TIFF Talk

Ever since causing a sensation at an Eccles screening since entered in Sundance lore, last winter Nate Parker’s, The Birth of a Nation has been one of the most buzzed-about films of the year. The story of Nat Turner’s historic slave uprising of 1831, with its title polemically echoing D.

In a career spanning two decades Ewan McGregor has appeared in over 60 films. This year he premieres his directorial debut American Pastoral, an adaptation of the Philip Roth novel of the same title.

Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona busts on the international scene with The Orphanage, which earned him a Goya for Best New Director in 2007. In 2012 he followed that up with The Impossible starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts on the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Denzel Washington plays Sam Chisolm, the bounty hunter who heads up a rogue team of mavericks enlisted as a ragtag defense force by a beleaguered Western village in Antoine Fuqua’s retooling of John Sturges’ 1960 original (itself based on Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai). Washington, who steps into the role played by Yul Brynner spoke to the HFPA in Toronto.

Chris Pratt has not been sitting around. Not only does he star in The Magnificent Seven, Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the John Sturges classic western from 1960, he will be seen in the upcoming Sci-fi epic Passengers opposite Jennifer Lawrence and to the anxiously awaited follow up to Guardians of the Galaxy whose presentation had fans in a frenzy at Comi-Con last July.

Not counting the experimental crowd-sourced Entertainment Experience (2012), 78 year-old Dutch iconoclast Paul Verhoeven hadn’t directed a film since Black Book ten years ago. He’s back to his old tricks with Elle in which Isabelle Huppert plays a French businesswoman, who after being brutally raped in her home stalks her assailant.

With a program of more than 300 films TIFF is truly the behemoth of North American festivals. The film market here and the strategic scheduling as the unofficial launch of awards campaigns have cemented its place among the handful of top-tier world festivals.