Latest in TIFF

Monkeypaw Productions is partnering with the Toronto Film Festival and the Universal Filmmakers Project for the “No Drama” initiative, designed to cultivate new talent by selecting up to six writer-directors to create short films. The unique aspect of the program is the potential for the shorts to…

The 2023 film festival season has wound its way from Sundance and SXSW through Cannes and Tribeca to the fall stops at Venice, Telluride and Toronto. Still to watch for this fall: Both Sundance’s Festival Favorite Award winner Radical starring Eugenio Derbez and Cannes’ Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a…

The Oscar Meter at Deadline is working overtime as the race for the 96th Academy Awards is shifting into higher gear as summer turns to fall this weekend. The official start of the very long six month+ awards season is now behind us as we made it…

EXCLUSIVE: Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial debut American Fiction is changing up its release plan, shifting from a November 3 limited opening to December 15. The MGM/MRC theatrical release, which stars Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross and Skyler Wright and just…

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…," Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities. The same phrase could describe the state of the documentary industry.  More independent documentary films and series of exceptional quality are being made than ever before, yet there is an…

Pop the cork and celebrate Haley Bennett in Widow Clicquot, a fast-paced and sexy biopic of the woman known as Madame “Veuve” Clicquot, or by her actual full name, Barbe Nicole Ponsardin-Clicquot, who triumphed over all odds to become the force that created…

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix closed a $20 million deal on Hit Man, making the biggest deal at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and of the year for that matter. After the Richard Linklater-directed noir comic thriller debuted to raves at Venice, the film was expected to fetch the biggest deal of the fall…

UPDATED with latest: The Toronto Film Festival began September 7 in Ontario with opening-night movie The Boy and the Heron, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. It kicked off a lineup for the fest’s 48th edition that included world premieres of GameStop pic Dumb Money, Netflix's Pain Hustlers…

Backspot Section: Discovery Director: D.W. Waterson Story by D.W. Waterson /Script by Joanne Sarazen Logline: Riley, a mid-level cheerleader, is given an opportunity to cheer with the All-Star team Thunderhawks. With a competition looming, Riley must navigate her crippling anxiety, her…

Stamped From The Beginning  Section: TIFF Docs Director: Roger Ross Williams Writers: Adapted from Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America  Logline: Williams' documentary adaptation uses an innovative animation process that…

American Fiction Section: Special Presentation / People's Choice Award Winner Director: Cord Jefferson  Writers: Cord Jefferson Logline: American Fiction is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture's obsession with reducing people to outrageous…

The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2023 Toronto Film Festival has gone to Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. First Runner-Up is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Second Runner-Up is Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. The Documentary Award…