The 49th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is upon us, which means the start of Oscar predictions and seeing who is a player and who is a pretender. A lot of answers and speculation will come out about debuts and films that started at Cannes coming over to North America finally. Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning Anora, Andrea Arnold’s Bird, and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez all finally make their appearance fresh off their success at Cannes. Mike Leigh returns after six years away with Hard Truths, Walter Salles is back after a decade with I’m Still Here, and local legend David Cronenberg comes with his latest horror film, The Shrouds. Here are a few others to keep an eye on.
Conclave
Edward Berger follows up his Oscar-winning All Quiet On The Western Front with a thriller that follows a Cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) who has to find the successor to the deceased Pope. In the process, a shocking secret is found, threatening the establishment and the whole church. Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini co-star in this thriller from novelist Robert Harris, who also wrote The Ghost Writer (2010) and An Officer And A Spy (2018) with director Roman Polanski.
Nightbitch
Writer/director Marielle Heller goes from the kindness of Mr. Rogers’ A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood to the comedy horror with a not-so-kind title. The story follows a domestic wife and mother (Amy Adams) who suddenly has a radical change of behavior that may or may not show she is becoming a canine. Dark, funny, and a total change of style from Heller, this Amy Adams vehicle is set to be in theaters after it was initially planned to be released straight to Hulu, but was bought by Searchlight for a December release.
Nutcrackers
The opening film of TIFF this year is David Gordon Green’s return to indie comedy-dramas with Ben Stiller back in acting since his tremendous flop, Zoolander 2. (Never again, Ben. Please.) Stiller plays a workaholic who is forced to go to Ohio after his four nephews are orphaned suddenly, making the city slicker into a guardian on the farm far from his job life. It feels much like a return to his debut, George Washington, and far from his streak of major studio films; The Exorcist: Believer being a complete waste of time and talent is probably what convinced Green to go back to simple stories.
The Piano Lesson
The next play of August Wilson to be adapted for the screen is his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama set in the Great Depression about the Charles family and their prized heirloom. John David Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Deadwyler, and Ray Fisher star in the directorial debut of Malcolm Washington, John David’s brother and the son of Denzel, who is producing. A Netflix release, this follows Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the Denzel-directed Fences, which was the first of August Wilson adaptations.
The Wild Robot
A robot (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) is stuck on an island and becomes part of an environment with its inhabitants, including a fox (Pedro Pascal) and a goose (Kit Connor) for whom the robot acts as its mother. Writer/director Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon) brings in a mix of classic Disney and Hayao Miyazaki to this adventure story for DreamWorks, immediately positioning itself as a player for Best Animated Feature against its Disney competitors. Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, and Ving Rhames also lend their voices to this animated film.
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