TIFF Industry Selects Section Includes Steve Buscemi’s ‘The Listener’, Bill Pohlad’s ‘Dreamin’ Wild’; Jason Reitman’s Live Read Returns

Brendan Fraser fought back tears as “The Whale” received a passionate standing ovation at its Toronto International Film Festival premiere on Sunday. The crowd stood for roughly five minutes until festival organizers quieted the applause to begin a question and answer session with Fraser, director Darren Aronofsky, writer Samuel D. Hunter and cast members Sadie Sink and Ty Simpkins. The reception was one of the strongest yet at this year’s festival, a gathering that has already included the premieres of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” TIFF was set to be a big festival for Fraser even before “The Whale” screened to huge acclaim. The actor is receiving the TIFF Tribute Award for Performance at the 2022 festival, with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey saying, “Brendan Fraser gives a performance of staggering depth, power, and nuance in ‘The Whale.’ This former Torontonian has been an action star, a screen comic, and a romantic lead. We’re thrilled to welcome him home as the actor behind one of the finest performances of the year.”

Manori Ravindran International Editor The stars descended on Soho House in downtown Toronto on Saturday for Variety and Chanel’s Female Filmmakers’ Dinner during the Toronto International Film Festival. Guests in attendance included Tilda Swinton, star of Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter”; Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of “The Woman King”; Darren Aronofsky, director of “The Whale”; and Anna Kendrick, who’s in Toronto shopping her new AGC Studios project “The Dating Game” to market buyers. Stars mingled on a packed rooftop before convening in the club’s private dining room, which gathered around 100 of the festival’s bright lights in filmmaking. They dined on a bespoke Soho House menu of beef tartare with black truffle, black cod and bok choy, and wagyu rib cap with porcini purée.

Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” earned a roaring standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, as the crowd of movie lovers cheered loudly for the Oscar-winning auteur as he made his first appearance at the gathering. “I’m really glad we came to Toronto,” a visibly moved Spielberg said after taking the stage as the credits rolled.  The director said he was inspired by the COVID pandemic to tell his most personal story yet, a look at his early filmmaking efforts, his childhood in Arizona and Northern California, and the dissolution of his family. However, he reassured the crowd at TIFF that this would not serve as his farewell to movies.“This is not because I’m going to retire and this is my swan song,” he said. “Don’t believe any of that.”

Christopher Vourlias The weeks leading up to a world premiere are typically a time of celebration and anticipation for the filmmakers, particularly when that premiere is taking place at the Toronto Film Festival. But for the team behind “Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman,” which is produced by Mo Abudu’s EbonyLife Films and Netflix and will screen in the festival’s Special Presentations section, there will be a long shadow cast across the red carpet on opening night. Just weeks ahead of the film’s world premiere on Sept. 10, director Biyi Bandele died in Lagos, Nigeria. His sudden, tragic passing on the eve of what would have been his crowning achievement as a filmmaker sent shockwaves through the film community, particularly in Africa and across the diaspora.

Standing between Steve Buscemi’s newest directorial effort, “The Listener,” and his last time on the director’s chair for the Sienna Miller-starring drama “Interview” is a whopping 15 years. Buscemi has been open about his desire to direct again, but nothing seemed to work out until Oscar-nominated writer Alessandro Camon knocked on his door, script in hand.

Guy Lodge Film Critic If you found yourself wide awake in the wee small hours with personal demons rattling in your brain, and you picked up the phone to share them with a patient, neutral stranger, Tessa Thompson’s measured, calming voice is more or less exactly what you’d hope to hear on the other end of the line. As Beth, a night-shift volunteer for a crisis helpline, the actor’s naturally gentle, benevolent presence is the chief asset of Steve Buscemi’s minor-key chamber drama “The Listener” — not that she has a host of elements to compete with in what amounts, on screen at least, to a one-woman show.  Thompson’s unforced credibility isn’t shared, however, by a flat, superficial script that treats an assortment of mental health ailments as quirky conversation fuel. Each anguished call that Beth takes, over the course of one long, dark night of assorted souls, is written less like a recognizable human exchange than as an actor’s heightened audition piece, and played out as such by a voice-only ensemble stacked with distractingly recognizable names. Though the global pandemic is only incidentally mentioned, “The Listener” plays in all aspects like a project conceived in the most self-searching and self-indulgent depths of the isolation era. It’s hard to imagine audiences wanting to enter that headspace now.

Taylor Swift fever hit the Toronto Film Festival on Friday night as the singer-songwriter star passed through with actress Sadie Sink to present her 10-minute work All Too Well: The Short Film, followed by an hour-long In Conversation event with festival CEO Cameron Bailey.

