The 2021 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val returns with a wave of announcements

Just yes­ter­day, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment announced that ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­cans would be allowed pas­sage through the inter­na­tion­al bor­der again in ear­ly August, an encour­ag­ing sign in the glob­al bat­tle against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. More impor­tant­ly, as all movie mat­ters are, this means things are look­ing up for the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, now just a cou­ple months out from its start date on 9 September.

This morn­ing, TIFF affirmed its come­back after the all-online inter­mis­sion of 2020 with a tidal wave of pro­gram­ming announce­ments, fea­tur­ing the big names and glitzy pre­mieres we’ve come to expect from the fes­ti­val. To start, the coor­di­na­tors have pulled back the cur­tain on both the Open­ing and Clos­ing Night selec­tions, the sui­ci­dal-depres­sion musi­cal Dear Evan Hansen and Zhang Yimou​‘s valen­tine to cin­e­ma One Sec­ond, respectively.

Oth­er sig­nif­i­cant titles in the Gala Pre­sen­ta­tions sec­tion include Ken­neth Branagh​‘s com­ing-of-age pic­ture Belfast, the tel­e­van­ge­lism biopic The Eyes of Tam­my Faye, Ali­son Klayman’s Ala­nis Moris­sette doc­u­men­tary Jagged, the North Amer­i­can pre­mière of Edgar Wright​‘s Last Night in Soho, and Mélanie Lau­rent​‘s peri­od piece The Mad Women’s Ball. Most curi­ous­ly, the fes­ti­val will also be graced by the pres­ence of ele­phan­tine canine Clif­ford the Big Red Dog in his lat­est movie vehicle.

The Spe­cial Pre­sen­ta­tions sec­tion also con­tains a num­ber of heavy hit­ters from Hol­ly­wood and around the world. Some are com­ing in from Cannes, a mass exo­dus that cov­ers Bergman Island, The Worst Per­son in the World, Dri­ve My Car, Three Floors, The Sto­ry of My Wife, Clio Barnard​‘s Ali and Ava, and Paris, 13^th Dis­trict. (Céline Sci­amma​‘s lat­est film Petite Maman will get a Cana­di­an pre­mière after open­ing at the Berli­nale.) Oth­er key cuts include Ter­ence Davies‘ Siegfried Sas­soon biopic Bene­dic­tion, Antoine Fuqua​‘s Eng­lish-lan­guage remake of Dan­ish thriller The Guilty, and Theodore Melfi’s The Star­ling (in which Melis­sa McCarthy becomes obsessed with mur­der­ing a bird in her back yard).

If the num­bers are expect­ed to match those of the pre-viral 2019 fes­ti­val, we can expect some heavy-duty beef­ing-up of these two sec­tions in the com­ing weeks, as well as the round­ing-out of the Con­tem­po­rary World Cin­e­ma, Mas­ters, and Doc­u­men­taries sec­tions as well. If the fates be kind, maybe an ear­ly look at Steven Spiel­berg​‘s West Side Sto­ry?