DDA Presents Toronto International Film Festival Slate
- Details
- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Sunday, 03 September 2017 12:23
- Written by Janet Walker
With The Toronto International Film Festival four days away DDA has announced their upcoming slate of films for Press & Industry screenings and commercial consideration. Representing films and distributors DDA is prepared to assist in facilitating sale.
With a slate of fifteen films, below are the highlights to a few of the many that will screen and the few that will make it down the backstretch as Awards Season approaches.
Sports Films are dominating this season with Borg/McEnroe showing up against Fox Films Battle of The Sexes, a doubles match unlike any in history both films should do very well playing for those who have a love for the sport, for film and a nostalgia for the season.
Former Olympic hopeful Figure Skater Tonya Hardy is portrayed in the film, I, Tonya, which will also showcase at Toronto with DDA representing and Margot Robbie as the Ultimate bad girl of ice skating.
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Suburbicon, coming off a solid showing at Venice, will also showcase at Toronto with George Clooney, Julianne Moore and Matt Damon in attendance.
The great comedian Andy Kaufman, and Jim Carrey whom all say embodied him during the 1999 filming of the Andy Kaufman bio-pic, is the focus of Jim & Andy, based on footage from Jim Carrey’s 1999 role in which he “embodied” Kaufman never breaking character on set.
Pablo Escobar, the 1992 L.A. Riots, A Michigan Mental Hospital, 1960’s London and the darkness of one of the world’s famous female writers, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin each have a moment, showcasing the work and world in which the actors personify.
Wimbledon, 1980. The rainiest summer in decades. The world is waiting to see the number one tennis player in the world, Björn Borg, claim his fifth Wimbledon title. But few know of the drama behind the scenes: at only 24, Borg is close to the end - run-down, worn out and ridden with anxiety. Meanwhile, the challenger John McEnroe, 20, desires to replace his former hero on the Wimbledon throne.
BORG/MCENROE is a story about the price of success. How the world’s two best tennis players, only in their early twenties, are imprisoned by their own careers. Two athletes constantly reduced to each other’s opposites by a commercialized tennis industry: the cartoonish ”lce Borg” and ”Superbrat”. Two rivals who, during Wimbledon 1980, are forced to realize that the only person capable of understanding what they are going through is their worst enemy.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Janus Metz, Actors Shia LaBeouf*, Sverrir Gudnason and Stellan Skarsgård
ON CHESIL BEACH
SYNOPSIS: It is summer 1962, and England is still a year away from huge social changes: Beatlemania, the sexual revolution and the Swinging Sixties. We first encounter Florence and Edward, a young couple in their early 20s, on the day of their marriage. Now on their honeymoon, they are dining in their room at a stuffy, sedate hotel near Chesil Beach.
Their conversation becomes more tense and awkward, as the prospect of consummating their marriage approaches. Finally, an argument breaks out between them. Florence storms from the room and out of the hotel, Edward pursues her, and their row continues on Chesil Beach.
From a series of flashbacks, we learn about the differences between them – their attitudes, temperaments and their drastically different backgrounds.
Out on the beach on their fateful wedding day, one of them makes a major decision that will utterly change both of their lives forever.
ON CHESIL BEACH is a powerful, insightful drama about two people, both defined by their upbringing, bound by the social mores of another era.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Dominic Cooke, Actor Billy Howle and Writer Ian McEwan
I, Tonya
SYNOPSIS: Margot Robbie stars as controversial Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding in this alternately tragic, hilarious and absurd look at one of the biggest scandals in US sports history.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Craig Gillespie, Actors Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney and Paul Walter Hauser
Mary Shelley
SYNOPSIS: MARY SHELLEY tells the story of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin - author of one of the world’s most famous Gothic novels ‘Frankenstein’ - and her fiery, tempestuous relationship with renowned romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The pair are two outsiders constrained by polite society but bound together by a natural chemistry and progressive ideas that are beyond the boundaries of their age and time. Mary and Percy declare their love for each other and much to her family's horror they elope, joined by Mary's half-sister Claire. In the midst of growing tension within their relationship during their stay at Lord Byron's house at Lake Geneva, the idea of Frankenstein is conceived when a challenge is put to all houseguests to write a ghost story. An incredible character is created, which will loom large in popular culture for centuries to come, but society at the time puts little value on female authors. At the tender age of 18, Mary is forced to challenge these preconceptions, to protect her work and to forge her own identity.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Haifaa Al Mansour, Actors Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley and Maisie Williams
I Kill Giants
SYNOPSIS: I KILL GIANTS tells the story of Barbara Thorsen (Madison Wolfe), a teenage girl who chooses to escape the realities of school and a drab family life by retreating into her magical world of Titans and Giants.
With the help of her new friend Sophia (Sydney Wade) and her school therapist (Zoe Saldana), Barbara will learn to battle her Giants and face her fears – tackling the mean bullies at school, her sister (Imogen Poots) and her difficult home life and eventually her biggest dread of the unknown.
