Today TIFF announced the 12 selected participants in this year’s TIFF Writers’ Studio. The lineup features six women and six men, highlighting Canada’s best-emerging writers and underscoring TIFF’s commitment to gender parity across the breadth of its talent-development programs. The women in this year’s intake will be supported in part by the organization’s trailblazing Share Her Journey campaign, which champions women both in front of and behind the camera.
The 2018–19 TIFF Writers’ Studio participants are: Danilo Baracho, Yung Chang, Martin Edralin, Sarah Goodman, Carinne Leduc, Jennifer Liao, Frieda Luk, Kaveh Nabatian, Celeste Parr, Kazik Radwanski, Lina Rodriguez, and Jorge Thielen-Armand.
Launched in 2012, the Industry programme provides a space for mid-career screenwriters to consolidate their skills, exchange ideas, and discuss their challenges in a collaborative and artistic environment. This year’s candidates will develop their chosen screenplay with expert support from international script consultants.
“We’re delighted to welcome this exceptionally talented group to TIFF Writers’ Studio,” said Kathleen Drumm, TIFF Industry Director. “Now in its sixth cycle, the program has proved successful in preparing Canada’s best and brightest talent for the global film industry. Candidates will be inspired to take their careers to the next level by developing their creative processes in a series of candid sessions with distinguished local and international writing mentors.”
TIFF Studio has helped cultivate exciting new cinematic voices. Notable alumni include filmmakers Pat Mills (Don’t Talk to Irene); Molly McGlynn (
Mary Goes Round); Joyce Wong (
Wexford Plaza); and Ashley McKenzie (Werewolf). Following their involvement in TIFF Studio, these filmmakers have gone on to success. Pat Mills was named one of MovieMaker Magazine’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2018. His film
Don’t Talk to Irene won the Comedy Vanguard Jury and Audience Awards at the Austin Film Festival, and was picked up for distribution in the US by Gravitas Ventures. Molly McGlynn won top prizes at the Annapolis Film Festival and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival for Mary Goes Round in 2018. Joyce Wong won the Jury Award at the Austin Asian American Film Festival in 2017, the Jury Award for best screenplay at the Hell’s Half Mile Film and Music Festival, and the award for the best narrative feature at the San Diego Asian Film Festival. The same year, Ashley McKenzie’s
Werewolf won Best Canadian Film at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards. In 2016 she won Best First Film by a Canadian Director and was nominated for the Best Screenplay for a Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle.
TIFF Writers’ Studio will run on a monthly basis from June 15 through January 2019 at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
The sessions will focus on script development, pitching, and creating memorable characters. Participants will receive an Industry Pass for the Toronto International Film Festival in September and for Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival in January. TIFF Writers’ Studio is produced by TIFF International Programmer Jane Schoettle and supported by Share Her Journey.
TIFF Writers’ Studio 2018 Biographies:
Danilo Baracho
Danilo Baracho is a Brazilian-Canadian filmmaker who studied audiovisual communication at the University of Salamanca in Spain. He has written and directed five short films, which have been screened at over 100 film festivals around the world. He is an alumnus of TIFF Talent Lab and the Reykjavik Talent Lab.
Yung Chang
Yung Chang is the writer and director of Up the Yangtze (07), China Heavyweight (12), and The Fruit Hunters (13). He is completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant, and in production for a feature documentary about Robert Fisk. Chang’s films have screened at Sundance, the Berlinale, TIFF, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Hong Kong and have screened theatrically in cinemas around the world.
Martin Edralin
Martin Edralin is a Toronto-based filmmaker whose films have screened at TIFF, Sundance, VIFF, and Festival du nouveau cinéma. His film credits include Hole (14), which won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Live Action Short; Emma (16), which was selected for the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival; and Building History: The Story of Benjamin Brown (16), which was nominated for a Heritage Toronto Public History Award. Edralin is an alumnus of the Locarno Film Festival Filmmakers’ Academy and the Reykjavik Talent Lab.
