TIFF13: Nordic Films

When I get my TIFF programme book each year, I automatically flip to the back and look up Iceland to see which films will be screening. I developed this passion thanks to TIFF programmer Jane Schoettle, when she ran Sprockets (now TIFF Kids). From listings under Iceland, I peruse the rest of the Nordic film offerings before moving on to other countries to see what my favourite TIFF programmers have selected. Here are my thoughts on this year's Nordic films programmed by Steve Gravestock. (At left, me with Mamma Gogo director, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson).



FILMS FROM ICELAND...

METALHEAD. I haven't had a chance to see works by director, Ragnar Bragason, but programmer Steve Gravestock calls this film a "darkly comic drama about a grief-stricken young woman who adopts the persona — and decibel-blasting predilections — of her deceased brother." The editor on this one is Valdís Óskarsdóttir, who directed  a blast of a road comedy, Country Wedding (TIFF '08) and edited such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Finding Forrester, to name a few.

THIS IS SANLITUN. I'm curious to see how Reykiavik director, Róbert I. Douglas handles this comic co-pro (China, Iceland, Ireland) in which a "pair of hapless ex-pats discover that Beijing isn’t the hotbed of entrepreneurial opportunity they had anticipated" (Steve Gravestock). I enjoyed Douglas' last film at TIFF '05, Eleven Men Out, so I have high hopes for this one.


FROM DENMARK...
 

SEX, DRUGS & TAXATION. In this film "an alcoholic playboy and a meek tax lawyer join forces to revolutionize the travel industry and alter the country’s political landscape ."
Actor, Jesper Christensen's ("Mr. White" in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) name in the cast makes me curious to see this film set in the 1960's Denmark; as does Pilou Asbæk, who starred in TIFF12's A Highjacking. Another cast member, Nicolas Bro, has worked with director, Christoffer Boe on his film Beast, so the collaboration on this film places it fairly high on my Try to See list.


FROM NORWAY...

I AM YOURS. More ex-pats, but this time the setting is the Pakistani community in Norway. First time director, Iram Haq is one of the lucky and talented filmmakers whose work has made it into TIFF's Discovery programme. With dialogue in Norwegian, Urdu and Swedish, how can I resist this cultural invitation, especially when the editors are the team that cut my TIFF12 fave, The Hunt (Anne Østerud and Janus Billeskov Jansen), and Axel Helgeland, a producer on one of my favourite melodramas, I Am Dina, and for dogma fans, Lars Von Trier's' Breaking the Waves?

PIONEER. Axel Hennie, is an actor who can make me both love (Max, in Max Manus) and hate (Trond, in 90 Minutes) his characters with equal passion, is back on the TIFF screen this year in Pioneer, a film by Erik Skjoldbjærg, the director Insomnia (later remade by Christopher Nolan). Steve describes this one as a "propulsive, gritty film about the birth of the Norwegian oil industry in the early 1980s."

THE IMMORAL. I'm not familiar with director, Lars Daniel Krutzkoff Jacobsen's work, so I'm going to this one, simply because Steve's description promises something beyond the ordinary for this film. He calls it a boundary-pushing comedy that is both "corrosive" and "provocative." I'm a sucker for a film that "rampages through notions of good taste, as it follows an ex-soldier and a single mother who go into the prostitution business after getting kicked off welfare." Bring. It. On.

FROM SWEDEN...

HOTEL. Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair) stars in this comedy-drama as a recovering control freak who finds support and a new lease on life when she enters group therapy.

Confession time: I think I'm a 75% control freak. Not as tightly wound as Lisa Langseth lead character, but I do wonder how much of myself I'll see in this director's second feature film. There's nothing like the personal connection to get you into a theatre seat. Who's with me on this one? Control freaks unite!

WE ARE THE BEST. My punk rock soul is urging me on to see Lukas Moodysson's latest TIFF presentation, but my control freak mind is wondering how I'm going to mange to see all of these films! I love the idea of sitting in a movie theatre cheering on these three young women as they navigate high school and the 1980's scene in Stockholm. No doubt cinematographer, Ulf Brantås, will do as spectacular a job on this project as he did in other Moodyson films such as Show Me Love, Together and Fucking Amal.