William Earl In the wake of winning the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year, Taylor Swift brought “All Too Well: The Short Film” to the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9 for a discussion in front of scores of devoted fans. How devoted? The first group of fans in line arrived at midnight, the second group at 5 a.m. — and they didn’t even have tickets yet, but were hoping that will call would answer their prayers, or that they would catch a glimpse of Swift walking by. The talk, alongside TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, focused on her directorial process and thinking of her music from a visual angle. It was also coupled with the first 35mm screening of “All Too Well,” which she wrote, directed, produced and makes an appearance in.

In his acting life, Steve Buscemi has certainly mixed things up, finding time for Bruckheimer/Simpson blockbusters, Pixar animation and even Adam Sandler movies in a bid to avoid typecasting as the definitive New York indie guy. In his directing career, however, he tends to stick to a certain genre: small, intimate, personal films like his excellent 1996 debut Trees Lounge, which told the story of a melancholic underachiever whose life revolves around a seedy dive bar where the crowd of misfit regulars become his bizarre de facto family. Loneliness is a familiar motif in Buscemi’s work, and he excelled himself with that in 2005’s Lonesome Jim, starring Casey Affleck as a young man who’s failed in the big city and now has to move in with his parents.

Manori Ravindran International Editor The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on a historic day with one of its strongest opening films in years in Sally El Hosaini’s “The Swimmers,” but what some audience members will likely remember is the stressful experience of getting to Roy Thomson Hall in the first place. TIFF, which has gone digital this year via Ticketmaster, has been plagued with ticketing issues all week thanks to a complicated voucher process for public tickets. While it was hoped that many of the technical kinks would be ironed out by opening night, this wasn’t the case. Media outlets, including Variety, that received opening night tickets from the film’s studio — in this case, Netflix — didn’t receive their tickets in time for the screening due to “technical glitches” and had to be rounded up and escorted to their seats by representatives for the streamer.

The stars are stepping out for Il Ballo Della Luce!

Tessa Thompson is rocking two more looks at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

Veteran producer Mel Eslyn’s feature directorial debut Biosphere, starring Emmy winners Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) and Mark Duplass (The Morning Show), will be making its world premiere as a surprise Special Presentation at the 47th edition of the Toronto Film Festival. The film will make its festival bow in the Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre at 2:30 p.m. on September 10th.

Taylor Swift is set to make an exciting appearance at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Bankside Films has boarded international sales for Steve Buscemi-directed Venice Film Festival drama The Listener, starring Tessa Thompson (Creed).

of late, from the translucent Interior NYC gown she wore to Westworld’s season four premiere to the dramatic and cycling shorts she sported on the streets of London earlier this summer.Over at Venice Film Festival, the actor has already delivered a series of stand-out moments—arriving in style in , paired with a clashing Vivienne Westwood bag and bright red gloves. This was quickly followed up with a black tulle skirt and oversized blazer by Rodarte, worn with a black bralette underneath.For her latest red-carpet appearance on Wednesday, August 31, Thompson opted for vintage—stepping out for the White Noise premiere in a sci-fi inspired look from Armani Privé’s autumn/winter 2009 couture show.

Clayton Davis In a world where politicians use mental health as mere talking points when discussing gun violence and suicide rates, Steve Buscemi’s “The Listener” addresses the crisis head-on. Written by Alessandro Camon, the Oscar-nominated scribe of “The Messenger” (2009), the film follows a helpline volunteer named Beth, played by Tessa Thompson, who is an integral part of the small army of counselors who field calls from all kinds of people who feel lonely and broken. The film unspools at the Venice Festival’s Giornate degli Autori and is the closing film of Venice Days on Sept. 9. Buscemi can sympathize with anyone who feels lost and broken, especially as he is still reeling from losing his wife Jo Andres in January 2019; they had been married for over 30 years. While in pre-production, the director and producer called a helpline number. “At first, it was in the name of research,” Buscemi told Variety. “I had these dreams in the night involving my late wife, and it was reason enough for me to call. I had an amazing 15-minute talk with this person. I’ll never know who she was, and I never told her who I was. I just talked about Jo, and it was important.”

Tessa Thompson (Westworld) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Super Pumped) are are attached to star in the sci-fi thriller Ash, which the Grammy-winning musician and filmmaker Flying Lotus — otherwise known as Steven Ellison — will direct as his sophomore feature, as we first reported in January. Neill Blomkamp (District 9) has since then come aboard to exec produce the pic, which its financier XYZ Films will rep for worldwide sales at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival.

The Everything Everywhere All at Once and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress is set to receive the Toronto International Film Festival’s  inaugural TIFF Share Her Journey Groundbreaker Award presented by BVLGARI at the fest’s upcoming Tribute Awards on Sunday, Sept. 11 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.