TIFF: "Lore", Australia's Formidable Oscar Contender

Toronto International Film Festival. Glenn is in Australia but he's seen Monday's premiere "Lore".

Australia isn’t a regular player in the Academy’s annual game of Best Foreign Language Film. We’ve only submitted five films prior to 2012: Clara Law’s Floating Life (1996), which I have never seen; Steve Jacobs’ La Spagnola (2001), which is fun, if slight, immigrant comedy; Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes (2006) a fabulous film that was the first ever filmed in native Aboriginal dialects; Tony Ayres’ The Home Song Stories (2007), which features an incredible performance by Joan Chen; and Samson & Delilah (2009), Warwick Thornton’s groundbreaking indigenous drama about two teens escaping their remote lives only to stumble upon tragedy at every turn. Thornton’s film was the closest Australia has ever come to snagging a nomination, having managed to find a spot on the nine-wide shortlist. As great as that film was, however, its hard-edged take on the plight of our country’s most troubled citizens was always going to be a tough ask for a nomination.

Much easier, I suspect, will be Cate Shortland’s Lore, which seemingly comes to us with the Oscar-nominee stamp blazoned across it. Transmission Films, the film's distributor in Australia, has officially announced that Lore will represent Australia in the Foreign Language Film category at this year’s Academy Awards. With a story involving an epic journey (!), children (!!), and WWII (!!!), it has to be considered a strong contender for the shortlist on nomination morning.

Shortland hasn't made a theatrical feature since she broke through in 2004 with Somersault, which helped launch Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington. Her latest is a finely crafted, delicate WWII drama about five children who must make their way across a divided Germany in the final days of the war after their Nazi parents are taken away. It receives a local release in two weeks time, but I saw it a couple of weeks back and was utterly captivated. It’s the best Australian film of the year (so far) for sure, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with our nation’s identity. Shortland’s knack for navigating tricky territory (a young girl’s burgeoning sexuality in Somersault, a traumatised police officer in TV movie The Silence) is at her finest here, exploring the crumbling world of these children whose affluent life is rapidly disintegrating upon the news of Hitler’s death. The final scenes are particularly pertinent as it begins to dawn on the kids – and the audience – that their lives will never be the same. They will always be Nazi children who spent their childhood in the shadow of Hitler’s rhetoric.

Wonderfully acted (especially by newcomer Saskia Rosendahl as the eldest sibling, Hannelore), expertly filmed by Adam Arkapaw (Animal Kingdom, Snowtown), sublimely edited by Veronika Jenet (Oscar nominated for The Piano), and featuring an original score by Max Richter (Waltz with Bashir, Sarah’s Key) that is so far above and beyond the best of the year, I have no doubt you will be hearing about Lore over the next year. It’s an official Australian/German co-production with many Aussies behind the scenes, so it remains to be seen whether the Academy’s voters see it as “not Australian enough”, but it is a powerful film that would make a worthy nominee.

Its American distributor, Music Box Films, has no set date for a US release yet, but distribution could give it a bit of extra marketing muscle come awards season. Lore screened in competition at the Sydney Film Festival, won the major audience award at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, and has its North American premiere tomorrow at TIFF.

A Whiff of TIFF

As you may have heard on Twitter, it looks like I'll be attending the last four days of the Toronto International Film Festival (i.e. the time when most of the journos have gone home) due to a very last minute window of time and my standard impulse control problems ("But... moviessssss! I must ?!!")

I love TIFF and I haven't been in way too long. So I'm winging it which is not the best way to approach one of the biggest and bestest festivals in the world but we do what we can do in the way that we can do it. If you want to help The Film Experience be on sounder financial footing next year, and help Nathaniel maybe get to Cannes or Telluride for the first time  (I can dream!) please consider the subscription donation in the right hand side bar. If everyone who loved this site spent the price of a cup of coffee on the blog every month, the world would open up to us like an oyster. No... not like an oyster... 

Amir, who covered the festival for us last year, will be doing a bit more this year and I'll pick up the baton in a week for the last few days.  (My regular podcast mate Nick Davis (first timer!) is going, too. TFE friend / podcast mate Katey Rich, and yours truly, will arrive next week.) Then, almost as soon as I return to New York, Michael Cusumano (of "Burning Questions" fame) and I will start covering the 50th annual New York Film Festival (NYFF) for you. Sound good?

TIFF's opening day features an all star live reading of the American Beauty screenplay which we really wish we coulda been there for given that Christina Hendricks is doing Annette Bening's part. The opening film is Rian Johnson's time travel head scratcher LOOPER which is already winning positive reviews, omg!you-gotta-see-this type buzz and even some playful tweetdowns like this...

Are you excited that festival season is here? Which films are you most desperate to have in front of your eyeballs right this second?

Searching for Treasures at TIFF: A Top Dozen List

Hey Everyone. Amir here to preview the Toronto International Film Festival. There's less than a month to go before opening night. Those of you who follow the festival’s news regularly probably know that yesterday marked the completion of most of the festival’s strands, so we can officially start salivating all over the program book. Making a “Most Anticipated Films” list is a fool’s errand; TIFF’s lineup is so vast that the list would basically equate to everything that’s left to be screened in 2012 and then some. Titles like The Master, Anna Karenina, Argo (the latter of which I'm anticipating and dreading) and Cloud Atlas will feature on everyone’s list. There are also Cannes leftovers such as Rust & Bone, Reality, No and The Paperboy to be excited for, but I’m dedicating this list, to the pleasure of discovery which is the lifeblood of festivals.