Sarah Goodman
Sarah Goodman is an award-winning director, producer, and writer whose works have played at TIFF, IDFA, and Hot Docs. Her credits include Army of One (03), When We Were Boys (09), Hidden Driveway (11), and Porch Stories (14). She is an alumna of the TIFF Talent Lab and the Berlinale Talent Campus and a member of Film Fatales. Her next feature, Lake 239, is currently in development, and she is a consulting producer on a scripted series that is also in development.
Carinne Leduc
Carinne Leduc is an award-winning French-Canadian actor, writer, and director. She co-wrote and starred in her first feature film, 3 Saisons (08), which was nominated for three Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture. Leduc has directed a number of short films, music videos, and commercials and has two features in development.
Jennifer Liao
Jennifer Liao is a director, writer, and producer. Her credits include the social-media storytelling project Crushing It! A Social Media Love Story (10), the feature film Sex After Kids (13), episodes of the crime drama Blood and Water (15–), and End of Days, Inc. (15), which was supported by Telefilm Canada. She was also a creative consultant on the TV adaptation of the Ava Lee novels.
Frieda Luk
Frieda Luk is a director and screenwriter. Her credits include Delicacy (12), which screened at Telluride and Tribeca, and American Sisyphus (12) and The Encounter (14), both of which premiered at TIFF. In 2011 she was nominated for a New York Women in Film and Television award, and in 2013 she received a scholarship to study in France that was supported by the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation. She has an MFA in directing from Columbia University and is an alumna of TIFF’s 2016 Talent Lab.
Kaveh Nabatian
Kaveh Nabatian is an Iranian-Canadian director and writer. He has spent the last decade directing and shooting fiction films, music videos, television series, and documentaries all over the world, including Montreal, Nunavut, Haiti, Mexico, and South Africa. Recent projects include a feature-length documentary about Leonard Cohen, commissioned by the CBC, and collaborations with Arcade Fire, Leif Vollebekk, Kahlil Joseph, and Half Moon Run.
Celeste Parr
Celeste Parr made her television debut writing for CBC’s This Life (16), for which she was nominated for a 2017 WGC Award for Best Writing for a Television Drama. In 2017, the pilot for her original drama series The Brac was selected for the TV writing program from the ATX Television Festival and The Black List. Parr is currently developing a television show and several features.
Kazik Radwanski
Kazik Radwanski studied film at Ryerson University and co-founded the production company MDFF in 2008. His films have screened at Berlin, Locarno, TIFF, Venice, NYFF, and the BFI London Film Festival. His credits include Tower (12);
How Heavy This Hammer (15), which was nominated for Best Canadian Film of the Year by the Toronto Film Critics Association; and Scaffold (17).
Lina Rodriguez
Lina Rodriguez is a Colombian-Canadian filmmaker. Her short films have played the Images Festival and NYFF, and her film and video installations and performances have been exhibited in festivals such as Nuit Blanche. Her first feature, Señoritas (13), premiered at the Cartagena Film Festival. Her second feature, Mañana a esta hora (16), premiered at Locarno, was released in six cities in Colombia, and opened theatrically in New York City and Toronto.
Jorge Thielen-Armand
Jorge Thielen-Armand is a director and producer. His debut feature film,
La Soledad (16), premiered at Venice and screened at over 50 festivals, including the Durban International Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay. His documentary Flor de la Mar (15) received the Jury Award for Best Documentary Short at Cine Las Americas International Film Festival. In 2015, he founded La Faena Films with Rodrigo Michelangeli.
Image:
1st row (left to right): Danilo Baracho, Yung Chang, Sarah Goodman, Martin Edralin
2nd row (left to right): Carinne Leduc, Jennifer Liao, Kaveh Nabatian, Frieda Luk
3rd row (left to right): Celeste Parr, Kazik Radwanski, Jorge Thielen-Armand, Lina Rodriguez
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The 40th Toronto International Film Festival taking place September 10 to 20, 2015, revealed a lineup of bold Canadian works by filmmakers including Patricia Rozema, André Turpin, Anne Émond, Kazik Radwanski and Guy Édoin, documentarians Mina Shum and Avi Lewis, trailblazers Bruce McDonald, Guy Maddin and Philippe Falardeau, promising new work from Andrew Cividino, Adam Garnet Jones and Stephen Dunn, and an impressive first feature by renowned visual contemporary artist Mark Lewis. From hardcore horror and political comedy to intense dramas and true tales of bravery, Canadians continue to carve their own place in filmmaking.
