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Nicole Kidman and Robert De Niro
An action spy thriller starring Jason Statham, Robert De Niro and Clive Owen — and other movies featuring Nicole Kidman, Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Hudson, Terrence Howard, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gerard Butler and James Gandolfini — were added Tuesday morning to the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.
Killer Elite, from director Gary McKendry, is based on a true story about a former special-ops agent (Statham) lured out of retirement to rescue his mentor (De Niro). To do so he’ll have to kill three veteran assassins, led by Owen. The U.S./Australian co-production makes its world premiere at TIFF.
Other films playing as Gala Presentations announced Tuesday include:
• Joel Schumacher’s Trespass, starring Kidman and Cage about a family victimized by a home invasion.
• Winnie, a portrayal of Winnie Mandela starring Hudson and Howard.
• TIFF’s closing-night Gala from U.K. director David Hare, Page Eight — a contemporary spy film featuring Weisz, Fiennes, Bill Nighy, Judy Davis and Michael Gambon.
• Hysteria, a rom-com based on how Mortimer Granville invented the first electro-mechanical vibrator, starring Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, Jonathan Pryce, Rupert Everett and Felicity Jones.
• Machine Gun Preacher from American Marc Forster, starring Butler as real-life Sam Childers, a former drug dealer who unexpectedly saved hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children.
• The Awakening, about a skeptic of séances forced to reassess her scientific convictions. Stars Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton.
• Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni, in Christophe Honore’s Beloved, an elegy of love from the female perspective covering two generations.
Among other program announcements, 18 more films were added to Special Presentations, including Gandolfini, Saoirse Ronan and Alexis Biedel in Geoffrey Fletcher’s Violet & Daisy, a film about “two girls. Some guns. A dress. A guy. A mess,” according to the TIFF news release.
For more information on these and other films playing at TIFF, and for tickets, go to tiff.net/festival. The 36th festival runs from Sept. 8-18 in downtown Toronto
A film about the invention of the vibrator starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, a biopic about Winnie Mandela starring Jennifer Hudson, and artwork by James Franco are among the latest offerings at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
TIFF announced more additions to its lineup Tuesday, including its closing night film: Page Eight. The spy thriller starring Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes is directed by acclaimed British playwright David Hare.
"Everyone here who saw it loved it, whether those people were hard-core cinephiles or casual filmgoers, whether they knew about political intrigue or the spy world. It was a really engaging movie," says Cameron Bailey, co-director of TIFF.
In Winnie, Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard play Winnie and Nelson Mandela in their quest to free South Africa from apartheid. Meanwhile, in Hysteria, Hugh Dancy and Rupert Everett play a doctor and scientist in a quest to free women from so-called hysteria. The romantic comedy set in Victorian-era England is about how Dr. Mortimer Granville (Dancy) invented the world's first electro-mechanical vibrator as a medical treatment.
Free art displays will also be available to the public at TIFF Bell Lightbox during the festival, including moving-image artwork by Franco and filmmaker Gus Van Sant. Their creation, Memories of Idaho, is a meditation on Van Sant's 1991 film, My Own Private Idaho. The piece includes a feature-length reassembling of the film with excised scenes and alternative takes from the original shoot.
The first film Bailey tweeted about Tuesday morning was Mausam (Seasons of Love). The Bollywood film, starring Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor and Anupam Kher, will have its world premiere at the festival.
"People have been dying to get confirmation that it was at the festival," Bailey says. "That got a lot of response, nine and a half hours away in India."
Tuesday's announcement brings the final number of galas to 20 and special presentations to 67. TIFF's final additions will be unveiled next week in anticipation of the festival's Sept. 8-18 run.
Some highlights of Tuesday's announcement:
• Killer Elite, directed by Gary McKendry: Based on a true story, Jason Statham plays an ex-special-ops agent who must rescue his mentor (Robert De Niro) by racing around the world and killing three assassins. The killers are led by an evil mastermind played by Clive Owen.
• Trespass, directed by Joel Schumacher: Nicholas Cage and Nicole Kidman star as a wealthy husband and wife who become victims of a vicious home invasion.
• Violet & Daisy, directed by Geoffrey Fletcher: Fletcher, who won an Oscar for adapting Precious, wrote and directed this whimsical and violent story of two young assassins journeying through New York. It stars Alexis Bledel and Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan as the title characters.
• Play, directed by Ruben Ostlund: Based on real cases of bullying, the film follows a group of boys in Gothenburg, Sweden, who robbed other children between 2006 and 2008.
• Footnote, directed by Joseph Cedar: This film chronicles the rivalry between a father and son, both professors in the Talmud department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
• Juan of the Dead, directed by Alejandro Brugues: A zombie outbreak hits Cuba on the anniversary of the revolution, leaving Juan and his friends to battle the undead who, according to government reports, are unruly Americans trying to undermine the regime.
• Heleno, directed by Jose Henrique Fonseca: Fonseca explores the life of Heleno de Freitas (1920-1959), a controversial and mythological Brazilian football player.
TIFF unveils homegrown lineup
What could be more Canadian than a hockey drama set in an Indo-Canadian community?
Among the Canadian films to be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival is Breakaway, Robert Lieberman's movie about an all-Sikh hockey team starring comedian Russell Peters and actor Rob Lowe. In it, Anupam Kher who, in 2002, played a London father with a soccer-playing daughter in Bend It Like Beckham, now plays a Toronto-area father with a hockey-playing son.
"When I first started doing standup, I used to do a joke about an all-Sikh ice hockey team called the Toronto Maple Sikhs," Peters says in a video that producers posted on YouTube. "Who would have thought (that), 20 years later, I'm in a film about an all-Sikh ice hockey team?"
Last year, the festival opened with Michael McGowan's Score: A Hockey Musical. This year, a documentary about U2 is the opener. But the hockey offerings continue.
Jay Baruchel, Liev Schreiber and Eugene Levy star in Mike Dowse's hockey comedy, Goon. In it, Seann William Scott plays a bouncer who is recruited as an enforcer for a hockey team.
TIFF unveiled its homegrown film lineup Wednesday, adding to David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method and Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz, which were previously announced.
Here are some more homegrown films debuting at the festival:
• Edwin Boyd: In his first lead role in a feature film, Scott Speedman (Underworld) plays a Canadian war veteran who starts robbing banks to provide for his family and fulfil a Hollywood dream. Nathan Morlando directs this movie, which is based on the true story.
• Keyhole: Guy Maddin stayed in his hometown of Winnipeg to shoot this story about a gangster returning home. It stars Jason Patric and Isabella Rossellini.
• The Moth Diaries: Scott Speedman can't seem to escape from vampires. Based on the novel of the same name, the film is set in an all-girls boarding school where a girl suspects her classmate of having blood-sucking tendencies.
• Billy Bishop Goes to War: Eric Peterson and John Gray reprise their iconic two-man play for the big screen.
• Pink Ribbons, Inc: Award-winning Quebec filmmaker Lea Pool examines how the reality of breast cancer has become obfuscated by a pink story of success that marketing experts have labelled a "dream cause."
The 36th Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 8 to 18; for ticket packages, visit tiff.net/festival.
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