Toronto International Film Festival

North American And International Press

Blind

Directed by Tamar van den Dop

(The Netherlands/Belgium/Bulgaria; 103 min., world premiere; Discovery programme)

In a foggy twilight landscape of late-Impressionist gloom, a mother and her son live in a mansion forgotten by time. Ruben, the son, is blind, but still remembers when he could see. He is a fierce, wild young man who rages at the world. Hoping to calm his tormented soul, his mother hires Marie to read for him, a mysterious woman who does not like to be seen. With patience and authority, she gradually tames Ruben with the gentle power of her voice, giving rise to images of crystalline clarity in his mind. Ruben falls in love with Marie, imagining her to be as young and beautiful as the voice he hears. But Marie is neither young nor beautiful: she is a decade older than Ruben and bears the scars of
a horrible childhood tragedy on her body. Having withdrawn into herself, she has chosen books over life, the beauty of the written page over the beauty she will never find in the mirror. But when the doctor says that Ruben can be operated and will be able to see again, fear takes over.

North American Press Only

Blood Brothers

Directed by Alexi Tan

(Taiwan/China/Hong Kong; 95 min.; N.A. premiere; Gala programme)

Shanghai in the 1930s was a city at its prime and no other place in the world could match its glamour, excitement, sensuality, and potential. Kang (Liu Ye), Fung (Daniel Wu) and Xiao Hu (Tony Yang), three innocent young men, have arrived in this “paradise” in search of a better future, finding instead that life is cheap and violence omnipresent.

As time goes by, and in a multitude of ways, each is forced into a life of crime. Kang, the most ambitious of the three, falls victim to his quest for power. Fung, previously content with his simple village life, is thrust into a world of violence where he sees his heroic side emerge. Xiao Hu, the most innocent, blindly admires and follows his brother Kang, even as this new world pulls him down.

Unable to cope with his fears and weaknesses, Xiao Hu must choose between the two people he loves the most. Against this backdrop of decadence, life takes a difficult turn when a forbidden love affair is exposed and everyone is forced to make hard choices.

Produced by John Woo (A Better Tomorrow; Bullet in the Head) and Terence Chang (Once a Thief; Mission: Impossible II).

Gala, 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Closing Night Film, 2007 Venice Film Festival

Talent Attending:

• Director Alexi Tan
• Producer Terence Chang
• Actor Daniel Wu
• Actor Lulu Li

North American And International Press

Encarnacion

Directed by Anahi Berneri

(Argentina; 93 min.; world premiere; Visions programme)

“I’m an actress” is how Erni Levier likes to see herself, with all the assertiveness and self-assurance of the present tense. Of course she hears the “Wasn’t-she-the-one-who...” and “Didn’t-she-once-appear-in...” whispered behind her back. She knows that her best years are behind her. Yet she continues to hope: for roles in films or commercials, for a comeback, for the spotlight. In her Buenos Aires apartment plastered with posters of the B movies she starred in as the sex bomb du jour, she leads a surprisingly normal life, enjoying an easygoing relationship with a middle-aged man, setting up a website to keep herself in the public eye… When she gets an invitation to her niece Ana’s 15th birthday party, Erni decides to return to her hometown. Ana, who adores her aunt, is overjoyed. Finally, a touch of glamour in the pampas, the scent of expensive perfume, the cut and feel of beautiful dresses… For Ana, it’s a time of discovery – of her own burgeoning femininity, of infatuation and jealousy, and of the pains of growing up. For Erni, it is a difficult return to her roots, a rough landing amidst the family and neighbors who know her as Encarnación, the small-town girl who fled to the big city to sell her body in immoral films… Over the course of an emotional weekend, Erni and Ana come closer as they both learn a few things about life: standing up for the choices you made, for who you are, and who you want to be…

Talent Attending:

• Director Anahi Berneri

North American Press Only

Ex Drummer

Directed by Koen Mortier

(Belgium; 104 min.; N.A. premiere; Vanguard programme)

Every village has its band of fools, trying to get to the top, following their idols in drug habits, but staying losers till the end of their pathetic days. They all do this in the name of rock & roll.

These disabled rock musicians are looking for a drummer. Dries, a well-known writers, seems to be the right guy for the job, were it not for the fact that his only handicap is that he can’t play the drums.

He joins the group as a perfect but evil god, walking down his mountain to play with the populace. With the arrival of this infiltrator, personal disputes and family feuds start to jeopardize the band’s fragile future. Dries will manipulate them till they are willing to drink each other’s blood and their only future is written down as in so many punk lyrics: “No future.”