The Canada Goose Award for Best Canadian Feature Film will be given to one of many outstanding Canadian filmmakers, with the City of Toronto Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film being presented to the Canadian filmmaker with the most impressive debut feature film at the Festival. This year’s Canadian awards jury is composed of filmmaker Don McKellar (The Grand Seduction), Jacqueline Lyanga (Director of AFI Fest), and Ilda Santiago (Programming and Executive Director of Rio de Janeiro International Film
Festival).
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Born to be Blue. Robert Budreau, Canada/United Kingdom World Premiere (pictured above)
Born to be Blue is a reimagining of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker’s life in the 1960s. When Chet is cast to star in a film about himself, a romance heats up with his female co-star, the enigmatic Jane. But his comeback bid is derailed when his past returns to haunt him and it appears he may never play music again. Starring Ethan Hawke and Carmen Ejogo.
Into the Forest. Patricia Rozema, Canada World Premiere
In a not-too-distant future, sisters Nell and Eva find themselves shuttered in their home. Surrounded by nothing but miles of dense forest, the sisters must fend for themselves using the supplies and food reserves they have before turning to the forest to discover what it will provide. They are faced with a world where rumour is the only guide, trust is a scarce commodity, gas is king and loneliness is excruciating. And yet somehow miraculously, love still grows. Starring Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood.
Ville-Marie. Guy Édoin, Canada World Premiere
An actress shooting a movie hopes to reconcile with her son. A paramedic haunted by his past tries to stay the course, while a caring nurse keeps an eye on him from afar as she tries, at the same time, to keep an emergency room running. It is at the Ville-Marie Hospital that these four lives will take an unexpected turn. Starring Monica Bellucci, Patrick Hivon, Pascale Bussières and 2015 TIFF Rising Star Aliocha Schneider.
TIFF DOCS
Al Purdy Was Here. Brian D. Johnson, Canada World Premiere
Al Purdy was Canada’s unofficial poet laureate, though he admits he didn’t write a good poem until he was 40. He found his voice in an A-Frame cabin he built in Ontario’s Prince Edward County. Canada’s leading musicians and artists from Bruce Cockburn and Sarah Harmer to Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje come together to tell his story and celebrate his poetry.
Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr. Patrick Reed and Michelle Shephard, Canada World Premiere
Omar Khadr: child soldier or unrepentant terrorist? The 28-year-old Canadian has been a polarizing figure since he was 15. In 2002, Khadr was captured by American forces in Afghanistan and charged with war crimes, including murder. After spending half his life behind bars, including a decade at Guantanamo, Khadr is released. This is his story, in his own words.
Ninth Floor. Mina Shum, Canada World Premiere
It started quietly when six Caribbean students, strangers in a cold new land, began to suspect their professor of racism. It ended in the most explosive student uprising Canada had even known. Over four decades later, Ninth Floor reopens the file on the infamous Sir George Williams Riot: a watershed moment in Canadian race relations and one of the most contested episodes in the nation’s history. Director Mina Shum (Double Happiness) locates the protagonists in clandestine locations throughout Trinidad and Montreal — the wintry city where it all went down. In a cinematic gesture of reckoning and redemption, she listens as they set the record straight.
This Changes Everything. Avi Lewis, Canada/USA World Premiere
Seven powerful portraits of community resistance around the world lead to one big question: what if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world? Inspired by Naomi Klein’s international bestseller and directed by her partner Avi Lewis, This Changes Everything is an affecting and hopeful call to action
Welcome to F.L. Geneviève Dulude-De Celles, Canada World Premiere
Welcome to F.L. portrays a community of teenagers navigating their environment, identity and other questions of youth within their high-school world in a small town in Quebec. Learning to define themselves inside and outside school boundaries as they transition into the challenges of adulthood, they expose refreshing points of view filled with humour, philosophy and courage.
