Toronto film fest offers something for everyone

Last Updated: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 | 4:31 PM ET

CBC News

Brad Pitt, seen in Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading, is one of the famous faces expected on TIFF's red carpet this year. (Macall Polay/Focus Features/Alliance Films)With more than 300 films slated to unspool in downtown Toronto theatres over the next 10 days, organizers of the city's annual film festival hope to satisfy the desires of cinephiles across the city.

Though the 312 titles screening at the 33rd annual Toronto International Film Festival is slightly less than last year's tally, the films are typically more international in scope than other similar events — so it's not surprising that the last 10 foreign language film Oscar-winners appeared at past editions.

"We're looking for artistic merit above all," festival co-director and longtime programmer Cameron Bailey told CBC News. "We always want a mix" of films.

"We're passionate about movies. We want to respond to people's own passion about movies. Sometimes people are just passionate about movie stars. You want to see Brad Pitt, you want to see your favourite stars. You want to see them on the red carpet, you want to see them up on screen," Bailey said.

Gross scores festival opening slot

Paul Gross, one of Canada's most recognizable stars, officially gets the ball rolling with his First World War drama Passchendaele, screening in the coveted opening-night gala slot on Thursday evening and "easily the biggest Canadian movie of the year," said TIFF Canadian programmer and CBC Radio film correspondent Jesse Wente.

Paul Gross wrote, directed, co-produced and stars in Passchendaele, which opens the festival. (Chris Large/Rhombus Media/Alliance Films)Written, directed, co-produced by and starring Gross (who drew inspiration from tales his soldier grandfather recounted to him), Passchendaele is "treated in the way we don't often see Canadian history treated on the big screen, which is in an epic, war-movie sort of fashion," Wente said.

"It is wholly Canadian. This is a big-budget movie," Wente said of the $20 million film. "Funded entirely in Canada, produced in Alberta, about Canadians. We don't often see that — even opening up the festival in Toronto."

Several other high-profile premieres also centre on war experiences, including Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, focusing on an African-American troop fighting in Italy during the Second World War, and The Lucky Ones, about a trio of Iraq War veterans returning home.

The Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, a dark but madcap espionage-themed comedy, Steven Soderbergh's lengthy, two-part biopic Che and Larry Charles and Bill Maher's documentary Religulous are also anticipated offerings at TIFF.

Aside from Gross, other acclaimed Canadian filmmakers screening new films in Toronto include Atom Egoyan (Adoration), Deepa Mehta (Heaven on Earth), Bruce McDonald (Pontypool) and Philippe Falardeau (C'est pas moi, je le jure!).

Scores of international celebrities are expected to descend on Toronto to promote their latest films, including Adrien Brody (The Brothers Bloom), Gerard Butler (RocknRolla), Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Gael Garcia Bernal (Blindness), Akshay Kumar (Singh is Kinng), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler), Charlize Theron (The Burning Plain) and Ben Kingsley (50 Dead Men Walking).

Sleeper hit Whale Rider, starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, won acclaim at the 2002 TIFF before later scoring an Oscar nomination. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Programmers scout for gems

Aside from all the famous names and faces, however, TIFF programmers have packed the various film lineups with acclaimed or promising titles scouted out during globe-trotting trips they've taken over the course of the year — with some movies having been selected "as they're shot or as they're being edited," Bailey said.

The hope is "that the audience will seek something out that they might have heard nothing about," he said, pointing to past "sleeper" hits like New Zealand film Whale Rider.

"Many films that come to Toronto don't have a huge box office career ahead of them, but some do come out of the pack and they end up getting an audience and that's what we're looking for."