Related Links:

• www.exdrummer.com

Talent Attending:

• Director Koen Mortier

North American Press Only

Help Me Eros

Directed by Lee Kang-sheng

(Taiwan, 103 min., N.A. premiere; Vanguard programme)

Ah Jie lost everything in the stock market due to a severe economic crisis. He spends his days in his sealed apartment, smoking joints and looking after the marijuana plants that he secretly grows in his wardrobe. In desperation, he calls a suicide helpline and gets to know Chyi, whose sweet and gentle voice causes him to fall in love with his fantasized image of her. He tries to ask her out but is repeatedly rejected. He begins projecting his fantasies of Chyi on Shin, the new girl working at the betel nut stall downstairs. Shin is always sexily dressed in order to lure male customers. He becomes closer to her and soon the two of them sink into a world of erotic and psychedelic pleasures… At the same time, Ah Jie begins to stalk Chyi…

A provocative, darkly comic and sexually daring film executive produced by Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye, Dragon Inn; I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone).

In Competition, 2007 Venice Film Festival

Talent Attending:

• Director/lead actor Lee Kang Sheng

North American Press Only

Ploy

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang

(Thailand; 2007; 107 min; N.A. premiere)

Every relationship has an expiration date. Every relationship needs its fantasies...some more real than others…

A violent death of a relative brings Wit and his wife, Dang, back to Bangkok from America for the first time in seven years. As soon as they arrive in Bangkok at 5.30 am. Wit and Dang check into a five-star hotel downtown. Wit finds out that he is out of cigarettes once they are inside the room. He goes down to the lobby bar.

After getting his pack of cigarette from the bartender Wit decides to order a cup of coffee and smoke his cigarette there. The girl from the table in the dark corner comes to Wit to ask if she could borrow his lighter. Wit hands her his lighter. Then she asks if she could borrow one cigarette too. The girl sits down and lights up one of his cigarettes and they somehow strike up a conversation. Wit learns that her name is Ploy.

This is how our little tale of love and jealousy begins. A highly detailed psychological drama with three strangers locked inside one hotel room. It starts with subtle suspicions and builds up to hilarious jealousy, as the appearance of the young woman triggers the couple to suddenly realize how they had grown apart in their seven-year marriage, before reaching a devastating climax. In the final act, the couple is faced with the choice of going separate ways or turns around and embraces each other for a new beginning.

Official selection, Directors’ Fortnight, 2007 Cannes Film Festival

North American Press Only

Reclaim Your Brain

Directed by Hans Weingartner

(Germany/Austria; 129 min., world premiere; Special Presentation programme)

Successful TV producer Rainer has it all: big salary, luxurious penthouse, high life, hot car, even hotter girlfriend. The 30-something go-getter has reached the top by creating TV shows of the most stupid and vulgar kind. In his latest hit, a man gets the privilege of fathering a woman’s child if his spermatozoid wins a microscopic race to fertilize an ovum!

One day, mysterious young woman Pegah vengefully drives full speed into Rainer’s car. After this near-death experience, Rainer has a major change of heart and decides to produce a thought-provoking news show for his station’s prime-time lineup. Devastated by the show’s poor ratings, Rainer quits his job and embarks on an investigation of the audience measurement system that keeps intelligence insulting programs at Number One.

Teaming up with the beautiful Pegah and a gang of unemployed social misfits, Rainer sets out to prove that a conspiracy surrounds the boxes used in select households to estimate audience percentage. Determined to fight television’s dumbing down of society, Rainer and his new friends eventually go all the way withan intricate and ingenious plan to get the public interested in quality cultural programs. But the station execs who live off audience hunger for brainless TV are not willing to give up what they have ruthlessly built over the years …

North American And International Press

Shadows

Directed by Milcho Manchevski

(Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; 120 min., world premiere; Special Presentations programme)

Lazar Perkov is a man who’s got everything going for him: He’s young, good-looking, has a beautiful wife, lovely boy, great house and a good job as a hospital physician. In fact, everyone calls him “Lucky.” Nothing’s missing—except maybe Lucky himself, who’s always trying to live up to the expectations of others. Like his bored wife and roguish colleagues. And, above all, his famous physician mother, a driven woman who rose from obscurity to renown with an iron will that crushed all resistance, whether from the living or the dead… When Lucky is involved in a disastrous car crash and mysteriously saved from a sure death, his life begins to change. He meets strange people: an old man with a baby, an ancient lady speaking a forgotten dialect, a beautiful young woman with a sad secret… Their only message is: “Return what is not yours. Have respect.” He becomes aware that it is a message from the afterlife, from tormented souls who seems to die over and over again, while looking for peace. But why have they chosen him? To answer this question, Lucky must finally grow up and become the man he wants to be…

