The race for the Oscars intensifies this week at the Toronto film festival, where a spotlight will be shined on American politics, youth radicalization, racism, feminism and alien arrivals.
Nearly 400 feature and short films from 83 countries will be screened at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival, the largest such even in North America, which opens Thursday and runs through Sept. 18.
The event is crucial for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors, attracting hundreds of filmmakers and actors to the red carpet in Canada’s largest city.
In past years, films such as “12 Years a Slave,” “The King’s Speech” and “Slumdog Millionaire” went on from winning the Toronto festival’s audience prize for best picture to take the top honor at the Oscars.
Last year, audience favorite “Spotlight” beat all predictions to win best picture at the Academy Awards, while Brie Larson — who is back again this year in “Free Fire” and “The Headhunter’s Calling” — received a nod for her performance in “Room,” which also screened here first.
“I don’t think anyone last year thought that ‘Spotlight’ would go all the way to best picture or that ‘Room’ would break out and become the kind of phenomena that it did,” said festival co-director Piers Handling.
Films being positioned for accolades this year include the new Denis Villeneuve sci-fi movie “Arrival,” and Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” about former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s massive 2013 leak revealing the extent of government snooping on private data.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s performances as a jazz musician and an aspiring actress who fall in love in the bewitching musical “La La Land,” which opened the Venice film festival before coming to Toronto, has also stirred up a frenzy.
“American Pastoral,” which looks back at the ideal American family torn apart by upheavals of the 1960s, and the true story of a boy separated from his family who searches for home 25 years later in Garth Davis’s “Lion” are also generating tremendous buzz.

Source: Arab News