Toronto International Film Festival

Festival Coverage

TIFF 2019: ‘Tammy’s Always Dying’

By: Trevor Chartrand Former actress Amy Jo Johnson’s second directorial effort is Tammy’s Always Dying, an incredibly painful look at dysfunctional family dynamics.  The film explores the dark and unstable relationship between the understandably broken Catherine (Anastasia Phillips) and her suicidal mother Tammy (Felicity Huffman).

Festival Coverage

TIFF 2019: ‘Coppers’

In his documentary Coppers, Alan Zweig (15 Reasons To Live) interviews Canadian ex-police officers.  Occasionally, viewers are given the a ride-along perspective as the subjects drive around their formally patrolled turf and share some unforgettable stories.  Most of these interviewees can recall aged confrontations as if it happened hours before Zweig’s camera turned on.  For some, these cases have led to current wellness complications.  Along with riding shotgun, Zweig has also emulated the atmosphere of…

Festival Coverage

TIFF 2019: ‘The Twentieth Century’

Depending on who you ask, Canadian cinema may well be celebrating its 100th year this year and, despite the general dismay that it continues to attract from some, it is still very much able to be as innovative as any other national cinema.  Why the history lesson?  Because that may be the best way to introduce Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century, at once a great addition to the Canadian cinematic canon and a bitter poisonous…

Festival Coverage

TIFF 2019: ‘The Lighthouse’

With The Witch, Robert Eggers showed the world that there were untold, new ways to tell horror stories.  So, what can someone who has already reinvented a genre do as a follow up?  Eggers decided to tell a new story based on the research of horrific authentic historical documents, and it works.

Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes @ TIFF ’18

TIFF returns for another year, pushed along by their Tuesday announcement of gala and special presentation films.  This first slate has the same level of films that frequently find their way into the earliest announcement: films that will eventually be nominated for Oscars, or be ignored for Oscars, or find their way into hot take articles about how they should have been nominated for Oscars.

Festival Coverage

TIFF 2017: ‘Meditation Park’

By: Jessica Goddard Mina Shum’s Meditation Park is an engaging, quirky, and empowering film about the overdue self-actualization of a Vancouver woman (Cheng Pei-pei) in light of the discovery of her husband’s affair.  This thoroughly modern film also expertly highlights the immigrant experience in multicultural Canada, while making clear that the narrative is culturally universal.  There is an exquisite balance of humour and poignancy in the writing, strengthened by an excellent cast.