A still from Rosine Mbakam’s ‘Mambar Pierrette’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The Toronto Film Festival’s Wavelengths program for artist-driven experimental work has been unveiled. The list includes films by Denis Côté, Radu Jude, the late Chantal Akerman and Wang Bing.
The films up for selection are Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, Angela Schanelec’s Music, and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia. The list also includes Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette and Vietnamese director Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,” Andréa Picard, TIFF senior curator, said in a statement according to The Hollywood Reporter.
As far as documentaries are concerned, the TIFF section selected Youth (Spring) from Wang Bing, Miko Revereza’s Nowhere Near, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts, and Paul B. Preciado’s Orlando, My Political Biography.
Wavelengths booked Radu Jude’s feminist satire Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, and Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge 3. The program also has a restored selection of the late Chantal Akerman’s Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera, Jean-Luc Godard’s last film, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars; and Pedro Costa’s Daughters of Fire.
Apart from this the selection also includes a Classic Lineup featuring 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, Brigitte Berman’s Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got, Jacques Rivette’s L’amour fou, a 50th-anniversary screening of Sengalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Boukic and Ousmane Sembène’s Xala. The Toronto Film Festival, set to run Sept. 7 to 17, will open its 2023 edition with Japanese anime legend Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, The Boy and the Heron.