Related Links:

• www.manchevski.com.mk

Talent Attending:

• Director Milcho Manchevski, dates TBC

North American And International Press

Silent Resident

Directed by Christian Frosch

(Austria/Germany/Luxembourg/Hungary; 96 min.; world premiere; Visions programme)

Never were apartment blocks more menacing, more inhabited by mystery, fear and control than the bright, white towers of Neustadt, a self-sufficient “living machine” on the outskirts of place and time… With the help of a motherly friend and colleague, Hannah leaves her violent husband and moves to a higher, and thus socially superior, floor of her building. There her life quickly begins to derail. Why is she being observed by her new neighbors and spied upon by the internal security system? Why did the previous tenant commit suicide? Hannah begins having visions – or are they? – of shooting her husband. She feels that everyone, including her lover, is conspiring against her. Her only hope is her friendship with Anna, a kind of “negative” of Hannah, who rebels against the all-pervasive control in New Town. But as their two identities begin to merge, and the boundaries between manipulator and manipulated blur, they are swept up into a spiral of violence that threatens the very foundations of the “living machine” New Town…

Talent Attending:

• TBC

North American And International Press

The Last Lear

Directed by Rituparno Ghosh

(India; 130 min.; World premiere; Gala)

As the most revered movie star on the planet, Amitabh Bachchan can take his pick of roles. But never before has he played a character like this. Commanding the screen as a legendary stage actor making a movie for the first time, this giant of Indian cinema, playing his first-ever English-language lead role, reveals surprising new dimensions. For a star who has acted in more than 130 films over four decades, this is no small feat.

When first we meet veteran thespian Harish Mishra (Bachchan), he is gravely ill. The punishments of a film shoot have left the old man in a coma. His co-star, Shabnam (Preity Zinta), is wracked with worry, but their director, Siddharth (Arjun Rampal), keeps strangely distant and refuses to visit his ailing star. In flashbacks, their story emerges.

Siddharth first had to woo Harish from the comforts of his retirement, and the interaction between the two yields some of the film’s most delightful scenes. The impatient young auteur attempts to win the trust and collaboration of the aged performer, who sits raging against the modern world from the sanctuary of his study. Sporting a silver mane, Bachchan is irresistible here – vain, forceful and impetuous. He trumpets the superiority of Shakespeare over anything cinema can create. And yet, the movies hold out a new challenge.

Once he agrees to act in the film, The Last Lear becomes a captivating reflection on the comparative artifices of stagecraft and cinema. As the outsider in the cast, Harish is hilarious in dismissing movie fakery. His theatre skills are grander. Standing on a hillside, he teaches Shabnam how to project her voice clear across a valley to the next hill.

As always, director Rituparno Ghosh excels in intimate scenes of conflict and revelation between characters, giving great opportunities to Zinta and Rampal. But the whole film feels like a valedictory gesture to Bachchan, who offers a master class in acting. Like Richard Burton, Toshiro Mifune or other larger-than-life greats, Bachchan demands to be watched. “You know what makes an actor?” his character asks. “The desire to perform. Nothing else matters.”

Talent Attending:

• Rituparno Ghosh, Sep. 6-12
• Amitabh Bachchan, Sep. 9-10
• Preity Zinta, Sep. 9-10
• Arjun Rampal, Sep. 9-10

North American Press Only

The Man From London

Directed by Béla Tarr

(Hungary/Germany/France; 2007; 132 min.; N.A. premiere)

Maloin leads a simple life without prospects at the edge of the infinite sea; he barely notices the world around him, has already accepted the slow and inevitable deterioration of life around him and his all but complete loneliness.

When he becomes a witness to a murder, his life takes a sudden turn.

He comes face to face with issues of morality, sin, punishment, the line between innocence and complicity in a crime, and this state of scepsis leads him to the ontological question of the meaning and worth of existence.

THE MAN FROM LONDON is about desire, man’s indestructible longing for a life of freedom and happiness, about illusions never to be realised—about things that give all of us energy to continue living, to go to sleep and get up day after day… Maloin’s story is ours—all of those who doubt and are able to question our humdrum existence.

