TIFF: Cord Jefferson’s ‘American Fiction’ With Jeffrey Wright Wins Toronto Film Fest Audience Award

Michaela Zee After winning this year’s Toronto International Film Festival’s people’s choice award, “American Fiction” has pushed back its limited release to Dec. 15 and will expand in theaters on Dec. 22.

EXCLUSIVE: Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial debut, American Fiction, is changing up its release plan from Nov. 3rd limited opening to Dec. 15.

Pop the cork and celebrate Haley Bennett in Widow Clicquot, a fast-paced and sexy biopic of the woman known as Madame “Veuve” Clicquot, or by her actual full name, Barbe Nicole Ponsardin-Clicquot, who triumphed over all odds to become the force that created and brought to the world the leading brand of Champagne. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.

TORONTO – “American Fiction,” the directorial debut from Cord Jefferson, is genuinely a very, very funny movie. And that’s hyperbole on our part.

The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2023 Toronto Film Festival has gone to American Fiction . First Runner Up is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Second Runner Up was Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy And The Heron . The Documentary Award went to Mr. Dressup: The Magic Of Make-Believe, ,and the Midnight Madness winner was Dicks: The Musical.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “American Fiction,” Cord Jefferson’s satire of race and media, captured the Toronto International Film Festival’s people’s choice award, bolstering its Oscars chances. TIFF’s people’s choice award is considered to be among the best predictors of eventual awards success, though the 2023 festival hosted a weaker lineup than most years due to the writers and actors strikes that saw some prominent contenders skip a Canadian premiere. In the past, winners of the prize such as “Green Book,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Nomadland” went on to be named best picture at the Academy Awards.

A new trend on the fall festival circuit this year is the biopic of the unknown hero, something that seems unthinkable now in the digital age. There’s One Life, about the Schindler-like achievements of Nicholas Winton, who saved nearly 700 Jewish children from certain death in German-occupied Prague. There’s Rustin, about the gay, Black activist who organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — literally, right down to the toilet facilities — and had to wait 50 years for an official thank-you.

Watching Mountains, which just made its international debut as part of the Toronto Film Festival’s Centerpiece program, I could not help but think of two other landmark films it seems to recall in its own way. One was 2019’s The Last Black Man In San Francisco, a remarkable story of gentrification and its effect on those being edged out of their home that starred Jimmie Falls and launched the career of Jonathan Majors. The other was the 1960 film version of Lorraine Hansberry’s oft-performed A Raisin In The Sun in which Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger played a struggling husband, son, and father with a dream for a new house and a better life for his family.

When I was in college cinema courses I made a Super 8 film called Movie Girl. It was a Hollywood-set love letter to movies centered on a Musso & Franks waitress who put herself dreamily into the plots of classic films. It won an award there but was the highlight of the directing career I never had. However I have always been partial to filmmakers who put their own early film going experience and passion into their careers now. You may have heard of them. Kenneth Branagh won an Oscar for doing just that in Belfast. Steven Spielberg got several nominations last year for his very personal The Fabelmans . Woody Allen had his own charming take in The Purple Rose Of Cairo. Peter Bogdanovich made a lasting impression with 1971’s The Last Picture Show, as did Giuseppe Tornatore with his Oscar winner, Cinema Paradiso. It is a combination of the latter two especially that might describe the feel of the latest movie about the love of movies, The Movie Teller (La Contadora de Peliculas) which had its World Premiere tonight at the Toronto Film Festival. And just in sheer numbers of classic film clips incorporated into its near two hour running time, this one sets a record in the little sub-genre. For movie lovers everywhere The Movie Teller is a must see.

Depending on who you speak to, Aggro Dr1ft has either been a hideous blight on the fall festival circuit or… Well, currently, there’s not exactly a consensus on what there is to love about Harmony Korine’s in-your-face fantasia, a nightmare vision of Florida made all the more hellish by its refusal to resemble anything you might expect even — or perhaps especially — from the director of Spring Breakers.

Brent Lang Executive Editor It’s been a Toronto Film Festival like few others. The writers and actors strikes meant that many A-listers opted not to touch down in Canada this year, depriving the gathering of film lovers of the star-studded red carpets and Q&As that make Toronto so memorable. Even if this year’s festival was starved for glamour, it was still a good opportunity to get a clearer picture of the awards race — and to check the pulse of Hollywood at a tumultuous time for the industry.

The Burial is a not-so-great title; it sounds like a horror film. I hope it doesn’t keep people away from this highly entertaining, crowd-pleasing movie that otherwise is an example of what good old fashioned Hollywood filmmaking can still be all about in the right hands. It feels bigger than life, but it is based on some pretty big lives indeed.

In 2019, Australian documentary filmmaker Kitty Green made her first narrative movie, a piercing almost cinéma vérité-style movie focused on an office assistant in a Tribeca film company run by a not-so-thinly disguised Harvey Weinstein. The male culture there and the sexual acts of the boss made it almost a modern horror story at the height of the #MeToo movement. For Green’s second narrative film she has changed up the filmmaking style considerably, but with The Royal Hotel which premiered last week at Telluride and now premieres tonight at the Toronto Film Festival, she is taking an even deeper look at the dark side of men as seen through the female gaze in a broken down hotel bar in a desolate part of the Australian Outback.

Colman Domingo shows off his award following the TIFF Tribute Gala during the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend.

Making a grand entrance into the world of directing, Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard present their feature debut, Hell of a Summer. With the vibes reminiscent of Friday the 13th and Sleep Away Camp, this film delivers nostalgia that captures the essence of the golden age of horror slasher cinema. Each character checks off the 1980s horror trope boxes, ensuring that every campy moment feels both authentic and delightfully over the top. Bryk and Wolfhard also star.

Michael Keaton, after making his directorial debut with 2008’s The Merry Gentleman, steps behind the camera for only the second time with his latest film, Knox Goes Away in which he also delivers one of his finest and most poignant performances as a man facing a rare form of fast moving dementia, but who is racing the clock to save his estranged son’s life before it is too late.

In an unexpected twist, the prison bars have transformed into curtains, drawing back to reveal a compelling story of redemption, humanity, and artistry. Sing Sing, adapted from the Sing Sing Follies by Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin,  and impeccably directed by Greg Kwedar, is more than just a film about prison life. It’s a love letter to the transformative power of performing arts, smartly penned by screenwriters Kwedar and Clint Bentley. This emotional drama stars Colman Domingo, Paul Raci, John “Divine G” Whitfield, Sean San Jose, Jon-Adrian Velazquez, David J. Giraudy, Sean “Dino” Johnson, and  Sean “Divine Eye” Johson. 

Fall film festivals are usually where we look for the more serious awards bait pictures, but occasionally as with tonight’s rousing World Premiere of Taikia Waititi’s long-gestating American Somoan soccer comedy, Next Goal Wins, you get a real commercial crowd pleaser.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Patricia Arquette, Lulu Wang, Finn Wolfhard, Barry Jenkins, Camila Morrone, Willem Dafoe and Colman Domingo mixed and mingled at Variety and Chanel’s annual female filmmaker dinner during the Toronto Film Festival. At the glamorous event, held on Saturday night at Soho House and hosted by Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh, VIP attendees nibbled on tuna tartare, striploin steak and heirloom tomato salad as they toasted the recipients of Chanel’s Women Writers’ Network. The year-round program is designed to advance the careers of women and non-binary alumni of the TIFF Writers’ Studio.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In Cord Jefferson’s idea-dense “American Fiction,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern reworking of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” (hardly bestseller material to begin with), but all the industry can see is the color of his skin.