DISCOVERY
Closet Monster. Stephen Dunn, Canada World Premiere
Oscar Madly hovers on the brink of adulthood — destabilized by his dysfunctional parents, unsure of his sexuality, and haunted by horrific images of a tragic gay bashing he witnessed as a child. A talking hamster, imagination and the prospect of love help him confront his surreal demons and discover himself. Starring 2015 TIFF Rising Star Aliocha Schneider and 2014 Rising Star Connor Jessup.
Fire Song. Adam Garnet Jones, Canada World Premiere
When a teenage girl commits suicide in a remote Northern Ontario Aboriginal community, it’s up to her brother Shane to take care of their family. Shane was supposed to move to the city for university in the fall, and has been trying to convince his secret boyfriend to come with him, but now everything is uncertain. Torn between his responsibilities at home and the promise of freedom calling him to the city, circumstances take a turn for the worse and Shane has to choose between his family and his future.
The Rainbow Kid. Kire Paputts, Canada World Premiere
Part gritty coming-of-age story, part episodic road film filled with magic realism, The Rainbow Kid follows Eugene, a young man with Down syndrome as he embarks on a life-changing adventure to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
River. Jamie M. Dagg, Canada/Laos World Premiere
In the south of Laos, an American volunteer doctor becomes a fugitive after he intervenes in the sexual assault of a young woman. When the assailant’s body is pulled from the Mekong River, things quickly spiral out of control. Starring Rossif Sutherland.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA
How Heavy This Hammer. Kazik Radwanski, Canada World Premiere
Erwin, a 47-year-old father of two, spends his time idly procrastinating between work and family, and is seemingly more engaged by playing a crude Viking computer game. His listless energy is contrasted on weekends by throwing himself into ‘old boys’ rugby matches. As Erwin’s marriage with his wife becomes increasingly compromised, something stirs inside him… or maybe something has stopped stirring.
My Internship in Canada. Philippe Falardeau, Canada North American Premiere
Guibord is an independent Member of Parliament representing a vast county in Northern Quebec who unwillingly finds himself in the awkward position of determining whether Canada will go to war. Accompanied by his wife, daughter and Souverain (Sovereign) Pascal, an idealistic intern from Haiti, Guibord travels across his district in order to consult his constituents and face his own conscience. This film is a sharp political satire in which politicians, citizens and lobbyists go head-to-head tearing democracy to shreds.
Our Loved Ones (Les êtres chers). Anne Émond, Canada North American Premiere
The story begins in 1978 in a small town on the Lower St. Lawrence, where the Leblanc family is rocked by the tragic death of Guy, found dead in the basement of the family home. For many years, the real cause of his death is hidden from certain members of the family, his son David among them. David starts his own family with his wife Marie and lovingly raises his children, Laurence and Frédéric, but deep down he still carries with him a kind of unhappiness. Our Loved Ones is a film of filial love, family secrets,
redemption and inherited fate. Featuring 2015 TIFF Rising Star Karelle Tremblay.
The Waiting Room. Igor Drljaca, Canada North American Premiere
Jasmin, once a successful actor in former Yugoslavia, now lives in Toronto with his second wife and young son. While juggling a construction job and a busy audition schedule, he dreams of re-launching an old televised stage show that made him famous in his homeland. When he is cast in a role that triggers recollections of the civil war, he is forced to reconcile his current reality with memories of his past success. From the team behind Krivina and In Her Place.
VANGUARD
Endorphine. André Turpin, Canada World Premiere
Thirteen-year-old Simone is trying to feel emotion again as a trauma survivor. Twenty-five-year-old Simone is a solitary woman trying to control panic attacks. Sixty-year-old Simone is an accomplished physician who gives a conference on the nature of time. The new film from celebrated director and cinematographer André Turpin intertwines the lives of three women in an intoxicating cinematic puzzle.
Hellions. Bruce McDonald, Canada Canadian Premiere
Strange trick-or-treaters plague conflicted teenager Dora Vogel at her isolated home on Halloween. Under siege by forces she can’t understand, Dora must defend both body and soul from relentless hellions, dead set on possessing something Dora will not give them. Set in a visually haunting landscape, Hellions redefines the boundaries of horror with its potent brew of Halloween iconography, teenage angst and desperate survival. Starring Chloe Rose.
