Massive TIFF Comeback After Venice Dig and Bumpy Ride: What You Need to Know!

Welcome to a special version of the Envelope newsletter, your all-inclusive guide to awards season. For the next four days, we’re broadcasting live from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival’s opening weekend. The Times’ entertainment experts will bring you interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis from one of the premier events that traditionally jumpstarts the Oscar race. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox.

The day’s most talked-about premieres

Billy Corben, co-director of the documentary “Men of War,” describes it as a “crazy tale of Florida nonsense” — or, in TIFF’s slightly less explicit but equally dramatic description, “Rambo meets Fyre Fest”. The documentary, set to premiere on Friday, delves into Operation Gideon (also known as the Bay of Piglets), a failed coup attempt during the Trump era aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. An ex-Green Beret, American mercenaries, and around 60 insurrectionists allegedly tried to invade Venezuela by boat and overthrow Maduro. Spoiler alert: It ended with plenty of arrests.

Would you expect anything less from Corben, who has previously tackled topics such as drug traffickers in Miami, Jerry Falwell Jr. , Florida’s 2000 election debacle and Alex Rodriguez’s doping scandal?

“What begins as a geopolitical action thriller,” Corben explains to The Times, “turns into an unexpected character study and examination of what happens to Captain Americas and G.I. Joes when governments are done using them.”

The story and the documentary itself are still unfolding: The U.S. government seized the Venezuelan version of Air Force One a few days ago and the ex-Green Beret allegedly involved in the failed raid was recently released pending his trial in October. Maduro’s downfall may still occur.

Therefore, Corben and co-director Jen Gatien admit their film is “not 100% finalized yet. It’s essentially a work in progress now.” Coup-planning boats move quickly, but news moves even quicker. —Nicholas Ducassi

Other world premieres on Friday include Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl,” starring Pamela Anderson; Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” and Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh‘s romance “We Live in Time.” View the complete Friday schedule here.

READ MORE: A modern take on a classic at TIFF: It’s not just ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ with cellphones

A possible awards nominee to look out for

Pedro Almodóvar, director (“The Room Next Door”)

There are few filmmakers who have explored the emotional lives of women as thoroughly — or as vibrantly — as Almodóvar. In his first feature film in English, “The Room Next Door,” the Spanish writer-director has enlisted two actresses who seamlessly fit into his unique melodramatic world: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. They play New York authors and old friends who reconnect during a critical moment. In her first collaboration with Almodóvar, Moore stars as Ingrid, the writer of a bestselling book about her fear of death, who discovers that her former colleague, Martha (Swinton, who has previously appeared in Almodóvar’s short film “The Human Voice”) is battling cervical cancer. The women meet up and quickly realize that despite the years apart, their bond remains strong. When Martha learns that her treatments are failing, she asks Ingrid to accompany her on a vacation (of sorts) to a house in upstate New York that could be featured in Architectural Digest, where she plans to spend a few weeks lounging by the pool before taking a euthanasia pill to end her suffering. Although hesitant at first, Martha eventually agrees to the plan. Adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through,” “The Room Next Door” lacks the wild plot twists usually seen in Almodóvar’s work — it mostly consists of Ingrid and Martha catching up on the couch — and is anchored by universally relevant themes of mortality and personal freedom. However, as expected from Almodóvar, it is a pleasure to watch, with meticulously composed shots and vibrant bursts of red, green and blue — a beauty that feels particularly defiant in the face of the inevitable fate that awaits us all. —Meredith Blake

Q&A of the day

The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on Thursday with the opening night world premiere of David Gordon Green’s friendly comedy “Nutcrackers” starring Ben Stiller. Other notable world premieres in the coming days include Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch,” Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl,” Rachel Morrison’s “The Fire Inside,” David Mackenzie’s “Relay,” Janicza Bravo’s “The Listeners” and Ron Howard’s “Eden.” The festival will conclude with Rebel Wilson’s directorial debut, “The Deb.”

Just over a week before this year’s festival launch, The Times spoke to TIFF Chief Executive Cameron Bailey and Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee about this year’s program, the current state of film festivals, and a recent poke at TIFF from the head of the Venice Film Festival. —Mark Olsen

This has been a turbulent year for film festivals globally: Leadership changes at Berlin and Sundance; the potential location change for Sundance; TIFF losing its longtime sponsor, Bell, and now Rogers taking over. Can you give me some insight into what the last year has been like from within the organization? With so much happening in the film festival world, how does that feel?

