The Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday announced even more films set to screen at the September event, with The Promise, starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, and the Richard Gere-starrer Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer among the high-profile titles getting gala screenings.
The Promise, the latest film from Hotel Rwanda helmer Terry George, is set for a world premiere at TIFF. And Joseph Cedar’s dramedy Norman stars Gere as a fixer who unwittingly gets involved in Israeli politics; Charlotte Gainsbourg, Michael Sheen, Steve Buscemi and Hank Azaria also star in the upcoming Sony Pictures Classics release.
Meanwhile, TIFF programmers have booked into the Special Presentations sidebar first looks for Walter Hill’s gender transition crime thriller (Re)Assignment (formerly titled Tomboy), starring Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver; Jordan Roberts’ quirky comedy Burn Your Maps, featuring Vera Farmiga and Jacob Tremblay; and David Leveaux’s spy thriller The Exception, toplined by Lily James and Christopher Plummer.
The festival will host an international premiere for Robin Swicord’s Wakefield, starring Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner and based on an E.L. Doctorow short story, and North American bows for Terrence Malick’s nature doc Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, narrated by Cate Blanchett; Philippe Falardeau’s The Bleeder, toplined by Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber; Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake; Gerard Barrett’s Brain on Fire, starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Thomas Mann; and James Franco’s In Dubious Battle, starring Franco, Vincent D’Onofrio and Ed Harris.
Elsewhere, the Masters sidebar will feature the latest work by Pedro Almodovar, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and Olivier Assayas. Kristen Stewart will bring two of her latest movies to the section: Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, which bowed at Sundance, and Assayas‘ Personal Shopper, which shared the best director prize at Cannes with Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation, another Masters program entrant.
TIFF 2016 also will feature North American bows for Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion, the Emily Dickinson biopic starring Sex and the City alum Cynthia Nixon that debuted in Berlin; and cherry-picked Cannes titles like the Dardenne brothers’ The Unknown Girl, Almodovar’s Julieta, Brillante Mendoza’s Ma Rosa and Wenders‘ The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez.
Toronto’s experimental Wavelengths sidebar also has booked North American premieres for films by Wing Bang, Oliver Laxe, Eduardo Williams and Lav Diaz. And the City to City program of eight features from Lagos, Nigeria, will open with The Wedding Party, by director Kemi Adetiba, and includes a world premiere for Steve Gukas‘ 93 Days, an Ebola outbreak thriller that stars Somkele Iyamah-Idhalama, Danny Glover and Tim Reid.
The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival will kick off Sept. 8 with Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven remake starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt and end Sept. 18 with the Hailee Steinfeld-starrer The Edge of Seventeen.
