TIFF 2005 : Toronto Festival

Toronto's 30th International Film Festival, took place from 8th to 17th September 2005, competing for the award of best world festival with Cannes, Venice and Berlin, certainly the largest with a maddening 335 films in only 10 days, including 109 world premieres. Can you believe it?
A well designed website with daily news published in a PDF newspaper!

From the line-up I recommended:
Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas); The Death of Mister Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu); Caché/Hidden (Michael Haneke); Manderlay (Lars von Trier); The Sun (Alexander Sokurov); Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien); The Forsaken Land (Vimukthi Jayasundara) all are Cannes greatest discoveries this year, that I watched in Paris.

And would have liked to be able to see there:
Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai); L' Enfant (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne); The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang); All the Invisible Children (Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, Kátia Lund, Jordan and Ridley Scott, Stefano Veneruso, John Woo); L' Enfer (Danis Tanovic); Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan); Mary (Abel Ferrara); Be With Me (Eric Khoo)... as well as the new film of Michael Snow, Matthias Müller, Patrice Chéreau, Matthew Barney, Nick Park, Josef Fares, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, John Turturro, Roman Polanski, Michel Gondry, Takeshi Kitano.

Doug Cummings (FilmJourney), Darren Hughes (Long Pauses), Girish Shambu (Girish), J. Robert Parks (on Long Pauses), Robert Davies (Errata) were lucky to be there on site. Don't miss their recommendations and reviews from their blogs, new films to look up to: The Quiet (Jamie Babbit, USA), Les Amants Réguliers (Philippe Garrel, France), Entre la mer et l'eau douce (Michel Brault, Canada); A travers la forêt (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, France); Vers le Sud (Laurent Cantet, France); My Dad is 100 years old (Guy Maddin, Canada); Why we fight (Eugene Jarecki, USA), Sketches of Frank Gehry (Pollack, USA); Marock (Laila Marrakchi , France); Into Great Silence (Groening, Germany), Sa-Kwa (Kang Yi-kwa, Korea), Sunflower (Zhang Yang , China), Un Couple Parfait (Nobuhiro Suwa , Japan). Hopefully I'll get to see these french films sometime soon... what irony!

Dispatches also available on GreenCine.

Awards anounced:

• Gavin Hood's TSOTSI (UK/South Africa) - People’s Choice Award
• LOOK BOTH WAYS (Australia) - Discovery Award
• SA-KWA (South Korea) - Fipresci Prize
• Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y. - Best Canadian Feature Film
• Louise Archambault's FAMILIA + Michael Mabbott's THE LIFE AND HARD TIMES OF GUY TERRIFICO - Best Canadian Debut (tie)