2018 Toronto Film Festival

Green Book, a sleeper hit among the big hits of Toronto International Film Festival, won the event’s People’s Choice Award. In previous years, TIFF’s audience prize has launched the trajectory of several films, among them Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, American Beauty and Chariots of Fire.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the first Residency Awards at the Toronto International Film Festival. The program, which builds on last year’s Canada Shorts Award, was aimed at TIFF’s Film Makers Lab, and the twenty-two film makers who participated in the festival’s mentorship program directed by Jane Shoettle.

The central figure in a stellar ensemble cast, Golden Globe winner Viola Davis shared with HFPA journalist Barbara Gasser the experience of being directed by Golden Globe nominee Steve McQueen in Widows, a heist drama with deep psychological insights – and how McQueen wooed her with a Sunday visit, and sushi.

Robert Redford’s co-star in The Old Man & the Gun, three-time Golden Globe winner Sissy Spacek shared the experience with HFPA journalist Ting Ting Xu – including how hard it was, sometimes, to concentrate on the character and not her handsome co-star….

In Toronto. Robert Redford – Golden Globe winner and Cecil B.

In Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers, Golden Globe nominee Riz Ahmed plays a German chemist who has created a formula for finding gold in the late 19th century’s Wild West. In Toronto, he talked to HFPA journalist Ting Ting Xu about his admiration for Audiard, his research of the West and how it felt to be back working with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Newcomer Richie Merritt was outside the principal’s office when a casting scout saw him. Long story short, Merritt became the star of White Boy Rick, about a1980s teen who became a drug lord and an informant for the FBI.

The star of director Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, Golden Globe nominee Penélope Cruz followed closely the five-year process that took the filmmaker to Spain, in an effort to understand the roots of the story he wanted to tell. HFPA journalist Gabriel Lerman got all the details.

Golden Globe winner Matthew McConaughey is in Toronto with director Yann Demange’s White Boy Rick, a crime drama about a teenager-turned-drug-trafficker (and FBI informant) in the 1980s. McConaughey plays the kid’s father – an element that, he tells HFPA journalist Brent Simon, was key for getting him involved in the project.

In director Maryam Keshavarz’s Viper Club, Matt Bomer plays a war correspondent who sees his worst nightmares come true. In Toronto, HFPA journalist Brent Simon talked to Bomer and found out that the Viper Club is a real thing – and how Keshavar’s research was the foundation for his character.