Riz Ahmed, Eva Green, more join 2019 Toronto Film Festival lineup
The Toronto International Film Festival had added a dash of star power to its 2019 lineup.
New projects from Emmy-winning actor Riz Ahmed (The Night Of, Nightcrawler), Eva Green (Penny Dreadful), and Julie Delpy (Richard Linklater’s Before series) will screen as part of the Canadian event’s Platforms section, the festival announced Wednesday.
Ahmed leads Darius Marder’s debut feature Sound of Metal, which is set to world-premiere in the festival section focused on showcasing emerging voices from around the world. The film follows a heavy-metal drummer (Ahmed) who, amid losing his hearing, reexamines his standing in the world.
Also joining the Platform section are Suffragette director Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, about a young, British girl suddenly tasked with caring for herself and her younger brother; Actor-director Delpy’s My Zoe, a suspenseful thriller about a recently divorced mother driven to untold extremes, and Alice Winocour’s Proxima, which stars Green as an astronaut questioning her motherly duties as she trains to enter space.
Of the 10 features included in the Platform section, four are directed by women. All will compete for the section’s $20,000 CAD prize, the winner of which will be selected by a jury consisting of a three-person jury led by Carlo Chatrian (Artistic Director of the Berlin International Film Festival), film critic Jessica Kiang, and director Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg).
“Competitions should celebrate the range of what great cinema is and what it can accomplish. Platform is alive to those possibilities,” Platform Co-Curator Andréa Picard said of this year’s selection. “Whether they are debuts or mid-career works, these films push the boundaries of narrative filmmaking in surprising and rigorous ways, some using documentary or experimental techniques in their approaches. Audiences will recognize similar themes emerge like a global collective subconscious, but what is truly exciting is the varied means of cinematic expression on display.”
Other titles previously announced to screen at the festival include Jennifer Lopez’s stripper drama Hustlers, the Marielle Heller-directed, Tom Hanks-starring Mister Rogers movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Judy Garland biopic featuring Renée Zellweger in the titular role, as well as Todd Phillips’ DC Comics adaptation Joker, with Joaquin Phoenix leading the cast as the iconic comic book villain.
The 2019 Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 5-15, with ticketing information available here. See the full TIFF 2019 Platform lineup below, and check out the rest of the lineup here.
TIFF 2019 Platform lineup:
Anne at 13,000 ft – Kazik Radwanski | Canada/USA World Premiere
Martin Eden – Pietro Marcello | Italy/France International Premiere
The Moneychanger (Así Habló El Cambista) Federico Veiroj|Uruguay/Argentina/Germany World Premiere
My Zoe – Julie Delpy | Germany/France World Premiere
Proxima – Alice Winocour | France/Germany World Premiere
Rocks – Sarah Gavron | United Kingdom World Premiere
The Sleepwalkers (Los Sonámbulos) – Paula Hernández | Argentina/Uruguay World Premiere
Sound of Metal – Darius Marder | USA World Premiere
Wet Season – Anthony Chen | Singapore/Taiwan World Premiere
Workforce (Mano De Obra) – David Zonana | Mexico World Premiere
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