Film4 confirms 6 titles for Toronto International Film Festival

19 August 2014

 

 

Six Film4 films have been selected for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival – three of which will be world premieres.

The prestigious festival will see the world premieres of Lone Scherfig’s The Riot Club, Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy and Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming, as well as the North American Premieres of Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Gerard Johnson’s Hyena and Yann Demange’s ’71.

Tessa Ross, Channel 4 Controller of Film and Drama, said: “We're really delighted by these invitations. Toronto is always a wonderful place for unveiling British films and it’s very exciting to be premiering such a great range of work there this Autumn."

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival will take place between 4th-14th September.

The titles:

At Oxford University the hottest invitation is to The Riot Club; a world where the bright, privileged and wealthy take their first steps in becoming the future masters of the universe. Miles and Alistair’s personal rivalry and jealousy ignite an evening where verbal pyrotechnics and vaulting ambition reign and eventually the wolf pack turn on one of their own. In the same vein as The Social Network, Lone Scherfig’s The Riot Club, based on Laura Wade’s play Posh, exposes the insecurities and viciousness of the young elite.

Peter Strickland’s eagerly anticipated follow up to Berberian Sound Studio and Katalin Varga explores the intense relationship between two women. The Duke of Burgundy is a dark melodrama about an amateur butterfly expert whose wayward desires test her lover's tolerance. Stars Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara d’Anna.

Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming follows a tight family unit navigating their way through family life as it breaks down in the aftermath of an unexplained pregnancy. Stars Nadine Marshall and Idris Elba.

Mr. Turner, written and directed by Mike Leigh, explores the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner, played by Timothy Spall. Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.

In Hyena, written and directed by Gerard Johnson, Michael Logan, played by Peter Ferdinando, is a complex mix of high-functioning addict and corrupt police officer whose world is changing thanks to a recent influx of ruthless Albanian gangsters who are threatening to change London's criminal landscape. Michael's razor sharp instincts have always kept him one step ahead, but now his increasingly self-destructive behaviour and the sheer brutality of the new gang lords find Michael in a spiralling descent of fear and self-doubt.

A young British soldier, played by Jack O’Connell, is accidentally abandoned by his unit following a terrifying riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971 in Yann Demange’s ‘71. Unable to tell friend from foe, the raw recruit must survive the night alone and find his way to safety through a disorienting, alien and deadly landscape.