Toronto film festival to look at women's strides

North America's largest film festival opens Thursday in Toronto with a spotlight on music, the rise of women directors, illegal immigration and 9/11. "It's a strong year for music documentaries, and there are some very provocative films by women," festival co-director Cameron Bailey said in an interview with AFP. And "there's a noticeable response to the immigration crisis in Europe," he said. "We've seen documentaries on this subject in the past, but this year we see several (fiction) filmmakers dealing with people banging on Europe's door, and how Europe is responding to that." The Toronto film festival opens Thursday evening for the first time ever with a documentary and runs until September 18 showcasing 268 feature films, and 68 shorts from 59 countries, including 123 world premieres.The opener "From The Sky Down," directed by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" on climate change featuring former US vice president Al Gore, tells the story of the popular Irish band U2. U2 will be in town for the event, as will Pearl Jam and Neil Young -- both also subjects of new documentaries.On Sunday, a four-minute short film "looking back at what happened" will mark the 10-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the United States. "9/11 happened during our festival 10 years ago, and it was horrific and overwhelming for a lot of people, especially Americans who were stranded here," said Bailey. The festival will also see new works by William Friedkin ("Killer Joe") and Francis Ford Coppola ("Twixt"), and feature North American premieres of films by Pedro Almodovar, George Clooney, Madonna and controversial Danish director Lars von Trier. Astounding interest in Clooney's "The Ides of March," set in the days leading up to a fictional presidential primary, led to false reports that the entire festival had sold out, but organizers insist there are still tickets to be had. In the female director category, the festival is featuring Andrea Arnold's "revisionist adaptation" of Emily Bronte's classic novel "Wuthering Heights," Chantal Akerman's "Almayer's Folly," based on Joseph Conrad's debut novel, and Agnieszka Holland's "In Darkness," about Jews hiding in sewers in WWII Poland to escape deportation to death camps, as well as Julia Leigh ("Sleeping Beauty") and Jennifer Westfeld ("Friends with Kids"). "It's still a bit of a struggle for female directors," Bailey commented. Kathryn Bigelow became the first female director to win an Academy Award last year for "Hurt Locker," which was screened in 2008 at the Toronto film festival, beating out her ex-husband James Cameron's "Avatar.""One of the struggles women directors face is that (they are perceived) to be able to only tell certain kinds of stories, soft stories about women or about emotion. Kathryn proved that wrong. But it's still a barrier to a lot of women." A lot of producers and studios still ask, "Can she command a big budget, a large crew -- typical chauvinism -- and are women's perspectives on human conflict and drama interesting to a general audience, i.e. a male audience.""Kathryn's success is interesting because she won an Oscar for a film with no women in it," Bailey noted. In contrast, the trailer for Tanya Wexler's very saucy "Hysteria" about the invention of the electro-mechanical vibrator has been the most downloaded from the festival's website. From Europe, several new films explore issues of illegal immigration and integration: "The Invader," "Hotel Swooni," "The Cardboard Village," "Terraferma" and "Color of the Ocean." And there is more fare from the Arab world because the festival has hired a new Beirut-based programmer to broaden its offerings from Africa and the Middle East. "There wasn't an immediate interest in perspectives from the Arab world right after 9/11," Bailey said. "The first response was fear and paranoia; you saw a lot of that in art that was made in the immediate aftermath throughout the West. It's only now that we see curiosity and greater engagement with the voices from the Arab world."The Toronto film festival is the biggest in North America and has traditionally been a key event for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors. This year, stars including Brad Pitt, Clive Owen, Freida Pinto, Glenn Close, Rachel Weisz, Salma Hayek and Viggo Mortensen are expected to grace the red carpet.Audiences will also be treated to strong performances by Woody Harrelson in "Rampart," Matthew McConaughey in "Killer Joe," Juliette Binoche in "Elles," and Michael Fassbender in "A Dangerous Method."