Toronto Fest adds movies, talks with Julianne Moore, Salma Hayek

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Toronto International Film Festival has added another 30-plus features to complete its lineup of almost 400 films, also scheduling conversations with Julianne Moore, Salma Hayek, Sarah Silverman and Matthew Weiner for its 40th annual festival, TheWrap reports.

The new additions, the last that will be announced before this year’s festival kicks off on Sept. 10, mean that the 2015 TIFF will consist of 399 films, 289 features and 110 short films, from 71 different countries. Out of that number, 132 are world premieres, 27 are international premieres and 97 are North American premieres.

The films were drawn from 6,118 submissions.

The In Conversation With … program, which replaces TIFF’s previous Mavericks program, will consist of onstage conversations with Julianne Moore, whose Oscar-winning performance in “Still Alice” premiered in Toronto last year, and who stars in “Freeheld” at this year’s festival; Salma Hayek, who appears at TIFF in “Septembers of Shiraz” and Cannes title “Tale of Tales”; Sarah Silverman, the comic and actress who will be at TIFF with “I Smile Back,” a harrowing drama about addiction in which she plays her darkest and most formidable role ever; and “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, whose landmark series came to an end this year.

The Discovery program, which consists of films by up-and-coming directors, will add 25 films, among them the world premiere of “Five Nights in Maine,” with David Oyelowo and Dianne Wiest.

Other Discovery features include “Dégradé,” which is set in a beauty salon on the Gaza Strip, where a group of women are trapped after a gang steals a lion from the zoo; “James White,” which stars Cynthia Nixon and Christopher Abbott and marks the directorial debut of “Martha Marcy May Marlene” producer Josh Mond; and “Very Big Shot,” a reverse “Argo” in which a Lebanese drug dealer poses as a film producer to smuggle amphetamines into Kurdistan.

The 1995 Michael Man film “Heat,” with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, has been added to the TIFF Cinematheque section of older films.

The TIFF Kids section, also announced on Tuesday, will include films from Japan, Sweden and Germany, as well as “Phantom Boy,” a new animated feature from “A Cat in Paris” directors Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli, and the world premiere of the remastered, expanded version of Brad Bird‘s “The Iron Giant,” with two new scenes.

And the TIFF Next Wave program, which was chosen by 12 Toronto students between the ages of 15 and 18, identified 10 films from across the festival suitable for teen audiences, from Davis Guggenheim‘s documentary “He Named Me Malala” to Hany Abu-Assad‘s “The Idol.”

The festival also announced a number of outdoor programs, from the Questival walking quiz to a music stage that will present a ballet based on the classic Frederick Wiseman documentary “Titicut Follies,” a performance by Mohammed Assaf, the winner of “Arab Idol” and the subject of the TIFF film “The Idol,” and a movie-themed ukulele jam session.