It was announced today that Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts and Chris Cooper, will open the 2015 Toronto global Film Festival with a world premiere on September 10 at Roy Thomson Hall.
Advertisement
The festival, a frequent launch pad for Oscar contenders, announced some 50 of the hundreds of films it will showcase between September 10 and 20.
Demolition follows an investment banker (Gyllenhaal) who loses his wife in a tragic accident.
Other titles headed to Toronto include Denis Villeneuve’s “Sicario“, Charlie Kaufman’s crowd-funded, stop-motion animated “Anomalisa“, Michael Moore’s “Where To Invade Next” and Cary Fukunaga’s Netflix initiative, “Beasts of No Nation”. The film focuses on the real-life love story and fight for justice by two New Jersey women and is likely to be especially poignant in a year where same-sex marriage became legal in the United States. Back then it featured the best of other film festivals around the world. This allows moviegoers to catch buzzy films already shown elsewhere at other venues during the opening days.
“Vallee has a tradition of presenting strong characters who are on journeys to self-discovery and redemption”, the festival’s artistic director Cameron Bailey said. “We’ve come up with what we think is the best approach, and everyone that we’ve talked to in the film community has been happy with it”. Last yr each lead appearing Oscar winners noticed their films world-premiere on the festival: Moore received her greatest actress push began with the worldwide bow of “Still Alice” in Toronto, whereas Eddie Redmayne’s “The Theory of…”
Handling held up a one-page program from that very first year, when TIFF was known as the Festival of Festivals. However, the crowd at this morning’s conference, where a few of the film’s trailers were screened, seemed to react most to clips from The Program.
Advertisement
As part of official selection, “Talvar”, produced by Junglee pictures and VB Pictures, will also compete for the People’s Choice Award at TIFF.
