You've heard about Widows opening the fest. You've seen the preview for First Man a hundred times. You've even started reading If Beale Street Could Talk so you can be the first on your block to talk about how Barry Jenkins captures the essence of James Baldwin better than any other filmmaker. Even then, you've barely scratched the surface of all the excellent films playing at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, which gets started on Thursday. We'll be on hand throughout the festival with reviews and reactions, but first, here are six films premiering at TIFF that we're super excited about.
Jeremiah Terminator Leroy
Any biographical drama that stars Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern will automatically have our attention, but the fact that they’re starring in a film about one of the literary world’s greatest hoaxes — not the Melissa McCarthy one, mind you — makes this work from King Cobra director Justin Kelly a must-see. In 2006, it turned out that author JT Leroy, a one-time literary sensation with an impossibly ugly and fascinating backstory, never actually existed, having been created by writer Laura Albert (Dern) for a number of fascinating reasons. Leroy’s “life” has been the subject of plenty of cinematic scrutiny, but with the character’s fresh relevance in the news, this narrative feature feels a bit more immediate than some of its documentary forbearers.