FROM FINLAND...

CONCRETE NIGHT. Believe it or not I sometimes enjoy the catharsis of an "emotionally devastating work", which is why veteran filmmaker, Pirjo Honkasalo's film appeals to me. Honkasalo's film is in the Masters section at TIFF13, and I usually include a viewing of one of these works as I can sit back and let the film unfold, certain that I am in the hands of greatness; however, the bleakness of this tale about "a fourteen-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum [who] takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother" might be too much for me. I don't know...

HEART OF A LION. This one is definitely on my Must See list, as the director, Dome Karukoski, is someone I interviewed at TIFF10, and whose film Lapland Odyssey, I thoroughly enjoyed. I can't wait to see how he shapes this film about a skinhead who falls in love with a woman with a child who is half Black. Perkele!


Toronto International Film Festival
September 5 - 15, 2013
Get Tickets: 
416.599.TIFF | 1.888.599.8433 | http://tiff.net/thefestival

TIFF 2010: Interview with Steve Gravestock, Associate Director, Canadianan Programming (TIFF)

donna g: Why should people consider seeing Canadian films at TIFF? I love and support Canadian films but many people tell me they choose foreign films over Canadian because they may not get a chance to see those films again.

Steve Gravestock: One of the reasons to see Canadian films at the Festival is that some may not show up in Toronto again (especially the Quebecois films -- though this will change with the opening of the Bell Lightbox). More significantly, the directors and in many cases the performers will be present at the screenings -- and that kind of situation is unique and unlikely to be duplicated. (This would apply especially to this year since there are a large number of very prominent international performers in a large number of productions -- as well as Canadian performers who have become internationally known.) Also, there's a certain excitement in seeing films first. That said, it's always a good idea to mix up things and see films from a variety of different countries, regions, etc. Frankly, I think this kind of approach shows how well we stack up against other countries.

More importantly, these films show us where we are now – and I don’t know why any Canadian wouldn’t want to know about that..

donna g: Could you share with new attendees to TIFF, the different areas of Canadian films to choose from at the festival?

Steve Gravestock: There are two specifically Canadian programmes: Canada First! and Short Cuts Canada. The former is a showcase for emerging Canadian filmmakers and is primarily comprised of first time feature filmmakers. The second is made up of short films. These include filmmakers who will go on to make features as well as artists who specialize in the short film form, a form Canadians have always excelled at.

The other films are spread across the Festival in a variety of programmes: Contemporary World Cinema, Visions and Real to Reel; Special Presentations and Galas (there are a very high number of these this year); and Midnight Madness--in fact, this year marks the first time a Canadian film (Mike Dowse's FUBAR 2) will open that section.

donna g: Could you please give some highlights from the different programme areas?

Steve Gravestock: I love everything in Canada First! It's a very wide-ranging programme including everything from Katrin Bowen's AMAZON FALLS, a neo-noir about a fading actress in L.A.; Daniel Cockburn's meta-detective story YOU ARE HERE; and of course the opener Mike Goldbach's comedy drama DAYDREAM NATION which is a small indy film with a big cast (Kat Dennings, Josh Lucas, Katie Boland) where Dennings plays a teenager whose father relocates her to a small rural town where all the high school students are permanently stoned. They do some very interesting things with household products.

There's way too many good films to pick out a few, but we're thrilled to be showing INCENDIES, the amazing and emotionally devastating new film from Denis Villeneuve (the director of POLYTECHNIQUE, which won every major award in Canada and Quebec last year); the new film from Jacob Tierney, GOOD NEIGHBOURS (an off-the-wall macabre thriller with Scott Speedman, Jay Baruchel -- who starred in Tierney's last film, THE TROTSKY, a big hit at TIFF last year --and the luminous Emily Hampshire); and Carl Bessai's REPEATERS. Bessai is a very interesting director and we've shown a lot of his work over the years, but this one is bigger in scope and on a larger scale than some of his earlier work. REPEATERS focuses on three teens in a rehab centre who wake up to find they're repeating the same day over and over again. It's pretty intense, with a great young cast and it uses the thriller genre as a means of addressing some pretty big, possibly even existential issues, in a very smart way. And of course Bruce McDonald's TRIGGER, a phenomenal piece of work, starring Molly Parker and Tracey Wright, one of our finest actresses, who sadly passed away earlier this year.

