Setting the scene

Q: How are the Canadians doing this year?

A: There’s a kind of “next” generation who came up in the wake of veteran filmmakers like Cronenberg and Arcand. We have Jeremy Podeswa [Fugitive Pieces] who’s associated with [Atom] Egoyan, although of course he’s his own filmmaker who works around the world. We have Paolo Barzman closing the festival with Emotional Arithmetic. Both of these appear in the Gala section alongside David Cronenberg [Eastern Promises] and Denys Arcand [L'Âge des ténèbres]. It’s interesting, the newer directors seem to be grappling with questions of identity, and what are these strands of Canadian-ness, and then, curiously enough, the generation above them have come back to play with genre films that effortlessly display a certain mastery, like Cronenberg with his Russian gangster film.

Q: We keep hearing that the Canadian film industry is depressed. How did that manifest itself in submissions this year?

A: Well, you have Québécois filmmakers who are not waiting for government anymore. Denis Côté produces his friend Rafaël Ouellet’s Le Cedre Penche, and makes an incredible low budget feature film for like $50,000. They’re finding a way to circumvent any funding crises and tell stories that matter.

Q: In the press material, you guys seem to be pushing an image of this year’s lineup as exceptionally “international.” Is that a reflection of grumbling that the festival is too North American, too commercial?

A: We’ve always been global in our outlook. We wouldn’t be Canadian if we weren’t. We’re a city that’s populated by virtually every nation in the world.

What’s changed is that we’ve become very useful to Hollywood, so there’s a certain kind of media element that will accentuate the American presence. We’re not opposed to that. Stars have their purposes, particularly when they appear in films that push esthetic boundaries or create debate about the issues of the day. We welcome very famous people and their personal risk-taking to be in such projects. If the media wants to focus on that, it’s their business. Our perspective is that the Bulgarian documentary at 9 o’clock in the morning might not be getting as much coverage, but it’s equally important work whether or not it has Ewan McGregor in it. People will always come to the Bulgarian doc, too, and it’s great to know that. It’s a tribute to the audiences in Toronto.

Q: Has that audience changed?

A: Yeah, it’s become more diverse. We’ve learned a few lessons over the years. We showed a Korean film a few years ago, and we had heard the actors were famous, but we had no idea until thousands of people lined up outside the theatre with gifts for an actor who didn’t even show up.

I think we used to proceed with caution in our Galas program, thinking that we should pick Asian films that would appeal to North American audiences, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but now we show films that fit into the mandate of the Gala program but that come from places like South Korea and mainland China, some challenging work.

Q: Is there going to be one of those global superstar feeding frenzies this year like last year’s Bollywood panel?

A: We’re setting ourselves up for a big Saturday and Sunday afternoon with [Indian star] Amitabh Bachchan’s first film in English. The lion will be with us, so if you’re anywhere near Roy Thomson Hall that day, come hear him roar. The fans will be back.

Q: Will we feel the reverberations of Iraq in this year’s films?

A: It’s an exceptional year for American films. You see themes of Iraq, civil liberties, violence. If I was going to compare it to anything, I’d say there was a bit of a ’70s echo, that legendary golden period, and many of the same genres seem to have popped out as well. Vigilantes and paranoia. 

There’s Jodie Foster’s collaboration with Neil Jordan, The Brave One, which turns the Taxi Driver paradigm on its head, especially in terms of gender. There’s the paranoid thriller Michael Clayton with George Clooney, which remains narratively satisfying while dealing with issues of corporate greed. Echoes of Iraq are to be found everywhere in films that are more confrontational, like Brian DePalma’s Redacted, and Paul Haggis’s In the Valley of Elah, which is slightly softer but also about families and the military.

In many ways, the film that brings together these various strands is The Visitor, the second film from Thomas McCarthy who was here a couple of years ago with The Station Agent. This is very sophisticated work about the violation of civil liberties, but you have to love Americans because they also want to entertain people.

Q: How did Max Von Sydow come to present the Ingmar Bergman film The Virgin Spring? Was this decided before Bergman's death?

A: Our Dialogues program features some of the most exceptional voices in cinema who happen to be at an advanced age. What an honour to be in the presence of these cinema gods: Sidney Lumet, Richard Attenborough, Ellen Burstyn. I don’t want to be glib about this, but hurry up. This won’t happen again.

A big part of the reason we chose Emotional Arithmetic was because of an exceptional performance from one of the world’s greatest actors, Max Von Sydow, and on the event of Ingmar Bergman’s death, the idea came to us to see if he would present a film. He said yes right away, and that he was honoured to be asked. This is an unprecedented gift. If I was a civilian and I was free on Friday, Sept. 14, 8 p.m., I would be there at the Isabel Bader Theatre.