Toronto film festival: riotous lead performance holds together third movie from actor turned film-maker, about a housewife who joins a local musical Jesse Eisenberg’s last two directorial efforts – the prickly comedy When You Finish Saving the World and the slightly softer A Real Pain – are small films rooted in the real world. They have their little idiosyncrasies, their bits of cinematic flair, but they keep their feet grounded in the here and now. For his third film, Eisenberg has said goodbye to all that (or most of that) and run headlong at the surreal and the absurd, borrowing from Charlie Kaufman and other oddballs to tell a small story in a big way. The Debut is about a repressed housewife, Mona (Julianne Moore), who decides to audition for a role in a community theater production of a musical called Nosy Neighbors, one of those gassy Manhattan trifles that were so ubiquitous on Broadway a half century ago. Mona’s kids are about to fly the nest, and her husband barely seems to notice her when she’s standing right next to him. So why not have a little creative adventure? Continue reading...

The subversive bacchanal for San Francisco’s eccentric underground is ageing out amid an influx of the super-rich Burning Man , the infamous arts festival in the Nevada desert, turned 40 this year, and it’s showing some distinct signs of middle age. It’s not just the tech billionaires who show up to party, the chartered flights straight to the desert or the HBO documentary about behind-the-scenes power struggles . The tens of thousands of people who assemble each year to create a tent city in the wilderness appear to be growing older, and it doesn’t seem that they’re being replaced by as many younger “burners”, as festival participants are called. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: Saipan standout Éanna Hardwicke is a soulful gay man looking for a missing friend in a striking yet muddled debut It’s not normal to regularly contemplate mortality in your twenties, to ask questions about where we might go after we die and whether any part of our legacy will even matter in the years following. But for gay men in the 1980s, death was everywhere. In David Turpin’s intermittently impactful debut Ancestors, the director tries to make a connection with those men who lived through the very worst years of the Aids crisis. Turpin, born in 1982, might not have the first-hand experience but he bears the scars passed on from generation to generation and like many young gay men coming of age in the years after, likely experienced a watered-down version of the shame and fear those before him once felt. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: Cynthia Erivo takes on the role Jodie Comer made famous for a pointless adaptation of a story about rape and retribution that loses the power it once had Suzie Miller’s award-winning 2019 play Prima Facie employs a familiar narrative device: a hotshot London barrister finds herself on the other side of the bar, subject to the very legal tactics she once so ruthlessly employed. Not as a defendant, but as the accuser in a rape case. We’ve seen versions of this before – a powerful figure suddenly caught in a struggle against a system they helped perpetuate – but Miller’s play distinguishes itself by putting the onus on to one actor. Prima Facie is premiering at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: the actor gives one of her best performances to date in a smoothly made globe-trotting drama of a woman’s life after the loss of her husband There’s a jump scare about 30 minutes into the glossy romantic drama Love of Your Life that’s about as effective as anything you’ll see in a horror movie this year. The film is focused on the life and loves of Maya (Margaret Qualley), a twentysomething Boston nurse who meet-cutes with the nerdy and idiosyncratic Charlie (Gabriel Basso) during the purchase of a nightstand. We follow the initial giddy rush of their courting as they progress all the way to an impromptu wedding over the course of a few years, marked by Maya’s change in age announced in text. But just as we’re about to process the unsettling introduction of Charlie using Chekhov’s inhaler, a news report interrupts the sunny tone. Spoiler: it’s March 2020. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: Shakespeare in Love director John Madden’s feelgood – and bad – comedy-drama is powered by excellent performances and authenticity So far at this year’s Toronto film festival, I have seen three films involving someone with dementia and two featuring someone who has Aids. It’s not just a sign that the lineup could perhaps benefit from some more light relief but also that certain conditions and illnesses still tend to be covered more often than others on screen. Last year’s festival saw Scottish hit I Swear bring an unprecedented level of awareness to people who live with Tourette’s and while there’s perhaps less of an obvious edge to John Madden’s more politely framed comedy-drama Onwards and Sideways, it too acts as both narrative movie and potential educational tool. Our knowledge of Parkinson’s is usually restricted to the celebrities who have it, from Muhammad Ali to Michael J Fox to, most recently, Carly Simon, but for many of us, it’s still seen in an abstract way, a handful of symptoms we know about, but so many more that we don’t. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: To be a parent or not to be a parent is the question propelling this often insightful yet largely run-of-the-mill riff on a Judd Apatow movie It’s a question still casually and routinely asked to couples everywhere regardless of familiarity, one that many fear and some feel actively offended by: are you guys gonna have kids? Despite living in an age where we’re supposedly more accepting of people who make choices that don’t conform to whatever dusty old standards our parents and their parents had to live by, there’s still an odd regressive judgment attached to those who dare to say no or even maybe. There’s the sad tilt of the head and maybe a “but you’d make such great parents” on top, as if either would make a difference to one of life’s biggest decisions. It’s a question that writer-director Lauren Miller Rogen knows all too well and as the wife of Seth Rogen , it’s one that has an answer that immediately becomes a headline . Continue reading...

NAZA, a new film directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, has been awarded the special jury prize at the 83rd Venice film festival. Shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, NAZA reveals in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Abraham, in his prize acceptance speech, said: 'It's really important Isrealis watch this film. It's our country that is doing these crimes' ‘They know the house they are bombing is full of children’: NAZA’s directors on their devastating film about Israeli intelligence Continue reading...

As anti-immigrant sentiment and vigilante violence fuel outrage across the continent, some fans abroad are rejecting South African performers.

Here are five culinary celebrations to work into your autumn itinerary.