The Toronto Film Festival can be a launching pad or a graveyard, a marketplace or a fleeting moment in the spotlight.
It is the most influential fall film festival in North America, the unofficial kickoff to awards season and the crucial showcase for dozens of films that hope to catch on with viewers, critics and Oscar voters in the months to come.
Enough Best Picture nominees (including "The Hurt Locker" and "Up in the Air" last year, and "Slumdog Millionaire" have premiered there to make it the single most important showcase for Oscar movies.
(See accompanying article, "How TIFF Became an Oscar Contender.")
“If you’re going to open any time in the next six months, it’s a key launching pad,” says Tom Bernard, the co-chief of Sony Pictures Classics, which is bringing nine films to Toronto and also expects to be in the market for new acquisitions. "And the audiences are incredibly perceptive. If your movie is going to play well with an audience, it usually plays incredibly well in Toronto.”
“Toronto is where somebody said of '[Dangerous] Liaisons,' ‘It’s like eating chocolate in bed,’” Stephen Frears laughs of the TIFF reception for his 1988 film. “That’s good enough for me.” Frears, who has brought several films to TIFF, including “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “The Snapper,” which won the festival’s audience award in 1993, is attending the 2010 fest with “Tamara Drewe.
This year’s TIFF, the 35th, opens Thursday with an impressive lineup of debuts and festival favorites from earlier in the year. With a particularly strong documentary slate that includes new work from Werner Herzog, Alex Gibney, Charles Ferguson and Errol Morris, the festival will run until Sept. 19.
Besides providing treats and quotes to almost 300 filmmakers, this year’s TIFF promises to supply answers will be found to at least some of the many questions that surround the festival each year.
1. WHO'LL EMERGE WITH THE BIGGEST OSCAR BUZZ?
Contenders abound. A key film could be Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” (above), the story of hiker Aron Ralston, who cut off his own forearm to escape after being trapped by a boulder while hiking alone. The consensus at Telluride was that James Franco is a clear Best Actor contender, but the Best Picture chances for the Fox Searchlight release are less assured.
The Weinstein Company, meanwhile, will have a chance to get more answers to the crucial question surrounding “The King’s Speech”: Is Tom Hooper’s Colin Firth/Geoffrey Rush movie, which deals with the relationship between Britain’s King George VI and his speech therapist, just an acting showcase, or a true Best Picture contender? Word out of Venice and Telluride puts it securely in the latter camp; Toronto could seal the deal.
Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” meanwhile, screened in Venice to a few raves and some skepticism; if it plays well, it could cement its director's position as an imaginative, gutsy filmmaker overdue for awards attention.
