Toronto Film Festival: Let the buzz begin

Ewan McGregor first came to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007 with Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream,” and last year he was back at the Canadian cinematic gathering to debut his quirky comedic drama “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.” “Beginners,” another film from the prolific actor, also found a buyer after screening in Toronto two years ago. This week, McGregor returns to unveil “The Impossible,” a drama from Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona about a family torn apart by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

If “Cassandra’s Dream,” “Beginners,” “Salmon Fishing” and now “The Impossible” represent McGregor’s appetite for diverse and challenging projects, the four disparate films are also testament to how the Toronto festival can set a wide variety of movies on a course for commercial and critical success.

The 11-day event comes on the heels of film festivals in Telluride, Colo., and Venice. But Toronto, which opens Thursday with the Joseph Gordon-Levitt time-travel film “Looper,” is the juggernaut of the three. Toronto boasts the largest slate of films (close to 400) and significant international media exposure. The event is where many films begin their campaigns for Oscars and other awards, and it’s become a significant market for movies looking for distribution.

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McGregor’s film will be competing for attention alongside others from some significant heavy-hitters, including Ben Affleck, Tom Hanks and Keira Knightley, to name a few. Affleck directed and stars in the 1970s thriller “Argo,” about CIA agents posing as a Hollywood film crew in an effort to rescue U.S. diplomats in Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis. Hanks takes on six roles from six eras in the film adaptation of David Mitchell’s epic novel “Cloud Atlas.” And Knightley partners for the third time with director Joe Wright in Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of “Anna Karenina.”

Warner Bros. is behind both “Argo” and “Cloud Atlas,” and the studio’s president of marketing, Sue Kroll, said: “Our two movies are very different, but they are the same in delivering a unique moviegoing experience. I think both films will be discovered by audiences and critics and we will be able to start our word-of-mouth marketing. Things will just start percolating.”

Many films that come to Toronto require a more nuanced sell than what can be achieved with a 30-second television commercial, so the festival’s news conferences, red carpets and other events can generate coverage that helps marketers explain and position their movies during the crowded fall season.

That’s certainly the case with “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s drama about a charismatic cult leader played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and his wayward acolyte (Joaquin Phoenix). The film won accolades upon its debut in Venice last weekend, but the Weinstein Co. needs to generate box-office interest ahead of its Sept. 14 general release, and is hoping Toronto attention can add to its awards momentum.

“There’s a tremendous, insane energy about Toronto,” said Anderson, who will mark his third visit to the festival with “The Master.” He previously screened “Boogie Nights” and “Punch Drunk Love” there. “I don’t know how you go about choosing which films to see because there is so much, but — and I don’t mean this in a bad way — they take prestige out of it and just go for volume and that’s a really fun thing. It’s like 24-hour movies.”

“The Impossible” is another movie with a somewhat challenging subject matter that needs good buzz in Toronto to improve its chances at the box office.

The film, though ultimately uplifting, is a realistic telling of the chaos and terror of the 2004 tsunami, which left close to 300,000 dead. McGregor stars as a husband and father of three young boys caught up in the giant waves; his wife is played by Naomi Watts.

The movie will premiere Sunday in Toronto, three months before Summit Entertainment will open it in U.S. theaters. The actor said he fell in love with the script that evolved out of hours of meetings with a Spanish family whose experiences form the basis of the film.

“There was something really brutal and personal about it,” said McGregor. “Although it’s an extraordinarily harrowing and harsh situation, for me, it was an opportunity to look at the unique relationship you have with your kids and the lengths you would go to for them if something like this were to happen.”

Other films with big names attached are looking for similar breakouts, including “On the Road,” Walter Salles’ adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel starring Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley that screened at Cannes in May. Stewart will be making her first public appearance since she became tabloid fodder following her dalliance with married director Rupert Sanders.

Jennifer Lawrence is hoping to shed her “Hunger Games” alter ego, Katniss Everdeen, for a moment; she’ll be at the fest to help promote David O. Russell’s new drama, “Silver Linings Playbook,” in which she stars as a troubled woman opposite Bradley Cooper. And Bill Murray will get presidential with “Hyde Park on Hudson,” portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposite Laura Linney and Olivia Williams.

The festival — now in its 37th year — entered a new era in 2010 when it moved most of its events and screenings downtown and opened a new headquarters. Its more sophisticated venues reflect a grander vision for the festival too. For the second year in a row, TIFF is tweaking its opening night plans, straying from its traditional pattern of kicking off with a Canadian feature. The opening night film “Looper” is a thriller from Rian Johnson, a 38-year-old American filmmaker who unveiled his second feature, “Brothers Bloom,” at the festival in 2008. The movie is about a mob hitman (Gordon-Levitt) assigned to kill his own future self (Bruce Willis).

“We’ve evolved, grown a lot, and I felt it was time for the opening night position to grow as well,” said Cameron Bailey, co-director of TIFF. “Rian is a filmmaker that’s really smart about genre films. ‘Looper’ is an exciting movie. It gives us the scale we want on opening night, but it’s not simply a dumbed-down commercial film.”

The Sony Pictures release is also a U.S.-China co-production, a topic the programmers expect will interest attendees. Part of the festival will include a China summit featuring Jackie Chan, Harvey Weinstein and the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s chief, Chris Dodd.

Bailey has also chosen Mumbai as his city of focus, debuting work from a new crop of Indian filmmakers that he believes are changing the face of that country’s cinema scene.

“These filmmakers are not making pure art house movies, but making films that they want to reach wide audiences, but they are not willing to play by the old Bollywood rules,” said Bailey. “These movies are without songs, which is radical. They are edgier, grittier and sometimes more violent. They feel more plugged into what’s happening now.”

High-profile documentaries include Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell,” the director’s 5-year dive into her family’s personal secrets that generated strong reviews when it debuted in Venice and Telluride last week; “Venus and Serena,” about the tennis superstars; and “Camp 14,” about the only man to escape from a North Korean labor camp. The provocative “The Gatekeepers” (which features candid interviews with six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI) will also screen.

“The audience in Toronto feels like a real audience that is a sampling of what the experience will be for people out in the world. It’s enthusiastic, but it’s a much better sampling for buyers,” said Leslie Urdang, producer and president of Olympus Pictures, which has sold three films in Toronto in the last three years and is back this year with the sex-addiction dramedy “Thanks for Sharing” and the Hugh Laurie starrer “Mr. Pip.”

“Thanks for Sharing” marks the directorial debut of Stuart Blumberg, who wrote “The Kids Are All Right.” Starring Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim Robbins, the film tracks three men in different phases of recovery from sex addiction who participate in a 12-step program in New York City.

“The film is sort of ‘Kids Are All Right’-esque. It starts out comedically and gets a lot more dramatic at the end. I wanted to walk that fine line between comedy and drama, always emphasizing the grounded reality of the situations and the characters,” said Blumberg, something he thinks will be well received by festivalgoers.

“I think Toronto is looking for bold filmmaking. Any film that tries to tell something truthfully, and doesn’t sugarcoat it, is something people will hopefully appreciate.”