In Competition, 2007 Cannes Film Festival

Talent Attending:

• Director Béla Tarr

North American And International Press

The Pope’s Toilet (El Bano del Papa)

Directed by César Charlone and Enrique Fernandez

(Uruguay/Brazil/France; 97 min., N.A. premiere; Contemporary World Cinema programme)

Melo, a Uruguayan town on the Brazilian border, anxiously awaits the visit of Pope John Paul II. The poor townspeople know what this means: 50,000 pilgrims in need of food and drink, paper flags, souvenirs, commemorative medals. And petty smuggler Beto is certain that he’s found the best business idea of all: “The Pope’s Toilet”, where the thousands of pilgrims can find relief…

But before he can build the WC, Beto rushes headlong into trouble, even losing his most precious possession – his bicycle – just as he secures the keystone for his temple to waste and wealth: the toilet bowl. Against all odds, he is determined to make it back in time for the divine event.

An alternatingly touching, humorous and poignant story of human dignity and solidarity from director-scriptwriters Enrique Fernández and noted cinematographer César Charlone (Oscar-nominated City of God), co-produced by Oscar-nominee Fernando Meirelles (City of God; The Constant Gardiner),

Official selection, Un Certain Regard, 2007 Cannes Film Festival

Talent Attending:

• Co-director César Charlone, dates TBC
• Co-director Enrique Fernandez, dates TBC

North American And International Press

The Sun Also Rises

Directed by Jiang Wen

(China; 116 min.; N.A. premiere; Special Presentation programme)

Composed as a quartet of spellbinding stories, the film begins with a pastoral idyll about the magical and moonstruck existence of a young widow and her son. A pair of embroidered shoes sends the mother into a flight of fancy and delirium; but later, a trip to her island hideaway reveals something of her past.

The second story, both hilarious and poignant, is set in a college campus at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution. It focuses on the desires and an illicit ménage à trois between two Indonesian Chinese returnees and a voluptuous female doctor. A scandal involving a ‘bottom-pinching molester’ paradoxically binds and severs their ties.

In the next episode, the protagonist of the previous story is sent down to the village where the mad mother and her son live. A riveting tale unfolds, about male egos and female bellies, and how caressing velvet can save or ruin lives.

The final story journeys back in time to the windswept Gobi Desert, home of nomadic Uyghurs. The film’s main protagonists converge in a single unified time and place. Poised at crucial junctures in life – marriage, death and birth, their predestined connections are finally unravelled.

In Competition, 2007 Venice Film Festival

Related Links:

• thesunalsorises.emp.hk

Talent Attending:

• TBC

International Press Only

The Tracey Fragments

Directed by Bruce McDonald

(Canada; 80 min., N.A. premiere; Visions programme)

15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) is naked under a tattered shower curtain at the back of a bus, looking for her little brother Sonny, who thinks he’s a dog.

Tracey’s journey leads us into the dark underbelly of the city, into the emotional cesspool of her home, through the brutality of her high school, the clinical cat and mouse games with her shrink and her soaring fantasies of Billy Zero, her boyfriend and rock ’n’ roll saviour. Her travels also put her in contact with the seedier inhabitants of the city. Like Lance, her would-be saviour who ultimately puts her life in jeopardy.

Tracey’s stories begin to intertwine truth with lies, hope with despair as we move closer to the truth of Sonny’s disappearance. We discover that in an unsatisfying romantic tryst with Billy Zero, she neglected to watch over her brother. Only through acceptance of her guilt can find Tracey find redemption and a way to go on with her life.

Opening Night Film, Panorama section, 2007 Berlin Film Festival; Winner, Manfred-Salzberger Prize
Official Selection, 2007 Karlovy Vary Film Festival

Related Links:

• thetraceyfragments.com

Talent Attending:

• Director Bruce McDonald, September 6-15
• Lead actress Ellen Page (dates TBC)

North American And International Press

The Trap

Directed by Srdan Golubovic

(Serbia/Germany/Hungary; 106 min., N.A. premiere; Contemporary World Cinema programme)

Post-Milosevic Belgrade, capital of a nation struggling to find its soul, of a country whose turbulent recent past has left many in a moral and existential desert. This is the home of Mladen, his wife Marija and their son Nemanja. When Nemanja develops a serious heart condition, the doctors urge an operation abroad. But where to get the 26,000 euros?

Just when the boy’s parents give up hope of raising the money, a man contacts Mladen and offers to pay the whole amount. But there is one thing Mladen must do: kill the man’s business rival. The proposal repulses Mladen, but as his son’s condition suddenly deteriorates, he begins to seriously consider the offer. If he accepts, he saves his boy’s life but loses his soul; if he refuses, he will grieve as a righteous man until the end of his life. The trap is set…

Official selection, 2007 Berlin Film Festival

Talent Attending:

• Director Srdan Golubovic, dates TBC