk has always been an attitude — and a style of music — that doesn’t really care what anybody thinks. It may be the ultimate statement of ‘this is who I am, take it or leave it.’ Celebrating its Canadian premiere at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, Fat Kid Rules The World is the story of Troy Billings (Jacob Wysocki), an overweight, unpopular, and slightly suicidal 17-year-old who is about to learn the importance of that punk attitude. As Troy walks home from school one day, he decides to end his life and steps in front of a bus....
When Cher playfully sang about “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” back in 1971 there’s no way she could have known that despite the colourful depictions of the Romani people we’re used to seeing in film and on stage, they’re a people that have quickly become the most persecuted in the European Union. The film, which screens as part of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, tells the story of the monumental tragedy suffered by the estimated half million Roma who were systematically murdered by the Nazis during WWII. Through harrowing accounts by the survivors (one by a man who suffered terrible medical...
The expression “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is something we’ve all heard time and time again, but never has it felt so tailor-made for someone than when it’s used to describe the life of Jerome Felder. After all, the subject of Will Hechter’s biopic documentary A.K.A. Doc Pomus was a rotund, bearded, wheelchair-bound white guy who lived in a small, cluttered apartment and wouldn’t necessarily strike you as the type of guy who say, was once called one of the greatest songwriters in music history by the likes of Lou Reed, but he was. And the story...
