BY: Amanda Jane Stern

The 45th Toronto International Film Festival is just around the corner. This year, due to current events, the festival will be run a little differently. According to its website: “The 45th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, taking place September 10–19, is tailored to fit the moment, with physical screenings and drive-ins, digital screenings, virtual red carpets, press conferences and industry talks.” Let’s take a look at ten films screening at TIFF that excite us. 

Ammonite

In Francis Lee’s follow-up to God’s Own Country, romance blossoms between acclaimed paleontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and a lonely housewife, Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), whom Mary is hired to accompany.

 

Another Round (Druk)

This Thomas Vinterberg drama Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), and his three best friends, who are high school teachers, hypothesize that they can improve their lives by maintaining a specific blood alcohol content level.

 

Bruised

Halle Berry makes her directorial debut with this sports drama about a disgraced MMA fighter named Jackie Justice, who is given a shot at redemption. Berry also stars in the movie as Justice.

 

David Byrne’s American Utopia

This Spike Lee-directed concert film documents David Byrne, former front-man of rock band Talking Heads, American Utopia Broadway show. David Byrne’s American Utopia will be the festival’s opening night screening.

 

Falling

Viggo Mortensen makes his feature directorial debut with this movie about a conservative and homophobic man (Lance Henriksen) who has to move in with his son, John (Mortensen) and John’s husband Eric (Terry Chen), after developing dementia.

 

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds

This Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer project follows the two men’s globetrotting adventures to sites where meteors, both ancient and recent, fell to earth, to understand what they can teach us about life on earth. 

 

Nomadland

In Chloé Zhao’s new film, Fern (Frances McDormand), a woman in her sixties, following the economic collapse of her rural Nevada town, uproots her life and lives nomadically out of her van as she treks across the American West.

 

One Night in Miami

Regina King’s feature film directorial debut follows a fictionalized story about Cassius Clay (Eli Goree). After defeating Sonny Liston in 1964, Clay meets Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) in a Miami hotel room.

 

A Suitable Boy

This miniseries directed by Mira Nair, and adapted from the novel of the same name, follows university student Lata’s (Tanya Maniktala) coming of age in 1951. A Suitable Boy will be the closing night presentation.

 

Summer of 85

François Ozon’s new film centers on a summer romance between teen friends Alexis Robin (Félix Lefebvre) and David Gorman (Benjamin Voisin) in 1985. Summer of 85 was to premiere at Cannes before cancellation due to the pandemic.