This year’s Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4th through the 14th and as usual will showcase the premieres of lots of exciting new gay films. Here’s a quick peek at some of the highlights.
This highly-anticipated British feature drama that took home the Queer Palm at Cannes and is set for a September 19th release here in the U.S. Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West and Paddy Considine star in this inspirational comedy-drama about a ragtag band of activists from London’s queer community who form an unlikely, anti-Thatcherite alliance with striking Welsh miners in 1984 Britain. Tony-winner Matthew Warchus directs from a script by Stephen Beresford.
Do I Sound Gay?
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
David Sedaris, Margaret Cho, Tim Gunn, George Takei and Dan Savage are featured in director David Thorpe’s documentary about the cultural history of the gay voice.
Guidance
Fabricating credentials to score a last-ditch job as a high school guidance counsellor, a closeted, boozing, drug-addled former child star becomes an improbable hit with his students by dispensing the worst advice possible, in this hilarious reprobate comedy from writer-director-star Pat Mills.
Cut Snake
The secrets of the past catch up with an ex-con who has rebuilt his life in a small Australian town, in this incendiary noir drama by Australian director Tony Ayres.
Love in the Time of Civil War
Quebec filmmaker Rodrigue Jean (Lost Song) takes a fearless, unflinching look at the reality of addiction in this tough-minded docudrama set in the bleak milieu of hustlers and junkies in Montreal.
Stories Of Our Lives
Created by the members of a Nairobi-based arts collective — who have removed their names from the film for fear of reprisal — this anthology film that dramatizes true-life stories from Kenya’s oppressed LGBTQ community is both a labour of love and a bold act of militancy.
Xenia
Following the death of their mother, two brothers undertake an odyssey from Athens to Thessaloniki in search of the father they have never met, in this wry and affecting road movie from Greek director Panos Koutras.
Heartbeat
Stuck in a go-nowhere job and a DOA personal life, a discombobulated Halifax twenty-something (singer-songwriter Tanya Davis) finds salvation by returning to her musical roots, in this vibrant comedy-drama from Festival veteran Andrea Dorfman (Love That Boy).
The Humbling
Advance word on this adaptation of the Phillip Roth novel about a straight guy having an affair with a lesbian is that the film is as awful as the book. Al Pacino stars as Roth’s alter-ego paragon of masculinity, with Greta Gerwig as the hasbian. Directed by Barry Levinson and co-starring Dianne Wiest, Charles Grodin and Kyra Sedgwick. We shall see.
The Vanished Elephant
In this new film from Undertow director Javier Fuentes-Leon, a crime novelist receives a vital clue to the whereabouts of his long-missing fiancée. This mind-bending mystery pays homage to Hollywood film noir and the reality-twisting fictions of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. It’s unclear from the TIFF catalog whether the film has actual gay content.
Click through for tickets and more info about the Toronto International Film Festival.
stranded
thank god, no bullshit gay guy loves a down low guy/hustler movie. No tragic love story where one dies… (well hopefully)