Toronto International Film Festival
9-18 September, 2021






[NOTE: Because I'm attending virtually this year, each day's screenings are listed in order of priority; theoretically, I can watch a film at any time during its 48-hour window. Makes it even easier than usual to shift stuff around in response to buzz, though I'm not sure how much of that there's likely to be.

[UPDATE: Blake Williams investigated "limited availability" and found that it's not, as I'd assumed, an indication that some sort of cap will be imposed on the number of streams. Just TIFF's way of saying that the list of geoblocked countries was too long to include on the page. So the good news is that I don't need to get up at the crack of dawn to avoid being shut out of screenings. The slightly bad news is that France turns out to be blocked for North America, so that's another one I'll have to try VPNing.]


Thu 9

Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, France)
[NYFF.] (70 mins.)

The Hill Where Lionesses Roar (Luàna Bajrami, Kosovo/France)
[Cannes Fortnight.] (83 mins.)

Violet (Justine Bateman, USA)
[Have heard surprisingly good things.] (92 mins.)

As in Heaven (Tea Lindeburg, Denmark)
[Expendable.] (86 mins.)

Dug Dug (Ritwik Pareek, India)
[Expendable.] (107 mins.)




Fri 10

The Story of My Wife (Ildikó Enyedi, Hungary/Germany/Italy/France)
[Cannes Comp.] (169 mins.)

The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, Australia/New Zealand)
[NYFF.] (127 mins.)

Aloners (Hong Sung-eun, South Korea)
[Expendable.] (91 mins.)

To Kill the Beast (Agustina San Martín, Argentina/Brazil/Chile)
[Expendable.] (89 mins.)

Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
[This is a high-priority film—Cannes Comp. + NYFF—but it's geoblocked in the U.S. Here anyway because I may attempt to work around that obstacle; I've seen conflicting VPN reports from last year. Assume I probably won't be able to see it until later.] (179 mins.)




Sat 11

Lingui, the Sacred Bonds (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad/France/Germany/Belgium)
[Cannes Comp.] (87 mins.)

Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, Finland/Germany/Estonia/Russia)
[Cannes Comp.] (107 mins.)

Neptune Frost (Saul Williams & Anisia Uzeyman, Rwanda/USA)
[NYFF.] (105 mins.)

Murina (Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, Brazil/Croatia/USA/Slovenia)
[Cannes Fortnight.] (92 mins.)

Earwig (Lucile Hadžihalilović, UK/France/Belgium)
[Neither Innocence nor Evolution quite succeeded in astounding me, but both suggest a filmmaker who'll do so eventually.] (114 mins.)

Mi Iubita, Mon Amour (Noémie Merlant, France)
[Cannes Special. Market screening.] (95 mins.)




Sun 12

Futura (Pietro Marcello/Francesco Munzi/Alice Rohrwacher, Italy)
[NYFF.] (110 mins.)

The Gravedigger's Wife (Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, France/Somalia/Germany/Finland)
[Cannes Critics' Week.] (83 mins.)

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (Arthur Harari, Belgium/France/Germany/Italy/Japan)
[Cannes UCR. "Industry Selects," whatever that is.] (165 mins.)

Montana Story (Scott McGehee & David Siegel, USA)
[Happy to check in with these guys if nothing else exciting is happening. Also, Haley Lu.] (113 mins.)

Arthur Rambo (Laurent Cantet, France)
[I feel like I'm kinda over Cantet, honestly. It's been a bleak decade or so. Alternative pickings are slim, though.] (86 mins.)

Inexorable (Fabrice du Welz, Belgium/France)
[Again, I'm just gravitating toward directors who've at least done interesting work in the past.] (98 mins.)




Mon 13

Benediction (Terence Davies, UK)
[Davies.] (137 mins.)

Ahed's Knee (Nadav Lapid, Israel/France/Germany)
[Cannes Comp.; NYFF.] (110 mins.)

Lakewood (Philip Noyce, Canada)
[May regret this one, but it stars Naomi Watts and at least it's short.] (84 mins.)

You Are Not My Mother (Kate Dolan, Ireland)
[Ireland + Midnight Madness = hard to resist.] (93 mins.)

Anatolian Leopard (Emre Kayiş, Turkey/Germany/Poland/Denmark)
[Super-expendable.] (113 mins.)




Tue 14

Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard, UK)
[Barnard.] (94 mins.)

The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, Switzerland)
[NYFF.] (98 mins.)

Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko, Russia)
[NYFF.] (97 mins.)

Small Body (Laura Samani, Italy/France/Slovenia)
[Cannes Critics' Week.] (89 mins.)

I'm Your Man (Maria Schrader, Germany)
[I've admired Schrader as an actor for decades, going back to 1995's Nobody Loves Me; let's see how she fares behind the camera. Does Dan Stevens speak German?] (102 mins.)




Wed 15

Three Floors (Nanni Moretti, Italy/France)
[Cannes Comp.] (117 mins.)

Medusa (Anita Rocha da Silveira, Brazil)
[Cannes Fortnight. Where's UCR this year?] (127 mins.)

The Other Tom (Rodrigo Plá & Laura Santullo, Mexico/USA)
[I really dug A Monster With a Thousand Heads.] (111 mins.)

France (Bruno Dumont, France/Germany/Italy/Belgium)
[Cannes Comp.; NYFF. As noted above, this is another one that I'll have to VPN, hence its "demotion" on the priority list.] (133 mins.)

Possible fifth film TBD.




Thu 16

Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Denmark/France/Sweden/Norway)
[NYFF.] (90 mins.)

Întregalde (Radu Muntean, Romania)
[NYFF.] (104 mins.)

Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Wen Shipei, China)
[Cannes Special.] (95 mins.)

After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (Bertrand Mandico, France)
[Kinda hated the 10 minutes of Wild Boys that I saw, but it can't hurt to give him another chance. Though this one's loooong.] (130 mins.)

Saloum (Jean Luc Herbulot, Senegal)
[Senegal + Midnight Madness = very intriguing.] (84 mins.)




Fri 17, Sat 18

This is always the point at which P&I screenings dry up and I start attending public screenings all day. Not an option this year, obviously, and the drying up still happens, so the only remaining film I definitely intend to watch is:

One Second (Zhang Yimou, China)
[Zhang.] (105 mins.)


FILMS I WANT TO SEE THAT ARE AVAILABLE ONLY TO PEOPLE WHO'LL BE PHYSICALLY IN TORONTO:

Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve)
Dune (Denis Villeneuve) [this'll be out soon enough]
A Hero (Asghar Farhadi)
Last Night in Soho (Edgar Wright) [see Dune]
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
A Night of Knowing Nothing (Cannes Fortnight)
Titane (Julia Ducournau) [already RSVP'd to an L.A. screening]
The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)