TIFF is less than one month away, and the fest continues to announce programs for its 41st edition. As is the case with the TIFF’s Galas and Special Presentations, the fest’s most prestigious and high-profile slots, the newly revealed lineups are far from 50 percent women-directed. But there’s still many promising titles to look forward to.
The Documentary program includes “The Cinema Travellers,” co-directed by Shirley Abraham. The film, centered on the last traveling cinemas in the world, premiered at Cannes earlier this year. “It is a love poem to cinema as the most profound form of the human imagination,” Abraham told Women and Hollywood. María José Cuevas’s “Beauties of the Night” spotlights iconic Mexican showgirls as they enter their so-called “golden years.” The women share their experiences about aging in a career centered around conventional beauty. “Forever Pure,” helmed by investigative journalist Maya Zinshtein, follows the most controversial sports team in Israel, the Beitar Jerusalem Football Club, as they add two Mulslim players from Chechnya to their team, causing an uproar from fans and teammates.
The Vanguard section, where TIFF promises “art house and genre collide to surprise, delight, and shock, with films that are a bit darker, a bit more transgressive, and a bit more dangerous,” hosts “Prevenge,” actress and director Alice Lowe’s revenge tale about a pregnant woman. Vanguard will also screen “The Bad Batch,” Ana Lily Amirpour’s follow-up to “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” Set in a Texas wasteland, “The Bad Batch” is an unconventional fairy tale — one that includes cannibals.
TIFF’s Midnight Madness program is severely lacking in women-directed offerings — as was the case last year. The 10-film lineup, known for “weird and wild” genre films, features only one film helmed by a woman: Julia Ducournau’s “Raw (Grave).” The genre-bending film centers on Justine, an exceptional student and vegetarian. When the 16-year-old girl starts vet school and tries raw meat for the first time, her world unravels in unexpected, terrifying ways. “With ‘Raw,’ I set myself the challenge of shifting the audience’s moral standards throughout the film,” Ducournau explained to Women and Hollywood. “I wanted the audience to feel empathy for a character that is becoming a monster in their eyes.”
The Cinematheque selection, a celebration of film history and culture, will include Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust,” the first American feature helmed by an African American woman to receive a national theatrical release. Agnès Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” an examination of female friendship and feminist politics, will also screen.
The festival runs from September 8 to 18 in Toronto.
