The inclusion of Dirt Music in TIFF’s latest line-up announcement brings to a total of eight the number of Film4 titles that will World Premiere at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival.
Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang will bow as a Gala Presentation. George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult, Thomasin McKenzie and Russell Crowe star in this thrilling, bold adaptation of Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel.
Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield, already announced as the opening night of this year’s BFI London Film Festival, is one of four Film4 titles to debut in TIFF’s Special Presentations strand. Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw lead the all-star cast of this fresh and distinctive take on Charles Dickens’ semi-autobiographical masterpiece.
Michael Winterbottom’s satire on the super-rich Greed starring Steve Coogan, Coky Giedroyc’s adaptation of Caitlin Moran’s How To Build a Girl featuring Beanie Feldstein, and Gregor Jordan’s adaptation of Tim Winton’s Man Booker-shortlisted Dirt Music starring Kelly Macdonald and Garrett Hedlund, will all unspool in Special Presentations.
Sarah Gavron’s Rocks has been picked as the opening night film of TIFF’s Platform section. Developed in a unique workshopping process with non-actors, the film is a big-hearted story about being a teenage girl in contemporary London, capturing the spirit, joy and resilience of a multi-cultural group of young women rarely represented in British cinema.
Nick Rowland’s debut feature Calm With Horses, a dark story of crime and family starring Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan and Niamh Algar, will launch in the Discovery strand.
And Saint Maud, a psychological horror film that marks the feature debut of Rose Glass, will be unveiled in Midnight Madness. Morfydd Clark (who also features in The Personal History of David Copperfield) and Jennifer Ehle star.
Director of Film4 Daniel Battsek comments: “We’re extremely grateful to Cameron, Joana and all the TIFF selectors for picking such a wide range of Film4 titles at this year’s festival. We are delighted for the filmmakers on each and every one of these projects. It’s particularly pleasing that they represent Film4’s broad slate, including two bigger budget co-productions, two debut features and three out of eight films from female directors.”