Last year Nathaniel made a similar list of sixteen potential gems in advance of the festival. Some of those were films I would not have watched had he not suggested them, and I’m glad to say that one of them ended up not only as my top film of the festival, but the best film I saw all year. Here’s hoping we can strike gold again with any of these:

The Suicide Shop

12. A Liar’s Biography/The Suicide Shop

Yes, I hate "ties" as much as you when it comes to list-making but I wanted to round things out with an animated film and couldn’t decide between them. We've got a 3D fictionalized telling of Graham Chapman’s life through the perspective of the Monty Python gang or a Patrice Leconte musical about a family who help people take their own lives. Can you blame me for the indecision ?!?

12. The ABCs of Death

The Midnight Madness program is the one I’ve attended the least over the years, mostly because I see too many films in a day to have the energy at midnight. Yet this omnibus film seems like the perfect campy end to a festival day. Twenty-six directors from all over the world (including Ti West and Ben Wheatley) give us twenty-six alphabet inspired ways to die in a horror film.

10. Barbara

Barbara already screened at Berlinale to terrific reactions, but given that it has no Canadian distributor I’m watching. Director Christian Petzold netted a Silver Bear in Berlin and Nina Hoss, terrific in his last two films, returns to star in a third consecutive. The 80s-set story concerns a scientist forced to stay in a rural hospital as punishment by the East German government.

Isabelle Huppert, Terrence Malick, and Seven (or more) Pyschopaths after the jump.

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TIFF Lineup: Female Directors & Prestige Adaptations

 Paolo here. We should probably give in and see what this year's Toronto International Film Festival has to offer! Toronto marks the unofficial start of awards season, inflating or deflating much hyped movies and performances. Speaking of which, the locals can experience the star power of actual would be contenders.  Within the space of ten days, TIFF gives its paying audience access to a year's worth of art house cinema - these movies will be trickling out in limited release for at least a year to come.

Fine reasons to be excited but I have more personal reasons, too. 

Reason no. 1 They're bringing back some classics.
They're under the Cinematheque programme, spotlightling restorations like Dial M for Murder in 3D, Loin du Vietnam - a collaborative anti-war project involving a handful on 1960's auteurs like Godard, Agnes Varda, William Klein Alain Resnais and (RIP) Chris Marker. There's also Roberto Rosselini's Stromboli and Roman Polanski's Tess, the latter being an adapation of a Thomas Hardy novel that I've been reading the past month or so. Which brings me to reasons two, three and four... after the jump.

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TIFF Finale Pt. 2: Oscar Boosts, Oslo August, Wuthering Heights, and Personal Prizes

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post now includes personal prizes from both of our TIFF correspondents, Amir & Paolo. I thank them profusely for all the coverage this year! -Nathaniel R

Amir here, back with the wrap up to this year's Toronto International Film Festival coverage for TFE. The festival ended yesterday with Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? beating Iran's A Separation and Canada's Starbuck to take the top prize, the People's Choice Award.

For me personally, the festival went out with a bang as on the closing weekend I watched a very entertaining film called. ... wait for it... Where Do We Go Now? before it became the surprise winner. I have Nathaniel to thank because before he pointed this one out among his top 16 curiousities, it was not on my radar at all. On one hand, I'm a little upset that Nadine Labaki took the prize because this means A Separation came second. I haven't seen the latter yet but if you haven't guessed by the number of Iran-related films I covered, I'm from, you guessed it right, Iran. So if TIFF were to give legs to one Best Foreign Language Film Oscar contender, you know which team I’m rooting for. On the other hand, I did contribute to the People's Choice outcome by giving Labaki’s film a 5 star vote after my screening. My five star vote doesn't mean the film is perfect. Far from it, in fact. But I can overlook it's serious dramatic problems in favour of its many merits.

The film is about a group of women in a village in Lebanon who try to ease tensions between the Christian and Muslim men using methods ranging from hash cookies to bringing in Ukrainian strippers. Part comedy, part musical and part exercise in interreligious coexistence in the Middle East, the film should be applauded just for approaching something as controversial as the Muslim-Christian relationship with comedy. But the script also has serious problems, ignoring any development in its male characters and unable to make the profound emotional impact it's aiming for when it ventures, too far, towards the dramatic and serious. But it is consistently funny if contrived, and the musical sequences are marvellous. Best of all, its female ensemble is Volver-level fantastic, equally funny and poignant.

I'm certain we'll see this as a Best Foreign Language Film nominee though I doubt that the critics will fall head over heels. Based on the recent track record of the category, I’d say this film has a good shot at winning the actual Oscar over whichever critical darlings are nominated alongside it.

On the last weekend of the festival I also so quite a double feature: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Chicken with Plums and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights.

AMIR & PAOLO's favorites from the festival after the jump.

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