Much-anticipated films starring Kate Winslet, Emily Blunt and Olivia Colman are set to premiere at this year’s Toronto film festival.
The annual gathering of A-list stars is set to be an unusual edition as a result of the ongoing actors’ strike, which forbids members of the Screen Actors Guild from promoting certain films.
But the lineup is dominated by work made independently outside of the system, with many sales titles that are as yet unaffiliated with a studio or streamer, technically allowing actors to attend premieres.
One of the buzziest titles is Lee, still to be sold outside of the UK, starring Winslet as Lee Miller who went from a career as a Vogue model to a photographer working in the second world war. The cast also includes Marion Cotillard, Alexander Skarsgård and Andrea Riseborough. Winslet has called Miller “an inspiration of what you can achieve, and what you can bear, if you dare to take life firmly by the hands and live it at full throttle”.
Blunt, currently receiving positive notices for her role in Oppenheimer, will see her Netflix fact-based con drama Pain Hustlers hit the festival although the streamer association will prevent any form of promotional activity if the strike continues. She stars alongside Chris Evans as a woman involved in a pharmaceutical conspiracy with a tone likened to The Big Short.
After one Oscar win and another two nominations, Colman is re-entering the Oscar race with a role alongside her fellow nominee and The Lost Daughter co-star Jessie Buckley in 1920s-set comedic mystery Wicked Little Letters. The pair play suburban women who team up to uncover who is behind a series of obscene letters. Colman and co-producer Ed Sinclair have called it “as hilarious as it is unexpected with beautifully and affectionately drawn characters across the board”.
The festival will see Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones teaming up for the legal drama The Burial, based on a New Yorker article about a lawsuit filed against a funeral company. Ian McKellen, Lesley Manville and Gemma Arterton will also star in the Patrick Marber-scripted thriller The Critic, set in 1930s London focused on a dark web of secrets and lies involving an actor and a theatre critic.
Fresh from winning a Tony award for her role in Prima Facie, Jodie Comer will be starring with Benedict Cumberbatch in apocalyptic thriller The End We Start From. She will play a mother trying to survive in the midst of floods that devastate London. Elliot Page will make his big screen comeback with Close to You, a drama from the Bafta-winning director Dominic Savage. He’s referred to it as “a very special and unique film about love, identity and family”. The Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins also stars as the British humanitarian Nicholas Winton in the second world war drama One Life with Helena Bonham Carter.
The festival will see a number of actors in the director’s chair and given that the directors’ guild is not on strike, it could technically allow them to promote their work as directors. The list includes films from Michael Keaton, Viggo Mortensen, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine and Ethan Hawke.
Kristin Scott Thomas will also make her directorial debut with the comedy drama My Mother’s Wedding starring Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller and Freida Pinto. Scott Thomas has said it was “thrilling to create this fictional family using my own childhood memories as a springboard”.
Last week saw the Venice film festival, which takes place just before, announce that the previously confirmed opening film Challengers, starring Zendaya, would no longer be premiering as a result of the strike.
Toronto film festival’s CEO, Cameron Bailey, recently spoke about his concerns over the possible lack of big-name attendance.
“The presence of actors and the excitement the stars generate is important,” he said to Variety. “It’s important to several stakeholders, including some of our public partners, who build their engagement with us around the presence of those stars. It’s important to us because it’s worth a considerable amount of our revenue every year, and that’s under threat. That is a serious concern for us …”
The festival is used as an important stop on the awards circuit for those hoping for Oscar glory with last year seeing premieres of Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and All Quiet on the Western Front.