Cate Blanchett poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film The Apprentice at the 77th international film festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 20.Vianney Le Caer/The Associated Press
Films starring Cate Blanchett, Will Ferrell, Ralph Fiennes, Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, Bruce Springsteen, Tilda Swinton and Pamela Anderson are heading to this year’s Toronto International Film Festival as organizers aim to boost TIFF’s red-carpet star-power in the wake of last year’s strike-plagued edition.
On Monday, festival organizers revealed 63 titles in their gala and special presentations programs set to screen at TIFF’s 49th annual edition, which runs Sept. 5-15.
Highlights include the drama The Friend, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s acclaimed novel starring Murray and Watts; the documentary Will & Harper, featuring Ferrell; the papal thriller Conclave, starring Fiennes and Stanley Tucci; the concert doc Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band; the Lego-animated biopic Piece by Piece, tracing the life and career of Pharrell Williams; the post-apocalyptic musical The End, starring Swinton and Michael Shannon; and the Las Vegas-set drama The Last Showgirl, starring Anderson and directed by Gia Coppola, granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola.
There are also a number of titles making their North American or Canadian premieres after previously bowing at the Cannes Film Festival this past spring, including Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning comedy Anora; Jacques Audiard’s polarizing musical Emilia Pérez; Paul Schrader’s dark drama Oh, Canada, starring Richard Gere; Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught by the Tides, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds; and Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson’s comedy Rumours, starring Blanchett.
Other high-wattage celebrities attached to, but not starring in, TIFF films announced Monday include Angelina Jolie, director of the Salma Hayek drama Without Blood, and Denzel Washington, producer of the drama The Piano Lesson, starring his son John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler. The latter actress will be pulling double duty, also headlining the world premiere of 40 Acres, the much-anticipated feature directorial debut of Canadian filmmaker R.T. Thorne (The Porter, Utopia Falls).
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Notably, almost half of the films announced Monday are sales titles. These movies join TIFF’s recently announced opening selection, the Ben Stiller-starring comedy Nutcrackers, as productions coming to Toronto without a studio or distributor already attached and conceivably play into TIFF’s ambitions to become a premier destination where films are bought and sold. Earlier this spring, festival organizers announced plans to launch what they say will be a “game-changing” official content market in 2026, an initiative made possible thanks to $23-million in funding from the federal government.
Many of the major Hollywood studios are represented in TIFF’s lineup, including Netflix (The Piano Player, Emilia Pérez, the previously announced Rez Ball), Disney/Searchlight (the Springsteen doc, the previously announced Amy Adams dramedy Nightbitch), Universal (Piece by Piece, the previously announced animated film The Wild Robot), and Amazon MGM (the boxing drama The Fire Inside, written by Barry Jenkins).
Yet there will be inevitable questions as to which high-profile titles did not make TIFF’s splashiest programming announcement, with such missing-in-action films including the George Clooney-Brad Pitt comedy Wolfs, the highly anticipated adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, the Julianne Moore drama The Room Next Door from Pedro Almodóvar (who was the recipient of a TIFF Tribute Award last year), Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic starring Jolie, Francis Ford Coppola’s polarizing drama Megalopolis, and Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux (the sequel to one of TIFF’s more talked-about 2019 selections).
Some of these titles, though, could show up as TIFF continues to roll out programming announcements this month and the next. The Platform, Discovery and Midnight Madness slates will be unveiled throughout this week, with the Centrepiece, Docs, Wavelength, Classics, Short Cuts and Primetime lineups announced later in the summer.