No Men Beyond This Point. Mark Sawers, Canada North American Premiere
Sixty years ago, women began reproducing asexually, and now are no longer able to give birth to male babies. This deadpan mockumentary follows 37-year -old Andrew Myers — the youngest man alive —who is at the centre of a battle to save men from extinction. No Men Beyond This Point asks what would happen if only women ran the world.
WAVELENGTHS
The following feature films will screen as part of the Wavelengths program:
88:88. Isiah Medina, Canada North American Premiere
A digital cinema incendiary, Isiah Medina’s anticipated feature debut explodes with ideas about time, love, knowledge, poverty, and poetry, all erupting within a densely layered montage that is formally rigorous and emotionally raw. 88:88 (or –:–) is what appears when bills are paid after the electricity has been abruptly cut off, demonstrating that people who live in poverty live in suspended time.
88:88 will be preceded by Denis Côté’s short film May We Sleep Soundly.
The Forbidden Room. Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin, Canada Canadian Premiere
Honouring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin’s grand ode to lost cinema begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within. Suddenly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company to tell his tale of escape from a fearsome clan of cave dwellers, and we are taken high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder, skeleton women and vampire bananas. Like a glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six-year-old child, created with the help of master poet John Ashberry, Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar and Elina Löwensohn make up a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers.
Invention. Mark Lewis, United Kingdom/Canada World Premiere
Shot in Paris, São Paulo and Toronto, Mark Lewis’ anthology of films captures the ever-changing textures of these cities through moving images of glass, light, shadows and reflections, offering homage to the City Symphony films of the 1920s, while also juxtaposing modernist architecture with the compositional structures of old master paintings.
Minotaur. Nicolás Pereda, Mexico/Canada World Premiere
Acclaimed Mexican-Canadian auteur Nicolás Pereda (Greatest Hits) returns to the Festival with this lovely, wraithlike fantasy that observes three thirty-somethings as they sleep, dream, read and receive visitors in a Mexico City apartment.
Free and open to the public during the Festival, the following Wavelengths Installations will be showcased at various venues throughout downtown Toronto:
Bring Me The Head of Tim Horton. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson World Premiere
Guided by the spirit of Maddin’s “Cuadecec Manifesto” (which calls for makings-of en masse), Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton is a strange and stirring behind-the-scenes look at Paul Gross’s new feature, Hyena Road. Shot on location at CFB Shilo near Brandon, Manitoba and in Aqaba, Jordan, the film summons psychedelic energy from the main event. Presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Reitman Square, 350 King Street West.
The Forbidden Room – A Living Poster. Galen Johnson World Premiere
Initially designed to promote Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room, A Living Poster employs the same digital techniques used to create the text-based intertitles and treat the footage within the film. A looping collection of living, moving, morphing posters, it blurs the boundaries between poster and trailer and suggests an anachronistic collision between digitally corrupted video files and a damaged film print from the silent era forming a beguiling hybrid aesthetic of digital data loss and decaying analogue emulsion. Presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Reitman Square, 350 King Street West.
La Giubba. Tony Romano and Corin Sworn, Canada/United Kingdom World Premiere
The first major collaboration between Canadian artist Tony Romano and English-born, Toronto-raised Corin Sworn, La Giubba follows the intersections of five drifters over the course of two summer days in southern Italy. This installation is presented in partnership with Clint Roenisch Gallery (190 St Helens Ave, Toronto).
Stories are Meaning-Making Machines. Annie MacDonnell and Maïder Fortuné, France/Canada International Premiere
A live in-cinema reading at TIFF Bell Lightbox performed by Canadian artist Annie MacDonnell and French artist Maïder Fortuné which explores a new form of cinematic memory. Originally commissioned by Le Centre Pompidou’s Hors Pistes Festival, Paris.
Deepa Mehta’s Beeba Boys, Jon Cassar’s Forsaken, Paul Gross’ Hyena Road (Hyena Road: Le Chemin du Combat), and Atom Egoyan’s Remember are Canadian features previously announced in the Galas Programme.