Angelina! J.Law! George Clooney! The Stars and Buzziest Movies Heading to the Toronto Film Festival
The A-listers will be in Toronto — along with hundreds of celebrities — for the annual film festival, kicking off the long road to the Oscars.
It’s that time of year again when the land of poutine, ice hockey, and Justin Trudeau becomes Hollywood North for 10 days. Starting tomorrow, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Nicole Kidman, Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal and hundreds of celebrities will flock to Toronto for the city’s 42nd annual international film festival, September 7-17.
Fresh off of glamorous turns in Venice, Clooney, Damon and Lawrence will be bringing these upcoming films to Canada: Suburbicon, the timely dark satire directed by Clooney starring Damon and Julianne Moore about a so-called idyllic 1950’s community; Downsizing, Damon’s second offering, is a comedy-drama about a couple who decide to shrink themselves to achieve a better life, and received terrific reviews last week; and mother!, the thriller/horror film packed with omg moments featuring a stellar cast of Lawrence, Javier Bardem, and Michelle Pfeiffer, and directed by Lawrence’s boyfriend, Darren Aronofsky.
Some, like Jolie with First they Killed My Father, Stone, who plays Billie Jean King in Battle of the Sexes, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hours, Christian Bale as an Army captain in the Western drama Hostiles, Kidman and Colin Farrell in Killing of a Sacred Deer, Cannes Best Actress Diane Kruger in In the Fade, Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards, director Guillermo del Toro with The Shape of Water, and two indies The Square, starring Elisabeth Moss, and The Florida Project, will try to cement themselves as awards contenders after previously strong film festival outings in Telluride, Venice and Cannes.
In addition, a large slate of starry prestige films will be making their world premiere in Toronto, including Boston bombing drama Stronger starring Gyllenhaal, The Mountain Between Us with Kate Winslet and Idris Elba, Jim and Andy with Jim Carrey, Loving Pablo with real-life couple Penelope Cruz and Bardem, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool starring Annette Bening, I, Tonya with Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding, and The Current War starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison.
The festival—always pivotal in launching awards campaigns—is now a key stop on the path to the Oscars. Last year, Moonlight and La La Land capitalized on Toronto buzz to catapult to the head of the class, a status they maintained through the final minute of the Academy Awards in March, when La La Land was accidentally announced as the winner, though it was Moonlight that actually took home the gold statue. In previous years, Best Picture winners Spotlight, Argo, 12 Years a Slave, and The King’s Speech, rode their festival momentum to great success, as have previous acting recipients like Stone, Brie Larson (Room), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), and Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years).
