TIFF 2007 -- First Big Title Announcement -- Coens, Ratanaruang, Akin and more!

It seems to be festival day around here. The first big batch of films coming to TIFF (that is The Toronto International Film Festival, a festival many of us locals like to visit often) were announced today. [Note: If you are on their ticket/pass mailing list, some of these titles you've probably already read on the snail-mail info package sent out last week -- a package which seems to have mysteriously eliminated the 30 Coupon Book as a festival option. I have one question for the TIFF programmers -- "Why?"]

Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a Gala Presentation. (A rare sequel to get the full red-carpet treatment, Clive Owen joins Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush in the cast.)

The Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men is a Special Presentation. (It will be a real treat to soak this film in at the gorgeous Elgin Theatre.)

Other highlights include ScreenAnarchy favorites Pen-ek Ratanaruang who has the erotic drama Ploy; Fatih Akin's follow up to Head On, The Edge of Heaven; Andrei Zviaguintsev's The Banishment; Canadian Bruce McDonald's Ellen Page starrer The Tracey Fragments; as well as new films from veterans Chang-dong Lee, Bela Tarr, Alexander Sokurov, Volker Schlöndorff and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Read on for the rest of the films and a brief synopsis of each.

Excerpt from the TIFF Press Release:

“These are many of the finest films to have screened at other festivals recently,” says Noah Cowan, Festival Co-Director. “These films were handpicked by TIFF Programmers to represent the crucial cinematic innovations and moments of onscreen delight from the last several months of cinema.”

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, USA
Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law – in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) – can contain.

MASTERS

ALEXANDRA Alexander Sokurov, Russia/France
Filmmaker Sokurov (RUSSIAN ARK) tells the story of a woman who travels to visit her grandson, a Russian officer stationed in the Republic of Chechnya.

LE VOYAGE DU BALLON ROUGE Hou Hsiao-hsien, France/Taiwan
Hou Hsiao-hsien (THREE TIMES) pays homage to Albert Lamorisse’s THE RED BALLOON in a film about Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), her son Simon and a mysterious red balloon.

THE MAN FROM LONDON Béla Tarr, France/Hungary/Germany
The simple life of lonely Maloin is blown apart when he witnesses a murder. NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE Jacques Rivette, France/Italy Based on a short story by Balzac, NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE reunites influential auteur Rivette (OUT ONE, VA SAVOIR) and actor Jeanne Balibar for a film about seduction and revenge amidst the extravagant balls of 1820s Restoration Paris.

ONE HUNDRED NAILS Ermanno Olmi, Italy
Announced as the last feature of his career, Ermanno Olmi (Palme d’Or winner for 1978’s THE TREE OF THE WOODEN CLOGS) presents a film about a young and eminent professor who finds himself at the centre of a difficult investigation.

ULZHAN Volker Schlöndorff, Germany/Kazakhstan/France
A man’s relentless quest to both find an ancient treasure and heal his wounded soul.

REAL TO REEL

THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES Andrey Paounov, Bulgaria/USA/Germany
A documentary about a village turned concentration camp, turned city, turned nuclear power plant.

VISIONS

IMPORT EXPORT Ulrich Seidl, Austria
A Ukrainian nurse abandons her family for a better life in Austria. An unemployed security guard leaves Vienna for Ukraine.

PLOY Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand
Ratanaruang (INVISIBLE WAVES) returns to the Festival this year with an erotic psychological drama which sees three strangers locked inside a hotel room.

SILENT LIGHT Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands
Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize for 2007, the film tells of Johan, a married North Mexican Mennonite who falls in love with anotherwoman.

A STRAY GIRLFRIEND Ana Katz, Argentina/Spain
Filmmaker Katz takes on writing, directing and acting with A STRAY GIRLFRIEND. After an argument with her boyfriend on the bus, Ines storms off at the wrong stop, only to find herself lost and alone on the open road – far from the holiday resort where she was meant to spend a romantic getaway.

THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS Bruce McDonald, Canada
McDonald (ROADKILL, HIGHWAY 61) delivers the story of Tracey, a 15-year-old who seeks refuge from schoolyard torment and an unstable home life by way of her elaborate imagination.

YOU, THE LIVING Roy Andersson, Sweden/France/Germany/Denmark/Norway
Andersson puts forth a film he describes as “simply a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy about us (human beings).”

VANGUARD

LES CHANSONS D’AMOUR Christophe Honoré, France
Julie and Ismael attempt to reignite the spark between them by inviting a third person, Alice, into their bed – and singing about it – in this romantic drama musical. But when tragedy strikes, everyone and everything is left at loose ends.

CONTROL Anton Corbijn, UK/Australia
Dutch photographer Corbijn moves into filmmaking with the story of the life and death of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

NAISSANCE DES PIEUVRES Céline Sciamma, France
Teenage girls awaken their sexuality amidst the world of synchronized swimming.
THE ORPHANAGE Juan Antonio Bayona, Spain From producer Guillermo del Toro (PAN’S LABYRINTH) comes a film about a woman’s return to the abandoned orphanage where she grew up and her conviction that something long-hidden and terrible is lurking inside.

CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA

AND ALONG COME TOURISTS Robert Thalheim, Germany
A young German – completing his civil service abroad in Auschwitz – must care for a former concentration camp inmate with a fetish for suitcase repair.

THE BANISHMENT AndreI Zviaguintsev, Russia
The eerie tale of one family’s relocation from an industrial city to the remote birthplace of husband and father Alex (Konstantin Lavronenko – Best Actor, Cannes 2007).

CARAMEL Nadine Labaki, Lebanon/France
Contemporary dilemmas face a group of women in a Beirut beauty salon.

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey
Focused on the interweaving lives of six people in Hamburg and Istanbul, the film – winner of the Award for Best Screenplay at Cannes 2007 – is the second in what filmmaker Akin (Head-On) calls his “Love, Death and the Devil” trilogy.

FARO – LA REINE DES EAUX Salif Traoré, Mali/France/Canada/Germany/Burkina Faso
Zanga arrives after many years to the village he was once driven out of. At the moment of his arrival, something happens that the villagers interpret as the river spirit Faro’s angry reaction to his return.

HAPPY NEW LIFE Árpád Bogdán, Hungary
Attila has no idea what it means to be a gypsy, but with the help of official documents containing details about the family who abandoned him, he may soon unearth his unknown Romani past.

HOME SONG STORIES Tony Ayres, Australia
The moving story of a Chinese woman who comes to Australia in the mid-sixties.
IN MEMORY OF MYSELF Saverio Costanzo, Italy Finding himself in an existential crisis, Andrea decides to join a monastery only to find his life of ritual and prayer to be under constant surveillance.

ISKA’S JOURNEY Csaba Bollók, Hungary
After a life of begging for food, collecting pieces of old metal for money and buying schnapps for her parents, Iska and her sister are discovered on a coal heap and put into a home.

THE MOURNING FOREST Naomi Kawase, Japan/France
Retirement home resident Shigeki and staff member Machiko find themselves on a journey of discovery when a landslide forces their car into a ditch in this Cannes Grand Prize winner for 2007.

MUNYURANGABO Lee Isaac Chung, USA
Fifteen years after the genocide, two Rwandese teens travel from the city to the countryside on a quest for justice.
MUTUM Sandra Kogut, Brazil/France The gloomy world of adults is witnessed though the eyes of a peculiar child.

SECRET SUNSHINE Chang-dong Lee, South Korea
Actor Do-Yeon Jeon (Best Actress, Cannes Film Festival 2007) stars as a woman trying to set out a new path for herself in the town where her late husband was born.

UNDER THE SAME MOON Patricia Riggen, Mexico/USA
Featuring America Ferrera (TV’s “Ugly Betty”), this film by first time filmmaker Riggen tells the tale of the love that endures between a mother and her son despite physical separation.