Cameron Bailey: We’re all emerging from the pandemic, and that has brought about a lot of change. At the same time, there have been technological and cultural shifts in the movie world, such as the rise of streaming that coincided with the pandemic years of staying indoors on our couches. There have also been challenges to the theatrical industry. Our own theaters were closed for a long time. Coming out of that, it has been a bit of a rocky ride. Every organization has their own specific circumstances, as did we. Some of it was natural organic change, and some of it was a result of all these things happening at once. We’re lucky that we’ve been able to come out stronger. We’ve had a very successful year this year. Our theaters are thriving year-round. We’ve got a great lineup at the festival. We know our audience is back because we’re tracking ticket sales already. Our memberships are up. So that’s all worked. But I would say the last 12 to 18 months before that have been tough.

Anita Lee: From a programming perspective, [we’re] bouncing back from two very tough COVID years and last year we were interrupted by the strike. We’re very optimistic for this year. It feels like we’ve actually had the opportunity to prepare and think about the balance that we want to see at the festival. So we’re quite excited that without external disruption, we feel that we are presenting a programming slate for the festival that really represents the full spectrum that we would like to see.

Cameron, you and I have had many discussions before and you are always diplomatic when talking about the other fall festivals and relationships between the fests. Recently, your colleague Alberto Barbera, artistic director at the Venice Film Festival, was a little less diplomatic when he said in an interview, “There’s almost no press in Toronto,” and that Venice is a much better platform to launch a film. I’m curious what your response is to those comments.

Bailey: I think the thousands of people covering the festival in Toronto would be surprised to hear that kind of remark. All of us who run festivals are trying to find the best movies we can and present them to audiences and really show how important it is to bring films to film culture and to the industry. And the media’s a big part of that. We all have our different ways of doing it. We might describe it in different ways, but I think in a world where people have so much more choice than they used to, and are sometimes paralyzed by that choice, festivals become especially important. You want to know, “What are the key films that I have to pay attention to this year? What are the ones that are going to be most worth talking about, most exciting, most transformative?” We’re all trying to do that at film festivals, and I think that’s something to be celebrated.

Anita, how do you deal with the behind-the-scenes competition with Telluride, Venice, and New York?

Lee: I always emphasize the fact that we’re very different festivals, especially with Toronto being such a large public film festival. And I think that really influences us in terms of our approach to programming. Of course, there are films and filmmakers that, whether it’s premiered at Venice or at Cannes, we want to bring to our audiences. But I think we are also very clear on what we can do for film launches and our public audience is such a bellwether of conversations to come. There is, of course, this friendly and sometimes slightly more competitive competition. But I think at the end of the day, each festival is very, very different. And most films and stakeholders we work with understand the difference.

The strategy that you have of programming films that just premiered at Venice or Telluride on Monday or later during TIFF, is that something you’d ever reconsider? I’ve seen a number of people note, for example, that Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” isn’t playing until Tuesday, and it seemed like it would’ve been such a natural fit on Saturday night.

Bailey: The reason behind it basically, and it goes back probably a decade or more now, is to try to protect some space for the films that are coming as world premieres in the first half of the festival. And it’s not for every venue. It’s really just for our largest venues. That allows those films to really have that spotlight because this is the very first time anyone will see them.

Another title I wanted to ask about specifically is Angelina Jolie’s “Without Blood.” When the announcement came out for the galas and special presentations, it wasn’t in the headlines of the press release and you had to read quite far down to find it. And it’s playing a relatively small venue at the festival instead of one of the larger houses. With that film in particular, is there a reason that it seems like it’s coming in under the radar?

Bailey: I wouldn’t call anything Angelina Jolie does under the radar, honestly. This is a film that is very much in line with the other films she’s made as a director, which is very much about the impact of war and conflict on people, and especially women. This is probably her third film that’s specifically on that theme. It’s not a war movie at all. It’s primarily a film of ideas. It’s a chamber drama in many ways. It’s about the long-term impact of conflict on a woman who’s played as an adult by Salma Hayek. And she’s amazing in the movie. But we really do try to find the right venue in terms of the scale and the atmosphere for each film. And I think this is one that’s really going to be exactly right for the film and the big, deep ideas that Angelina Jolie is exploring in it.

Lee: It was also about wanting to clearly distinguish her work as an actor from her work as a filmmaker, which is very, very different. And I will just share that you will hear a big, big announcement this week as related to Angelina Jolie in the festival. [One day after this interview, TIFF announced Jolie would be receiving a tribute award at the festival’s annual fundraising awards gala.]

Inside the Los Angeles Times Studio

Our team on the ground at TIFF will be capturing photos and videos of the directors, writers, and stars visiting our studio from Friday through Monday. Check back here in each edition of our Envelope: TIFF Daily newsletter for highlights.