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Looking for the next Barry Jenkins, Pietro Marcello, William Oldroyd, or Darius Marder? Let the Toronto International Film Festival’s auteur-focused and discovery-minded Platform section help.

Today, the festival has announced its 2025 Platform program lineup, marking the tenth anniversary of the fest’s auteur competitive section, which “champions bold directorial vision and distinctive storytelling.”

This year’s edition features 10 films representing 19 countries. The program opens with the World Premiere of “Steve,” from Belgian director Tim Mielants, starring Tracey Ullman and Academy Award–winner Cillian Murphy. The film is Mielants’ first appearance at TIFF and his third collaboration with Murphy.

Per usual, the section is juried by a three-person team of luminaries. This year, they include Jury Chair and Spanish film writer, editor, and director Carlos Marqués-Marcet, who won the 2024 Platform Award for “They Will Be Dust.” He is joined by Oscar-nominated actor, writer, composer, and director Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was...

It’s no secret that Francophone cinema tends to have a more liberal view of sex, but even in that milieu, the writer Catherine Léger stands out. Her films “Slut in a Good Way” and “Babysitter” are both festival darlings that tackle the intricacies of female sexuality from multiple angles. Now her latest, the Sundance competitor “Two Women” directed by Chloé Robichaud, centers on a pair of heroines chafing against motherhood and long-term monogamy.

Continue reading ‘Two Women’ Review: Libidinous Québécois Romp Pokes Fun At Monogamy [Sundance] at The Playlist.

In Two Women, an adaptation of Claude Fournier’s Two Women in Gold (1970), two women, one struggling with depression and the other on a difficult maternity leave, find that misadventure and taboo make their lives a bit more invigorating. The World Cinema Dramatic Competition entry is directed by Chloé Robichaud. Matthieu Bouchard, a veteran of TV comedy, took his first turn as a feature film editor on Two Women. He reflects on achieving that dream and helping Robichaud realize her vision below. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did […]

The post “You Have to Give It the Love It Needs”: Editor Matthieu Bouchard on Two Women first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In Two Women, an adaptation of Claude Fournier’s Two Women in Gold (1970), two women, one struggling with depression and the other on a difficult maternity leave, find that misadventure and taboo make their lives a bit more invigorating. The World Cinema Dramatic Competition entry is directed by Chloé Robichaud. Matthieu Bouchard, a veteran of TV comedy, took his first turn as a feature film editor on Two Women. He reflects on achieving that dream and helping Robichaud realize her vision below. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did […]

The post “You Have to Give It the Love It Needs”: Editor Matthieu Bouchard on Two Women first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Sundance Film Festival remains the largest independent film festival in the United States, and as was the case in both 2023 and 2024, the 2025 edition will be in a hybrid format, with screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City, Ut, along with limited selections available online for viewers across the United States. This provides cinephiles ample opportunity to check out some of the most exciting indie cinema that will be coming your way this year.

FandomWire is delighted to again be covering the Sundance Film Festival, but this year, for the first time in person in Park City, Utah! We will be reviewing many of the films we see on the ground, but for now, we wanted to let you know about some of the films we have gotten the opportunity to see early and you won’t want to miss.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono appear in One to One: John & Yoko...

Pulsar Content has nabbed worldwide sales on “Two Women,” a Canadian sexy comedy which is slated to world premiere at Sundance.

Directed by Chloé Robichaud, “Two Women” is written by critically acclaimed playwright Catherine Léger based on her own play, “Home Deliveries,” which is itself a modern adaptation of Claude Fournier’s 1970 comedy “Two Women In Gold.”

“Two Women” follows neighbors Violette and Florence who are haunted by a sense of failure despite having successful careers and families. “What if happiness lies in rebelling against a rigid performance-driven society by sometimes choosing short-term satisfaction over success, freedom over being good? In a world where having fun is nowhere near the top of the priority list, having an adventure with the delivery guy can become revolutionary. For Violette and Florence this is the breath of fresh air they’ve been longing for,” reads the synopsis.

