Announcing our #TIFF19 Opening Night film: the world premiere of Daniel Roher’s ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON AND THE BAND. #TIFF19 https://t.co/AanVcgqwRJ pic.twitter.com/o1TpfU59Vq
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) July 18, 2019
For the first time in 9 years, the Toronto International Film Festival will open with a Canadian film. Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band from director Daniel Roher is one of 5 Canadian films in Galas or Special Presentations.
Some of the familiar filmmakers back with more Canadian films at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival include Kathleen Hepburn, Louise Archambault, Alanis Obomsawin, François Girard, Albert Shin, Atom Egoyan, and Zacharias Kunuk.
Ellen Page is familiar to TIFF but is at TIFF 2019 with a documentary.
Here are some other Canadian film highlights from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival:
There are 5 Indigenous filmmakers and film teams: Kathleen Hepburn (Never Steady, Never Still) and co-director Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers has The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, a drama about two Indigenous women from very different circumstances. Jeff Barnaby directed Blood Quantum, a zombie film where a Mi'gmaq community is immune to the zombie plague.
Ellen Page and Ian Daniel, her partner on the Gaycation series, co-directed There's Something In The Water, a documentary about environmental racism with the Indigenous and African communities in Nova Scotia.
Albert Shin followed up In Her Place with Clifton Hill that takes place in Niagara Falls. David Cronenberg and Marie-Josée Croze are in the cast.
Montreal producer Aisling Chin-Yee is out with The Rest Of Us, starring Heather Graham and Sophie Nélisse as mother and daughter.
Castle in the Ground is from Joey Klein (The Other Half) about neighbours attracted to each other during an opioid epidemic.
Louise Archambault (Gabrielle) is back with Il pleuvait des oiseaux | And The Birds Rained Down about hermits whose remote habitat is threatened by wildfires.
Alanis Obomsawin has her 53rd film, Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger. The documentary is about a 5-year-old Manitoba child from the Norway House Cree Nation Reserve, which you might recall from her 2017 film Our People Will Be Healed. His death led to Jordan's Principle on equitable access to government-funded services.
Murmur from Heather Young is a docu-fiction with Shan MacDonald as a troubled Halifax woman assigned to community service at an animal shelter. Raf from Harry Cepka features Grace Glowicki and Jesse Stanley as two women who change each other's lives. The adaptation of Sophocles's Antigone from Sophie Deraspe is set in modern Montréal and the primary characters are a family of immigrants.
The Last Porno Show from writer/director Kire Paputts features a struggling actor who inherits his late father's porn theatre. The new film from Amy Jo Johnson is Tammy's Always Dying with Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips in a toxic mother-daughter relationship.
Xavier Dolan's new film Matthias et Maxime is not on the TIFF 2019 schedule. That could change. The film will be released in Quebec theatres on October 9.
The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, Dolan's film that debuted in TIFF 2018, will finally be released across Canada on August 23.
Canadian film notebook: Giving Quebec films an Anglophone audience
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
Here is the list of full-length Canadian films, their directors, and the categories where they are listed for TIFF 2019.
Galas
American Woman, Semi Chellas
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, Daniel Roher
The Song of Names, François Girard
Special Presentations
Clifton Hill, Albert Shin
Guest of Honour, Atom Egoyan
Special Events
David Foster: Off the Record, Barry Avrich
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, Zacharias Kunuk
Masters
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, Alanis Obomsawin
TIFF Docs
Coppers, Alan Zweig
This Is Not a Movie, Yung Chang
There's Something in the Water, Ellen Page and Ian Daniel
Discovery
Black Conflux, Nicole Dorsey
Easy Land, Sanja Zivkovic
Kuessipan, Myriam Verreault
Murmur, Heather Young
Raf, Harry Cepka
The Rest of Us, Aisling Chin-Yee
Contemporary World Cinema
Il pleuvait des oiseaux | And The Birds Rained Down, Louise Archambault
Antigone, Sophie Deraspe
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn
Castle in the Ground, Joey Klein
The Last Porno Show, Kire Paputts
Tammy's Always Dying, Amy Jo Johnson
White Lie, Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis
Midnight Madness
Blood Quantum, Jeff Barnaby
The Twentieth Century, Matthew Rankin
The 2019 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5-15.
Twitter capture: @TIFF_NET
photos credit: There's Something in the Water film; Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band film
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