Word: torontos
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...success of Christian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days at Cannes, where it won the Palme d'Or, has many critics hyping the new Romanian cinema. The Mungiu drama will play prominently at Toronto, but Cowan's enthusiasm for a national Romanian film movement is guarded. He notes that TIFF's resident specialist on Eastern European films, programmer Dimitri Eipides, "approaches the Romanian new wave with some skepticism. You could barely field a soccer team with all the Romanian filmmakers. Apparently there's one great teacher at the film school there who has passed his influence...
...Mind you, if there were more Romanian emigrants in Toronto, the festival might find more films to please them. TIFF prides itself on catering to different local constituencies. "If there's a commitment to a specific cinema from the city and its audiences, we try to address it," says Cowan. "There's been a huge rise in interest for East Asian films - not just China but Korea, Japan, Thailand." The festival is also expanding its coverage of Bollywood directors. "In the last five years," he notes, "they've been seeking a wider international audience, so they've been toning down...
...Free World ... from the veteran writer-director team of Paul Laverty and Ken Loach. Cowan recommends Penn's Into the Wild, the Guy Maddin "docu-fantasia" My Winnipeg and Nothing Is Private from Alan Ball, writer of American Beauty, which, in 1999, had its world premier at Toronto on its way to a Best Picture Oscar...
...Handling, Cowan and their team must also play the role of efficient concierges for their more demanding guests. In 1996, Jean-Luc Godard, the ageless enfant terrible of the French New Wave, agreed to accompany his film For Ever Mozart to Toronto. "He had only two conditions," Handling recalls. "He insisted on a video suite to cut his movie, which we got for him; and he wanted to play tennis. So we brought in a tennis...
...fixers of Toronto, the motto could be: we aim to please. And for over 30 years, they've been making good on their promise...