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World premieres of films led by Helen Mirren, Seth Rogen and Chris Rock lead the lineup for this year’s Toronto film festival.
The September festival, taking place after the Venice film festival, has previously seen the premieres of Oscar-winning movies such as Green Book, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Still Alice, Dallas Buyers Club and Silver Linings Playbook.
Mirren will play Patricia Highsmith in A Talent for Murder, a twisty thriller starring recent Tony-winner Alden Ehrenreich as a literary agent who is sent to Switzerland to persuade the author to write one more Ripley novel. The film is directed by Anton Corbijn, whose previous credits include Control and A Most Wanted Man.
Rogen, who was at last year’s Toronto with Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune, will star alongside Anna Kendrick in Babies, a comedy drama written and directed by his wife Lauren Miller Rogen. The film, which also stars Issa Rae, Kate Berlant and Sharon Stone, centres on a childless couple who are forced into parenting when their divorced friend moves in with her three-year-old.
Rock will return to the festival with his latest film as writer-director, the Hollywood-set comedy Misty Green. The star, whose last effort Top Five also premiered at Toronto, also leads the A24 film which focuses on a director who offers a comeback opportunity to an actor whose career has been derailed by her vices. The starry cast also includes Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick and the British actor Rosalind Eleazar in the lead role.
The festival will also see the world premiere of I Play Rocky, a drama about the making of Sylvester Stallone’s Oscar-winning triumph. Directed by Peter Farrelly, whose 60s-set drama Green Book went from a Toronto premiere to a best picture Oscar win, the film stars Anthony Ippolito as Stallone.
Courteney Cox’s Evil Genius will also make its bow at the festival. The crime thriller, which marks the actor’s second film as director after Tallhotblond, is based on a true crime docuseries of the same name that tells the story of the so-called “Pizza Bomber” Brian Wells. The cast includes Patricia Arquette and David Harbour.
“It’s stranger than fiction,” Cox has said of the project. “At moments darkly funny and yet deeply emotional. A story about love, loneliness, manipulation, and the people on the fringes who get pulled into something much bigger than themselves.”
After legal issues affected the release of her first film as director, Rebel Wilson’s follow-up Girl Group will also premiere at Toronto. The film stars Wilson as a singer kicked off her own’s group’s reunion tour who then stages a comeback by attaching herself to a younger teen group. The cast also includes Jennifer Coolidge, Sheridan Smith, Melanie C and Nicole Scherzinger.
The Shakespeare in Love director John Madden will also head to Toronto with the drama Onwards and Sideways, a film starring Laura Linney and Rhys Ifans as two people who receive a Parkinson’s diagnosis on the same day.
Other premieres include the comedy thriller Everybody Wants to Fuck Me starring Taron Egerton about the world of modern dating, the prison-set drama The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd starring Amanda Seyfried, supernatural drama Faith starring James McAvoy and Erin Doherty, Takashi Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo with Lily James, a coming-of-age drama called The Julia Set starring One Battle After Another breakout Chase Infiniti, the Joy Luck Club director Wayne Wang’s drama Diary of a Mad Old Man and Up Against It, a Trudie Styler-directed romcom led by Antonio Banderas.
Previously announced premieres include the romance Love of Your Life starring Margaret Qualley, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Aaron Pierre, a big-screen adaptation of the hit stage drama Prima Facie starring Cynthia Erivo, revenge thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother led by Mahershala Ali and Being Heumann, the new film from Coda director Sian Heder.
Last year’s Toronto saw the premiere of the hit horror Obsession which has since become the highest-grossing festival acquisition of all time after it made $442m worldwide.
This year’s festival takes place between 10 and 20 September.
