The Toronto International Film Festival just released their official film schedule for this year’s festival. Both “Passion” and “To The Wonder” are selected for the festival – which runs from September 6 to September 16 – and now the official schedule and expected guest list was released. Rachel is currently listed as ‘expected to attend’ according to the official press release.
“To The Wonder” will have it’s first screening September 10 and “Passion” the next day on September 11 and both movies will have two other screenings the days after. For more information on the screenings and movies be sure to visit TIFF.net!
To The Wonder
Monday September 10 (Premium screening)
Princess of Wales
7:00 PMPassion
Tuesday September 11
Winter Garden Theatre
8:00 PM
The programmer’s note on “To The Wonder” was also released, you can find it after the jump.
PROGRAMMER’S NOTE
Never, even when he was starting out in the 1970s, has Terrence Malick released two films in such quick succession. Usually the wait for his followers is long. Sometimes, as in the twenty-year span between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, it can be unbearable.Now, just over a year after The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, comes a cinematic blessing: To the Wonder, a new film from this American master and mystic that continues his exploration of the vagaries of desire and regret that shape our time on this planet.
Ben Affleck plays a Midwesterner who meets a woman (Olga Kurylenko) in Paris. She returns with him to Oklahoma to be his wife, but the relationship soon falters. He finds himself drifting towards a childhood love, played by Rachel McAdams. But, as always with Malick, what appear to be simple motivations open up to reveal enduring truths.
Malick studied philosophy at Harvard, and at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; before he became a filmmaker, he translated Martin Heidegger. For all its visual poetry, his work shows a passionate interest in ideas. Where The New World and The Tree of Life open themselves to analysis of spirituality and ethics, To the Wonder continues that intellectual investigation into the realm of politics and faith. It is also, like The Tree of Life, gloriously engaged with cinematic form itself.
As Malick liberates himself more and more from the restrictions of conventional narrative and pursues a more associative approach, he gets closer to eliciting pure, subconscious responses from his viewers. It is gratifying to note that the same man who long ago wrote an uncredited draft of Dirty Harry now finds freedom in the transcendental.
Cameron Bailey
HAH. Monday the 10th. That’s the one day when I’m not volunteering at Princess of Wales… Dammit.
So it appears that only To The Wonder will have a red-carpet premiere in Toronto, as none of the Passion screenings in the programme indicate this. Although, given Brian de Palma is scheduled to attend, Rachel may still attend a screening, just without the usual bells and whistles.
Wendy – do you know how the standard screenings normally work if the cast/director/producers etc are attending? Are there “arrivals” as such, just without the red carpet, or is it really low-key?
@ Nick – I noticed the same. Passion doesn’t have a premium screening (red carpet premiere) but I noticed that other ‘big’ movies selected for the festivals also don’t have a premium screening but the principal cast is expected to attend so I guess there will be some kind of smaller red carpet for those movies?
I could be wrong, but I think there will be some kind of press moment for Passion. Especially with de Palma confirmed to attend. (Noomi, Karoline and Paul aren’t mentioned).