The cast is lead by Karine Gonthier-Hyndman,...

Paris-based Totem Films has acquired world sales rights, excluding Canada, to Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz’s “Measures for a Funeral” in advance of the film’s world premiere in the Toronto Film Festival’s Centrepiece program.

Margot Hervée, Totem’s head of sales and acquisitions, first encountered Bohdanowicz’s work a few years ago. “It immediately resonated with me,” she told Variety. “We’re thrilled to now have her as part of the Totem family and to represent her latest film.”

Vortex Media is the film’s Canadian distributor.

As part of today’s announcement, Totem has shared with Variety a first teaser for “Measures,” which stars Deragh Campbell as Audrey Benac — a “family detective” character she has played in previous Bohdanowicz films, including the feature “Ms Slavic 7,” which premiered in Berlin in 2019 and also screened in Toronto.

Filmed in Canada, the U.K. and Norway, “Measures”— which won the...

The BFI Flare: London Lgbtqia+ Film Festival has revealed the line-up for its 38th edition which takes place March 13-24.

The programme comprises 57 features across the Hearts, Bodies and Mind strands, four of which are world premieres.

Scroll down for full line-up

World premiering is Karen Knox’s sophomore feature We Forgot To Break Up about a trans musician caught in a love triangle with his bandmates. The Canadian actress and filmmaker’s debut Adult Adoption premiered at Glasgow Film Festival in 2022.

Other world premieres are Kat Rohrer’s Austrian romantic comedy What A Feeling about two women who meet...

Festival selection includes Nikolaj Arcel’s ‘The Promised Land’ and Ernst De Geer’s ‘The Hypnosis’.

Goteborg Film Festival has selected almost 250 films for its 47th edition, including recent Nordic favourites The Promised Land starring Mads Mikkelsen and The Hypnosis by Ernst De Geer.

The festival, which runs from January 26 to February 4, has also programmed events including a talk between Ruben Ostlund and Cannes director Thierry Fremaux; and selected Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen to receive its Nordic Honorary Dragon award.

Scroll down for the list of festival titles

The 10 films competing in the Nordic Competition include Nikolaj Arcel’s The Promised Land,...

The Göteborg Film Festival has unveiled the competition titles selected for its 47th edition, which runs from January 26 to February 4. (Scroll down for the full list).

Göteborg is split into four competition strands. The main strand is the Nordic Competition, which features nine films from the Nordic region. The competition’s winner takes home the Dragon Award and a Sek 400,000 cash prize. The rest of the festival comprises the Nordic Documentary Competition, the Ingmar Bergman Competition for first-time filmmakers, and the International Competition.

Among the Nordic highlights is Madame Luna, Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa’s return to Nordic filmmaking following a series of Hollywood titles such as Morbius and Safe House. Inspired by real-life events, the film follows an Eritrean refugee who gets stuck in Libya and becomes a notorious human trafficker known as “Mama Luna” with deep ties to the Italian Mafia. When she is forced to flee to...

Sly Exhibit. Courtesy of the author.Take the elevator to the fourth floor of the TIFF Bell Lightbox theater and follow the sounds of proggy synthesizers. You’ll find a small gallery containing about a dozen neo-expressionist paintings; many depict solitary wanderers against backdrops of stormy neutrals. But before you have a chance to revel in these angsty brushstrokes, you’ll have to encounter the artist—it’s not optional. His image is plastered all over the elevators, lobby, and on an enormous cube in the center of this room: stare into the smirking visage of Sylvester Stallone, sequestered in an art-filled living room. “Sly Exhibit,” reads the text on the poster. A red “N”—the classier, minimalist version of the Netflix logo—is stamped at the bottom like a seal of approval.I wasn’t familiar with Stallone’s visual art before Netflix and TIFF shared it with me.

