After screening a coma-inducing 733 entries, organizers of the 30th Toronto International Film Festival unveiled their Canadian programming slate yesterday, which will include repeat appearances from festival favourites such as Sturla Gunnarsson, Thom Fitzgerald, Clement Virgo, and Louise Archambault.
In total, there will be 103 cinematic works by Canadian filmmakers on centre stage this year, including a number of stellar Quebecois films, led by Archambault's tale of familial bonds, Familia, which will kick off the second annual Canada First! program.
Gunnarsson's Beowulf & Grendel (a modern-day twist on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem) and Fitzgerald's Three Needles (set in China, South Africa and Canada, and starring Lucy Liu and Chlöe Sevigny) will screen as world premieres under Special Presentations.
Virgo's steamy story of a female sex addict on the prowl one hot summer, Lie With Me, will have its world premiere in Visions. The film is based on a novel by Virgo's wife, Tamara Faith Berger.
At a packed press conference in Toronto yesterday, TIFF also announced that Canada's maverick filmmaker Don Owen -- whose seminal 1964 feature Nobody Waved Good-Bye set the bar for English Canadian cinema -- was named yesterday as the candidate to profile at this year's Canadian Retrospective.
The retrospective will feature 16 features, shorts and documentaries made by the Toronto-born artist, who was described by TIFF chief executive officer Piers Handling "as a pioneer, a filmmaker who had an innate feel for Canadians and the issues of the day."
In total, there will be 10 films screened in Canada First!, including seven world premieres: Dylan Akio Smith's The Cabin Movie; Julia Kwan's Eve & the Firehorse; David Ray's Fetching Cody; Robin Aubert's Saints-Martyrs-Des-Damnés; Aubrey Nealon's A Simple Curve; David Christensen's Six Figures; and John Hazlett's These Girls.
Michael Mabbott's comedy The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico and Denis Côté's Les États Nordiques round out the remaining feature films to be showcased in Canada First!
Contemporary World Cinema features three world premieres from Canada, including Sean Garrity's Lucid, about an insomnia-plagued psychotherapist named Joel; Ann Marie Fleming's absurdist comedy The French Guy; and Amnon Buchbinder's poignant and hilarious Whole New Thing. Also in this program are three Quebecois films, Jean-Marc Vallée's hit C.R.A.Z.Y.; Ricardo Trogi's Horloge Biologique; and Bernard Émond's La Neuvaine, about personal faith.
Four feature Canadian documentaries, all world premieres, will also screen for audiences, including Allan King's Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company; Metal: A Headbanger's Journey from Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy-Wise; Robin Neinstein's Souvenir of Canada, based on Douglas Coupland's best-selling novel; and Astra Taylor's Zizek!, about the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek.
Short Cuts Canada will feature 44 quirky and offbeat shorts exploring everything from sexual awakening to romantic relationships, loss of memory and more sexual awakening.
Owen's first feature film, Nobody Waved Good-Bye, made for the National Film Board, followed 18-year-old Peter (Peter Kastner), who lived with his middle-class family in suburban Toronto about the same time the Beatles were taking the world by storm. The teen and his girlfriend (Julie Biggs) rebel again their parents' values and morals, and both run away from home.
In 1984, Owen made a sequel to the film, called Unfinished Business, that reconnected with Peter and Julie, whose 17-year-old daughter Izzy runs away from home.
In addition to the retrospective, there will be a book published, Don Owen: Notes on the Filmmaker and His Culture, by Steve Gravestock. Also planned is an art exhibit of Owen's painting at a local gallery, from Sept. 10 to 24.
The Canadian Open Vault segment of TIFF -- which screens Canadian classics at the festival -- features Michel Brault's 1967 complex loss of innocence drama Entre la Mer et l'Eau Douce ( Between Sweet and Salt Water).
Also yesterday, the festival announced that award-winning author Michael Ondaatje ( In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient) and movie producer Peter Jensen ( Manderlay, Show Me Love) will act as creative mentors at TIFF's second annual Talent Lab. The lab accepts 22 emerging Canadian directors, writers and producers who brainstorm creatively in a four-day workshop.
Three internationally renowned guests will also take part in the lab, including Gurinder Chadha ( Bend It Like Beckham), documentarian Kim Longinotto ( Divorce Iranian Style), and veteran producer Jeremy Thomas ( Tideland, Sexy Beast).
Gayle MacDonald