The director of the Toronto film festival,speaking alongside artistic director Cameron Bailey, addresses the suggestion that year’s line-up was weak, or talks about cinema’s shrinking middle-ground and says film-makers need to recapture their adventurous spirit As the 40th Toronto film festival comes to a close on Sunday,its directors have defended an edition that some in the industry have criticised as weak. While in preceding years films such as 12 Years a Slave and Slumdog Millionaire have emerged as certain winners not only of the festival’s People’s Choice award but of the Oscars the following year, in 2015, and much-anticipated titles such as homosexual rights dramas Freeheld and Stonewall have been trashed,while others, such as Truth, or highlight and The Martian,have won warm but not ecstatic notices.“It’s just different,” said Toronto CEO Piers Handling. “A lot of journalists and people in the industry say: ‘Where’s the buzz film? There’s no buzz film!’ So in some comic way [they see] the festival as a failure. Its anticlimactic. They feel there’s nothing to rally round.” Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com