TIFF announces complete lineup, celebrity visitors

Jimmy Carter, Brad Pitt among personalities to visit Toronto film fest

Last Updated: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 | 12:41 PM ET

CBC Arts

The list of cinematic luminaries set to visit Toronto, as well as the remaining films and special events scheduled for this year's Toronto International Film Festival, was announced Wednesday. 

Organizers will screen 349 films from 55 countries at the Sept. 6-15 festival.

David Cronenberg, seen here in Cannes in May, will screen his anticipated new thriller, Easter Promises, at the Toronto festival.
(Francois Mori/Associated Press)

Filmmakers expected to attend include David Cronenberg, Woody Allen, Ang Lee, George A. Romero, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Denys Arcand, Werner Herzog and Julie Taymor.

Among the performers slated to appear at the star-studded event are Brad Pitt, Uma Thurman, Cate Blanchett, Amitabh Bachchan, Carrie-Anne Moss, Clive Owen, George Clooney, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Douglas, Nandita Das, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Sydney Pollack, Tony Leung and Viggo Mortensen.

Six high-profile titles were announced to complete the glitzy gala presentation lineup:

• Le Deuxième Souffle - French director Alain Corneau's remake of the 1966 thriller stars Monica Bellucci and Daniel Auteuil. It follows an aging prisoner who breaks out of jail and seeks to leave the underworld behind, but he's forced to commit one more crime.
• Cleaner - An action thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a crime scene cleanup technician who unwittingly disposes of the evidence of a murder and must clear his name.
• Sleuth - Based on Anthony Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play, Kenneth Branagh remakes the tale of a wealthy writer who embarks on a cat-and-mouse game of wits with the young man having an affair with his wife. Michael Caine, who original portrayed the young adulterer opposite Laurence Olivier in the 1972 film, stars as the writer in the remake opposite Jude Law.
• Closing the Ring - A period love story and U.K.-Canadian co-production by Oscar-winning director Richard Attenborough that jumps between the present and the Second World War era.
• The Jane Austen Book Club - Based on the novel of the same name, the ensemble drama follows a book club whose members discover their love lives are playing out like a modern version of Austen's novels.
• The Walker - A drama starring Woody Harrelson as a popular Washington socialite who covers for a well-heeled, connected friend only to find himself at the centre of a criminal investigation.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn are among the notable figures expected at the 32nd edition of TIFF.

The Carters, who are profiled in the Jonathan Demme documentary Man From Plains (screening as a special presentation), will join social commentator Allan Gregg for a conversation about their activism work as part of the festival's Mavericks program.

Other Mavericks events include:

• The Time is Now: A Conversation About Darfur, which will include actor Don Cheadle and Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
• Religulous: A Conversation with Bill Maher and Larry Charles, in which the two humourists discuss and give sneak previews of their work-in-progress — a satirical look at religion;
• Mira Nair Presents Four Views on AIDS in India: The celebrated director hosts a discussion with three of her Indian colleagues to discuss the spread of HIV and AIDS in their homeland, and will screen a quartet of short films.

Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, and musical features on The Who, Lou Reed, Joy Division and Maria Callas are among the eight documentaries announced on Wednesday, bringing TIFF's total Real to Reel program to 32 titles.

For the first time, the festival will open its Doc Talks series to the public. It features documentarians discussing how they make their films, including filmmakers working on projects about the conflict in Iraq, and a tribute to Canadian Michel Brault, being honoured this year in TIFF's Canadian Retrospective program.

Bogdanovich to receive film honour

Acting legend Max von Sydow and filmmakers Ken Loach, Peter Bogdanovich and Sidney Lumet are among the personalities who will showcase films that have inspired them or marked a significant point in their careers as part of the Dialogues program.

Peter Bogdanovich, seen in New York in March, will be honoured for his contribution to film preservation.
(Stephen Chernin/Associated Press)

Bogdanovich will also be honoured with the International Federation of Film Archives Award, which celebrates those who have made a significant contribution to film preservation. It has previously been presented to Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Martin Scorcese and the late Ingmar Bergman.

Bognaovich, whose credits include The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon, will screen Jean Renoir's 1937 film La Grande Illusion as part of the event to highlight the importance of film restoration.

Organizers also announced 13 more titles in the special presentations program, including Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead and Michael Moore's Captain Mike Across America, and the addition of two new films by Chinese American director Wayne Wang to the Masters lineup.

The festival opens Sept. 6 with Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa's Fugitive Pieces, based on the bestselling Anne Michaels novel, and ends Sept. 15, with the drama Emotional Arithmetic, based on the book by Canadian writer Matt Cohen.