Toronto International Film Festival 2018
Here is a list of 30 Must See Films at the Toronto International Film Festival 2018, we are most excited about:
“I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians”
Director: Radu Jude
Country: Romania / Czech Republic / France / Bulgaria / Germany
Cast: Ioana Iacob, Alex Bogdan, Alexandru Dabija
“I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians.” These words, spoken in the Council of Ministers of the summer of 1941, started the ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front. The film attempts to comment on this statement.
22 July
Director: Paul Greengrass
Country: Norway / Iceland
Cast: Thorbjørn Harr, Anders Danielsen Lie, Jon Øigarden
In Norway on 22 July 2011, right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 young people attending a Labour Party Youth Camp on Utøya Island outside of Oslo. A three-part story. About the survivors of the attacks, the political leadership of Norway, and the lawyers involved.
3 Faces
Director: Jafar Panahi
Country: Iran
Cast: Behnaz Jafari, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Rezaei
Three actresses at different stages of their career. One from before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, one popular star of today known throughout the country and a young girl longing to attend a drama conservatory.
Beautiful Boy
Director: Felix Van Groeningen
Country: USA
Cast: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney
Based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse, and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.
Blue
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Country: France / Thailand
Cast: Jenjira Pongpas Widner
A woman lies awake at night. Nearby, a set of theatre backdrops unspools itself, unveiling two alternate landscapes. Upon the woman’s blue sheet, a flicker of light reflects and illuminates her realm of insomnia.
Boy Erased
Director: Joel Edgerton
Country: USA
Cast: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Joel Edgerton, Russell Crowe
The son of a Baptist preacher is forced to participate in a church-supported gay conversion program after being forcibly outed to his parents.
Climax
Director: Gaspar Noé
Country: France
Cast: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub
Birth and death are extraordinary experiences. Life is a fleeting pleasure.
Cold War
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Country: Poland
Cast: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc
A passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatefully mismatched, set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris.
The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
Director: Xavier Dolan
Country: Canada
Cast: Emily Hampshire, Natalie Portman, Jacob Tremblay
A decade after the death of an American TV star, a young actor reminisces the written correspondence he shared with him, as well as the impact those letters had on both their lives.
An Elephant Sitting Still
Director: Hu Bo
Country: China
Cast: Yu Zhang, Yuchang Peng, Uvin Wang
The story links together the lives of a number of protagonists, narrating the course of one single, tension-filled day from dawn to dusk, and along the way, painting a portrait of a society marked by selfishness.
Everybody Knows
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Country: France / Spain / Italy
Cast: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Ricardo Darín
Laura, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her two children to attend her sister’s wedding. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.
A Faithful Man
Director: Louis Garrel
Country: France
Cast: Lily-Rose Depp, Louis Garrel, Laetitia Casta
A couple’s relationship becomes complicated when she leaves him for his best friend, and returns after he dies.
First Man
Director: Damien Chazelle
Country: USA
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke
A look at the life of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong, and the legendary space mission that led him to become the first man to walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Gloria Bell
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Country: USA / Chile
Cast: Alanna Ubach, Julianne Moore, Tyson Ritter
A free-spirited woman in her 50s seeks out love at L.A. dance clubs.
High Life
Director: Claire Denis
Country: Germany / France / USA / UK / Poland
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin
A father and his daughter struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation.
Hotel By The River
Director: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea
Cast: Joo-Bong Ki, Min-hee Kim, Hae-hyo Kwon
An old poet staying for free in a riverside hotel summons his two estranged sons. This is because he feels, for no apparent reason, like he is going to die. After being betrayed by the man she was living with, a young woman gets a room at the hotel. Seeking support, she summons a friend. The poet spends a day with his sons and tries to wrap up the loose ends in his life. But it’s not so easy to do that in one day. But then he sees the young woman and her friend, after a sudden, unbelievably heavy snowfall.
Husband Material
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Country: India
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Tapsee Pannu, Vicky Kaushal
The film is a love story set in Punjab where Abhishek Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, and Vicky Kaushal will be seen in prominent roles.
If Beale Street Could Talk
Director: Barry Jenkins
Country: USA
Cast: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King
A woman in Harlem desperately scrambles to prove her fiancé innocent of a crime while carrying their first child.
The Image Book
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Country: Switzerland / France
Cast: Jean-Luc Godard, Dimitri Basil
Nothing but silence. Nothing but a revolutionary song. A story in five chapters like the five fingers of a hand.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Director: Bi Gan
Country: China / France
Cast: Sylvia Chang, Yongzhong Chen, Jue Huang
A man went back to Guizhou, found the tracks of a mysterious woman. He recalls the summer he spent with her twenty years ago.
Loro
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Country: Italy / France
Cast: Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio
A film about the life of Silvio Berlusconi.
The Man Who Feels No Pain
Director: Vasan Bala
Country: India
Cast: Radhika Madan, Abhimanyu Dasani
Tells the story of a young boy Surya who has a rare condition of incognito sensitivity to pain meaning he can not feel pain, and sets out learn martial arts and hunt down muggers.
Manto
Director: Nandita Das
Country: India
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rasika Dugal, Tahir Raj Bhasin
The film is a biographical account of writer Saadat Hasan Manto’s life and is set in 1940s India.
The Old Man & The Gun
Director: David Lowery
Country: USA
Cast: Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek
Based on the true story of Forrest Tucker and his audacious escape from San Quentin at the age of 70 to an unprecedented string of heists that confounded authorities and enchanted the public.
Roma
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Country: Mexico
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
A story that chronicles a year in the life of a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s.
Shoplifters
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Country: Japan
Cast: Lily Franky, Kirin Kiki, Sôsuke Ikematsu
A family of small-time crooks take in a child they find on the street.
The Sisters Brothers
Director: Jacques Audiard
Country: USA / France / Romania / Spain
Cast: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal
In 1850s Oregon, a gold prospector is chased by the infamous duo of assassins, the Sisters brothers.
Widows
Director: Steve McQueen
Country: UK / USA
Cast: Viola Davis, Carrie Coon, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell
Set in contemporary Chicago, amidst a time of turmoil, four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities, take fate into their own hands, and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.
The Wild Pear Tree
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Country: Turkey / France / Germany / Bulgaria
Cast: Dogu Demirkol, Murat Cemcir, Bennu Yildirimlar
An aspiring writer returns to his native village, where his father’s debts catch up to him.
Wildlife
Director: Paul Dano
Country: USA
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, Bill Camp
A boy witnesses his parents’ marriage falling apart after his mother finds another man.