Contemporary World Cinema, which is sort of the backbone of the Festival and includes a wide range of different kinds of films, there's CRYING OUT or A L'ORIGINE D'UN CRI, the latest from one of Quebec's most interesting young filmmakers Robin Aubert, which marries some truly intense domestic drama (think Eugene O'Neill and Michel Tremblay) with a baroque visual and symbolic landscape that evokes David Lynch. It's about three generations of alcoholic men careening around the Quebecois countryside. It shares some affinities with Ed Gass-Donnely's film, SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS, which also takes place in a rural area, and focuses on a cop, played by the great Peter Stormare, who's haunted by his violent past. We also have MODRA, a beautiful, lovely new film by Ingrid Venninger -- it's her first solo feature -- about the relationship between two teenagers starring her daughter Hallie Switzer. The film was shot almost entirely in Slovakia -- in fact there are a lot of films that have an international scope or setting this year.

In Vision, we have two major works, MOURNING FOR ANNA or TROIS TEMPS APRES LA MORT D'ANNA, the latest from Catherine Martin, a devastating drama about a woman mourning the sudden death of her daughter, and Denis Cote's CURLING, which already won the director's prize in Locarno and is possibly his best and most accessible film to date.

In Real to Reel, we have two great documentaries: Bill MacGillivray's portrait MAN OF A THOUSAND SONGS about East Coast singer-songwriter Ron Hynes and Jody Shapiro's funny and very compassionate piece HOW TO START YOUR OWN COUNTRY, about micro-nations, small (even tiny) countries that aren't usually acknowledged by other nations.

Gala-wise, we're obviously looking forward to the world premiere of SCORE, the new movie by Michael MacGowan; Richard J. Lewis's BARNEY'S VERSION, the adaptation of the Mordecai Richler novel produced by one of the country's most prominent producers; A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO ENDINGS, a very funny, sometimes macabre family comedy written and directed by Jonathan Sobol, and starring Harvey Keitel; Jason Jones; Paulo Costanzo; and Tricia Helfer; Stephen Silver's THE BANG BANG CLUB, a very powerful and visceral drama about photo-journalists in the lead-up to the first free elections in South Africa which stars Ryan Philippe and Malin Ackerman.

What CANADIAN FILMS will you see at TIFF 2010?

Thanks to Steve Gravestock, you now have on excuses not to see Canadian Films at TIFF 2010. Enjoy! and don't forget to share you feedback by leaving a comment.

Photos: Crying Out/L'origine d'une cri (top); MODRA (second)

Photos courtesy of Toronto International Film Festival

Seen Any Good Films Lately? YES!

David Lean's HOBSON'S CHOICE, part of Cinematheque Ontario's Encounter David Lean series that has kept me out late at night.

It seems that since TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) I have been going from one film festival to another or attending Doc Soup screenings. With Toronto being a film city, I'm sure many of you have attended the same screenings. Did you see what I saw?







I didn’t cover this festival, but a friend had a couple of tickets so I managed to see the hilarious office vampire tale, Netherbeast Incorporated (Darrel Hammond and Judd Nelson) and the visually stunning, but poorly written, Mutant Chronicles (Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman). The highlight of attending that night was seeing Steven Kostanski's short film, Laser Ghosts 2: Return to Laser Cove, which effectively parodies common sci-fi horror plots. I can do horror comedies, and action horrors, but I can't go gory. I loved the trailer for Tokyo Gore Police, but had to pass on the ticket because I just can't see these types of films. My friend, who is a hardcore horror fan and enjoyed the film, told me that the cinematography was wonderful, but agreed that I would not have been able to last.

Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival
I had a wonderful discussion with Academy Award Nominee, director, Christine Choy about Asian representation in North American cinema. Her documentary Long Story Short chronicles the experiences of Tony and Trudie Long as recounted by them and their daughter, Jodi Long. In the documentary, Tony Long is fired from his role in Flower Drum Song because of a fight with one of the producers. The movie and the play are integral to the documentary, and Christine and I spoke about the Asian representation from the first incarnations of this work to the play's revival on Broadway with an updated script. Besides the lack of non-stereotypical work for Asian actors and the persistence of Chinese actors playing Japanese roles etc, we also touched on the topic of film schools (Christine is in the film department of NYU), and how Asian students are not being encouraged to write stories that reflect their own experiences.

Congratulations to Aram Collier on his award for "THE OTHERS" featuring Lou Diamond Philips (the Every Asian/Latino/Inuit/Indian) and Randall Lloyd Okita for the incredibly inventive, MACHINE WITH A WISHBONE. I wish I could say the same for THE DRUMMER, but unlike most of the audience I did not like this mix of Zen meets gangster movie. For other award winners, visit www.reelasian.com.

Doc Soup
Both October and November screenings at Doc Soup took me to the American South with very personal films. Trouble the Water, which has won a Sundance Film Festival award, took me to New Orleans and the personal videos of a young couple as they deal with the encrouching waters of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. One of the things that resonate with me is the couple's reaction to seeing Black people outside of New Orleans who lived suburban lifestyles that they had never seen before. As bad as the situation that they lived through, they probably never would have had the opportunity to move beyond their own impoverished neighbourhood. The Order of Myths took me to Alabama and the racially segregated celebration of Mardis Gras. The filmmaking is rudimentary, but the film is worth watching because of the class differential that I don't usually see when filmmakers tackle the issue of racism. Class structures are usually seen in films about England, but in The Order of Myths, to be part of the White Mardis Gras world, you have to belong to certain White families. Getting a glimpse into this closed world where Blacks are still the ones serving food in the background is like watching a video of modern Alabama superimposed on a slide show of American slavery. As for the Black Mardis Gras, it was interesting to see how they out-formalized the White Mardis Gras functions in terms of pomp and glitter. This film was a very interesting social commentary.

Canadian Films:
32 Short Films About Glenn Gould
I love talking film with Steve Gravestock, Associate Director of Canadian Programming and Special Projects for the Toronto International Film Festival Group. He loves Canadian and Nordic film and so do I, but I enjoy talking film with him because he always keeps it conversational. (If you've ever been stuck discussing aspect ratio and film run times with die hard film afficionados you'll know what I mean.) If you tuned in to our chat on Saturday, November 15th, I hope you got a sense of what this film meant to Canadian cinema of the early 1990s and why its still relevant today. If you missed the recent screenings at the Royale Cinema, rent it. The DVD won't be the fresh new print that was screened and it has been formatted for television, but until a newer version is released, it will be as good as it gets. The colour palette and depth of the photograpy, Colm Feore performance and Glenn Gould's music is well worth it.

C.R.A.Z.Y
In their continued support of Canadian film, The First Weekend Club has launched Canada Screens, a monthly screening of Canadian films. Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y was shown in the very intimate underground of the Drake Hotel on Sunday, Nov. 30th, and even though I had seen this film before I still teared up at the end (as did many others in the audience). During the Q & A following the film Jean-Marc talked about how important the soundtrack (Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, David Bowie,Patsy Cline...)was to the making of the film ($650, 000 for music out of a total film budget of 7 million) was to the story and how he fought to get certain songs to reflect the rebellion of his main character as well as mark the passing time from the early 60's to 80's. He also expressed his immense surprise at how well the film connected with everyone who saw it (the film swept the Genies and the Jutras and has won many International awards).

I also had a chance to speak to Jean-Marc about the difficulty of distribution and about the heartbreaking process of making a film and not having final say (his last project, not C.R.A.Z.Y). The reality is film is a business and studios will do everything to get bums in seats; they won't risk their money on anything that appears too "art house". As an audience we lose when what we see at the theatres is limited. Thanks goodness for festivals and special screenings! Next up for me is David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, just one of the many Lean films I've seen over the past few months (Oliver Twist, Brief Encounter, The Passionate Friends, Summertime). To be cont'd...