Nine more films added to Toronto Festival slate

Jul 26, 2005 by Ian Evans

The 30th Toronto International Film Festival added nine more films to its slate today, eight of which will be world premieres.

The newly announced films are:

The world premiere of Lorene Machado’s Bam Bam and Celeste which was written by and stars comedian Margaret Cho. The film follows friends Bam Bam (Bruce Daniels) and Celeste (Cho), as they make their way across Middle America in the hopes of becoming contestants on a reality-TV makeover show.

The fest also gets the world premiere of Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s mockumentary Brothers of the Head which tells the tale of conjoined twins (played by Luke and Harry Treadaway), plucked from obscurity in the 1970s by a music promoter who grooms them into a seminal link between “classic” rock and punk.

Emmanuelle Béart will appear in the world premiere of L’Enfer, Danis Tanovic’s film about the lives of three sisters, bound forever by an act of violence that they witnessed in their childhood.

Training Day screenwriter David Ayer gets a world premiere for his directorial debut Harsh Times. The films is about two unemployed friends, Jim (Christian Bale), a war veteran, and Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), a computer programmer. When Jim persuades Mike to join him in search of excitement and adventure through the streets of South Central L.A., things take a turn toward disaster and the two unwittingly sow the seeds of their own destruction. The films also stars Desperate Housewives’ Eva Longoria.

Rowan Woods Little Fish follows Tracy (Cate Blanchett), a woman struggling to put her troubled past behind her. After being refused two bank loans to open up her own internet café, she begins lying to her loved ones. When Tracy turns to a shady ex-boyfriend (Dustin Nguyen) in order to come up with the money, she soon becomes embroiled in a dangerous drug deal that threatens her life. The film costars Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving.

The debut of writer/director Joshua Stern, Neverwas, gets its world premiere in Toronto. The film follows Zach (Aaron Eckhart), a psychiatrist who returns home to work at the mental institution where his father (Nick Nolte), a famous children’s book author, was committed years earlier. The cast also includes Sir Ian McKellen, Brittany Murphy, and Alan Cumming.

Robin Wright Penn returns to the festival in Jeff Stanzler’s Sorry, Haters, the story of an Arab cab driver (played by filmmaker Abdel Kechiche) who picks up a troubled professional woman (Robin Wright Penn) in New York City. Over the course of a few days, they develop a relationship with unexpected results. This psychological drama is set against the nightmarish anxieties of a post-9/11 America. The cast includes Sandra Oh.

Terry Gilliam’s Tideland had it’s pre-filming press conference at last year’s fest and now Toronto gets the world premiere as well. This adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s classic cult novel brings the audience into the fantasy world of Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), the young narrator, who drifts from the harsh reality of her childhood to escape into the fantasies of her own active imagination. The cast includes Janet McTeer, Brendan Fletcher, Jeff Bridges, and Jennifer Tilly.

Finally, Adam Rapp’s Winter Passing tells the story of a young woman (Zooey Deschanel) who returns home to visit her father, a reclusive novelist (Ed Harris), after the two have spent seven years apart. Her arrival brings a wind of change into her father’s home and into the lives of several of its inhabitants, including Will Ferrell as an eccentric handyman.