MUMBAI: This year‘s Toronto International Film Festival will hold world premieres of films of Robert Redford, Guillaume Canet, Michael Winterbottom, John Cameron Mitchell, Tony Goldwyn, Emilio Estevez and David Schwimmer.
In all, about 50 films, including 25 world premieres, were unveiled yesterday at the opening news conference for the fest‘s 35th edition.
Redford‘s The Conspirator, an investigation into the assassination of President Lincoln that stars Robin Wright, James McAvoy and Kevin Kline, will have its gala screening at Roy Thomson Hall.
To be accorded the same treatment would be Canet‘s Little White Lies, a beachside drama that stars Marion Cotillard, Benoit Magimel and Gilles Lellouche. The South African-set Steven Silver‘s Canada/South Africa co-production, The Bang Bang Club, starring Ryan Phillippe, Malin Akerman and Taylor Kitsch will also have its premiere at the Fest.
Stars whose latest work will be on display include Nicole Kidman, playing one half of a married couple rocked by the death of their child, in Mitchell‘s Rabbit Hole. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis facing off as rival ballerinas in Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan will be the opening-night film at the festival. Keanu Reeves, playing a man unjustly imprisoned in Malcolm Venville‘s Henry Crime; Edward Norton and Robert De Niro circling each other in John Curran‘s psychological thriller Stone and Ben Affleck, who has directed himself in the Boston crime drama, The Town which Warner Bros. will release domestically on 17 September.
French actress Catherine Deneuve will be seen in two features: Francois Ozon‘s Potiche and Eric Lartigau‘s melodrama The Big Picture. Helen Mirren will also will get plenty of exposure from her appearances in John Madden‘s thriller The Debt and Rowan Joffe‘s adaptation of Graham Greene‘s novel Brighton Rock.
