World premieres starring Angelina Jolie, Saoirse Ronan and Keanu Reeves lead this year’s lineup for the Toronto film festival.
The 50th edition of the festival will again feature a string of films hoping to gain awards traction, taking place after the Venice film festival.
Jolie, who premiered a film at last year’s Toronto as director, will return in front of the camera for the French director Alice Winocour’s drama Couture. She will play a film-maker arriving in Paris for fashion week, following her role as Maria Callas in last year’s Netflix biopic Maria. Winocour previously premiered the Eva Green-led sci-fi film Proxima at the festival.
Ronan, who was last seen in the alcoholism drama The Outrun and Steve McQueen’s Blitz, will lead the Bristol-set comedy thriller Bad Apples, playing a teacher forced into drastic lengths while dealing with a particularly troubling 11-year-old. The official synopsis promises “uneasy laughs” and a “provocative” tone.
Reeves will lead Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut, Good Fortune, as an angel who engineers a body swap between a poor and a rich man, played by Ansari and Seth Rogen, respectively. Ansari has said he hopes the film helps to resurrect the theatrically released R-rated comedy. “Aziz is great,” Reeves told Entertainment Weekly. “A great writer, director, actor. I had such a fantastic experience working with him.”
Toronto will also see directorial debuts from actors James McAvoy, Brian Cox and Euphoria’s Maude Apatow, daughter of Judd Apatow. McAvoy directed California Schemin’, based on the true story of Scottish rappers pretending to be American, Cox has helmed Glenrothan, a drama described as a “love letter to Scotland”, and Apatow is behind Poetic License, a comedy starring her mother Leslie Mann.
The festival will also see the world premiere of Christy, a biopic of the groundbreaking female boxer Christy Martin starring Sydney Sweeney. The film, from the Animal Kingdom director David Michôd, will cover Martin’s rise in the 1990s and then later her husband’s attempt to murder her. “Our film is a wild mix of inspiring underdog sports-world story and personal saga,” Michôd said to W Magazine. “Sydney trained her butt off to play the part. The beauty of Sydney is that she turned up to work every day with her tail wagging, ready to go. No matter how tough it was, she was like a ray of sunshine.”
Other true stories premiering include the 1930s-set Palestine 36 about a Palestinian uprising against colonial British rule, the historical drama Nuremberg starring Rami Malek and Russell Crowe, Agnieszka Holland’s Franz Kafka biopic Franz, Swiped which stars Lily James as the founder of the dating app Bumble and Paul Greengrass’s previously announced survival thriller The Lost Bus, which stars Matthew McConaughey as a schoolbus driver trying to save children from the deadly 2018 Camp fire in California.
Premieres that had also already been announced before Monday include Rian Johnson’s much-anticipated Knives Out sequel Wake Up Dead Man, which brings back Daniel Craig and adds Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close and Mila Kunis, the buzzy Brendan Fraser-led comedy drama Rental Family from Beef director Hikari, the Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman with Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, Nicholas Hytner’s period comedy The Choral starring Ralph Fiennes and based on an original Alan Bennett script and Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy The Christophers with Michaela Coel, Ian McKellen and Baby Reindeer breakout Jessica Gunning.
Chris Evans will also play a movie star abducted by a group of radicals in Sacrifice, an action comedy also starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Salma Hayek, John Malkovich and Charli xcx. Director Bobby Farrelly, known for co-directing hit films such as There’s Something About Mary, will unveil Driver’s Ed, a new comedy starring the White Lotus breakout Sam Nivola. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James will also headline the heist thriller Fuze from the Scottish director David Mackenzie.
Other notable premieres include the offbeat romantic comedy Eternity with Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller, mystery thriller The Ugly from Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho and Easy’s Waltz from True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto with Al Pacino and Vince Vaughn.
Documentaries set to premiere include Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert and films about subjects such as John Candy, teen series Degrassi and music festival Lilith Fair.
The festival takes place from the 4 to 14 September.