Toronto: “Humanist Vampire,” “Solo” Heat Up Market for Toronto’s Quebec Feature Slate

By Jennie Punter

Toronto has long been a go-to place for Quebec filmmakers to launch new work, connect directly to the U.S. marketplace and, by extension, propel their careers to the next level — Denis Villeneuve, Phillippe Falardeau and Jean-Marc Vallée, for example, premiered most of their early films here.

Many of this year’s bumper crop of mostly world-premiering Quebec titles explore less familiar corners of society — First Peoples and newcomer stories, the drag scene — and there are also fresh takes on romantic dramedy (Monia Chokri’s “The Nature of Love”), true-story-inspired WWII drama (Louise Archambault’s “Irena’s Vow”) and horror comedy.

Five of the festival’s eight Quebec features are directed by women. Sophie Dupuis, whose third film, the drag-scene character study “Solo,” told Variety that support from government funding agencies Telefilm and Sodec (Quebec...

These should be joyful times for Emma (Sophie Desmarais). She’s thought of as the top of her class and is about to finish a year-long residency conducting for Orchestre Métropolitain in her hometown of Montreal. There’s talk she might even be up for a permanent position––which would work perfectly now that she’s started seeing one of the group’s cellists (Nour Belkhiria’s Naëlle). Emma should be drinking champagne with friends and celebrating with her family because future dreams are about to become her actual present. Yet her agent can’t help but always applaud their work rather than hers. While a red flag normally, the fact that Patrick (Sylvain Marcel) is also her father means the sirens are deafening.

I say that with hindsight, though. Did I think it at the start? No. Because writer-director Chloé Robichaud does a wonderful job writing their dynamic as complex-yet-successful at the beginning.

by Cláudio Alves

You first notice sounds – the gurgle of running water, then the chirps of distant birds. It’s symphony-like, played by an orchestra with no maestro, though it’s through such a person we come to experience it. She’s Emma, a promising young conductor whose life is on the precipice of unraveling and to whose subjectivity Chloé Robichaud ties her new film. While the character’s vocation, sensitive ear, and relationship with a female cellist will inevitably draw comparisons to TÁR, Days of Happiness differs significantly from Todd Field’s Volpi Cup champion—the biggest distinction residing in the pictures’ narrative trajectory. One is about a public downfall, the other a private ascent…...

Sophie Desmarais plays talented young conductor wrestling with relationships.

Visit Films has acquired worldwide sales rights excluding Canada for Days Of Happiness, Chloé Robichaud’s upcoming world premiere in TIFF Special Presentations.

Days Of Happiness will premiere on September 9 and stars Sophie Desmarais as Emma, a conductor and rising star on the Montreal stage who has a complicated relationship with her father and agent Patrick.

Emma must confront her emotions if she is to succeed in navigating her career and her romantic relationship with Naëlle, a newly separated cellist and mother of a young boy.

Sylvain Marcel and Nour Belkhiria...

Next Goal Wins (Taika Waititi, 2023).The lineup is being unveiled for the 2023 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, starting with 60 selections from the Gala and Special Presentations programs. The festival takes place from September 7–17, 2023.Gala PRESENTATIONSConcrete Utopia (Um Tae-Hwa)Dumb Money (Craig Gillespie)Fair Play (Chloe Domont)Flora and Son (John Carney)Hate to Love: Nickelback (Leigh Brooks)Lee (Ellen Kuras)Next Goal Wins (Taika Waititi)Nyad (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin)Punjab ’95 (Honey Trehan)Solo (Sophie Dupuis)The End We Start From (Mahalia Belo)The Movie Emperor (Ning Hao)The New Boy (Warwick Thornton) The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green)The Holdovers.Special Presentationsa Difficult Year (Éric Toledano, Olivier Nakache)A Normal Family (Hur Jin-ho)American Fiction (Cord Jefferson)Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)Close to You (Dominic Savage)Days of Happiness (Chloé Robichaud)The Rescue (Daniela Goggi)Ezra (Tony Goldwyn)Fingernails (Christos Nikou)Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania...