It’s been a weekend full of reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival, and along with the premieres, it means producers or (if the film is lucky enough) distributors releasing the first look at footage in an attempt to drum up interest and stand out of the pack of hundreds of others at the festival. Well, it seems to have done the trick as we’re posting a round-up today.
First up, we have the first trailer for Let the Corpses Tan, the latest film from Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the duo behind Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. We reviewed it here, and the preview displays some of the visual inventiveness at play. Along with that, there are previews for three other anticipated projects, including the Netflix documentary One of Us, arriving on the platform on October, as well as a pair of acclaimed features that first premiered at Venice: Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country and Xavier Legrand’s Silver Lion-winning Custody.
See all the trailers below.
TIFF Vanguard veterans Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani weaponize their aesthetic proclivities into an all-out bombardment of sensational style as they methodically adapt every devilish detail from the cult novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid. A gang of thieves absconding with 250kg of stolen gold arrives at the abode of a listless artist caught in a bohemian love triangle. The scenario quickly escalates into a desperate day-long firefight between cops and robbers throughout the remote ruins of a Mediterranean hamlet — and genre and art-house tropes collide in a relentless reverie of action spectacle, exquisitely photographed on Super 16mm film.
One of Us plays like a documentary thriller about individuals trying to escape a closed society. New York’s Hasidim are one of the most insular communities in North America. Haunted by the Holocaust’s decimation, they live by strict codes that discourage contact with outsiders. We meet three people who are driven to break away despite threats of retaliation. Etty was forced into marriage at age 19, birthed seven children by age 29, and recounts a history of spousal abuse. Luzer, in his late twenties, broke ties with his family in order to pursue his dreams as an actor. Eighteen-year-old Ari suffers from the trauma of sexual abuse and wants to explore a different way of life.
Aboriginal stockman Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) works the land of a kind preacher, Fred Smith (Sam Neill), living and labouring in a respectful, if diffident, harmony. But when a bitter and often-drunk war veteran named Harry March (Ewen Leslie, also appearing at TIFF in The Butterfly Tree) returns to town, trouble escalates and Sam is forced to kill in self-defence. Shocked, afraid, and with a deep distrust in the impartiality of settler authority, Sam and his wife, Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber), go on the run. Urgently pursued by a posse led by Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown) and Aboriginal tracker Archie (Gibson John), expert bushman Sam must ultimately decide which of several looming unknowns to face.
As Custody opens, Miriam and Antoine Besson have just divorced. Their young son, Julien, sits in family court reading out a letter denouncing his father. His sister, Josephine, having recently reached the age of majority, is not part of the dispute. Antoine is described as a violent monster, yet in court appears to be a model of calm reserve. Despite Miriam’s appeals for sole custody — also Julien’s preference — the judge gives the parents shared custody. And Antoine is not a two-dimensional beast. He tries to re-establish a relationship with a son who feels paralyzed by the competing emotional demands of his father and his mother, who will stop at nothing to remove both Julien and herself from her ex-husband’s life.