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I KILL GIANTS an adaptation of Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura's Man of Action/Image Comics internationally acclaimed graphic novel is directed by Academy Award-winning director Anders Walter.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Anders Walter and Actors Imogen Poots, Madison Wolfe, Sydney Wade and Writer Joe Kelly
Suburbicon
SYNOPSIS: Suburbicon is a peaceful, idyllic suburban community with affordable homes and manicured lawns …the perfect place to raise a family, and in the summer of 1959, the Lodge family is doing just that. But the tranquil surface masks a disturbing reality, as husband and father Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) must navigate the town’s dark underbelly of betrayal, deceit, and violence. This is a tale of very flawed people making very bad choices. This is Suburbicon.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director George Clooney, Actors Julianne Moore, Matt Damon and Oscar Isaacs
Mom & Dad
SYNOPSIS: Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair star in this pitch-black horror-comedy about a worldwide mass hysteria where, for 24 brutal hours, parents turn violently against their own children.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Brian Taylor, Actors Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair
Woman Walks Ahead
SYNOPSIS: Based on true events, WOMAN WALKS AHEAD tells the story of Catherine Weldon, a widowed artist from New York in the 1880s, who travelled to North Dakota to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull. Catherine and Sitting Bull, each broken in their own way, come to recognize their mutual strength. Soon, the wider political struggle for Native American land rights influences their friendship. Catherine and Sitting Bull overcome personal adversity to fight against the US government’s takeover of the Plains Indians’ lands.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Susanna White, Actors Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes, Sam Rockwell and Chaske Spencer
Jim & Andy
SYNOPSIS: “No one really knew what was real and not real half the time. I didn’t know what was real and not real, you just went with Andy and Tony and where ever their whim took you and the emotions often times were very real.” - Jim Carrey
In 1999 Milos Forman cast Jim Carrey to play cult comedian Andy Kaufman in his biopic Man on the Moon. What followed was an intensely bizarre and emotional film production. Surrounded by Kaufman’s friends and family on set, Carrey thoroughly “became” Andy and, alternately, Tony Clifton, Kaufman’s obnoxious lounge singer alter ego. Much like Kaufman’s comedy, Carrey’s acting took on a performance art quality during the film. He never broke character on set, the cast and the crew referred to him as either ‘Andy’ or ‘Tony’ depending on who he was embodying (he had created complete and separate identities for each).
Jim Carrey earned critical acclaim and a Golden Globe for the performance, but many of the production’s most Kaufmanesque moments played out behind the scenes, thankfully captured on video by Andy’s former girlfriend, Lynne Margulies and former writing partner, Bob Zmuda. In Jim & Andy, Carrey looks back at the resulting footage 18 years later, reflecting on how he and Andy came up in oddly parallel universes, his experience channeling Andy and Tony and more broadly the spiritual journey of his career.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Chris Smith, Actor Jim Carrey, Producers Spike Jonez and Danny Gabai
Public Schooled
SYNOPSIS: Socially awkward, Liam has been home-schooled his entire life. When he falls in love with a popular one-legged girl, he abandons his mother’s suffocating love and enrolls in public school, getting a crash course in sex, drugs and social mayhem.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Kyle Rideout, Actors Judy Greer, TIFF Rising Star Daniel Doheny, Russell Peters and Grace Park
The Third Murder
SYNOPSIS: Leading attorney Shigemori takes on the defense of murder robbery suspect Misumi who served jail time for another murder 30 years ago. Shigemori’s chances of winning the case seem low - his client freely admits his guilt, despite facing the death penalty if he is convicted. As he digs deeper into the case, as he hears the testimonies of the victim’s family and Misumi himself, the once confident Shigemori begins to doubt whether his client is the murderer after all
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Hirokazu Kore-eda, Actors Masaharu Fukuyama, Koji Yakusho and Suzu Hirose
Kings
SYNOPSIS: KINGS is the English-language debut from writer-director Deniz Gamze Erguven, a recluse (Daniel Craig) helps a woman (Halle Berry) and her multiple children when riots erupt in Los Angeles following the 1992 acquittal of the policemen charged with assaulting Rodney King.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Deniz Gamze Erguven, Actor Halle Berry (TBC)
Loving Pablo
SYNOPSIS: Loving Pablo chronicles the rise and fall of the worlds most feared drug lord Pablo Escobar (Javier Bardem) and his volatile love affair with Colombia's most famous journalist Virginia Vallejo (Penélope Cruz) throughout a reign of terror that tore a country apart.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Fernando León de Aranoa, Actors Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz (TBC)
Three Christs
SYNOPSIS: Based on a 1959 experiment at Michigan's Ypsilanti State Hospital, Three Christs is the story of Dr. Alan Stone and his three paranoid schizophrenic patients who each believe they are Jesus Christ. Stone treats them in a simple, yet revolutionary way: putting them in a room together. He faces opposition from his supervisor and those who would sedate, restrain and electroshock the patients. In order to avoid these treatments, Stone must go beyond the prescribed boundaries. What transpires is a darkly comedic and profoundly dramatic story about the nature of identity and the power of empathy.
ATTENDING TALENT: Director Jon Avnet, Actors Richard Gere, Walton Goggins and Julianna Margulies (TBC)
Journey’s End
SYNOPSIS: March, 1918. C-company arrives to take its turn in the front-line trenches of northern France, led by the war weary Captain Stanhope (Claflin). With a German offensive imminently approaching, the officers (Bettany, Graham, Sturridge) and their cook (Jones) use food and the memories of their lives before the war to distract themselves, while Stanhope soaks his fear in whisky, unable to deal with his dread of the inevitable. A young officer, Raleigh (Butterfield), arrives fresh out of training and abuzz with the excitement of his first real posting – not least because he is to serve under Stanhope, his former school house monitor and the object of his sister’s affections. Each man is trapped, the days ticking by, the tension rising and the attack drawing ever closer…
ATTENDING TALNET: Director Saul Dibb, Actors TBD
Sources: DDA
