U2 documentary to open Toronto Film Festival

 

A documentary about rock band U2 will open this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

The festival also features the world premieres of films by Luc Besson, Terence Davies, Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Winterbottom.
Davis Guggenheim's From The Sky Down, which charts the release of U2's Achtung Baby in 1991, is the first documentary to open the festival.
The gala, opening on 8 September, is a key event ahead of the Oscars.
Last year Toronto's top audience prize went to The King's Speech which went on to win the Academy Award for best picture.
Among the world premieres are Luc Besson's The Lady, which tells the story of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband Michael Aris. The film stars Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis.
Clooney drama
Thewlis also appears alongside Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave in Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, which premieres in Toronto.
Set in Elizabethan England, the film speculates that William Shakespeare may not have been the true author of his plays.
Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea will also be unveiled, starring Rachel Weisz as a wife who walks out on her High Court judge husband (Simon Russell Beale) to be with her lover, a young ex-RAF pilot played by Tom Hiddleston.
Festival-goers will also get a first look at The Descendants, starring George Clooney and Lasse Hallstrom's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, starring Ewan McGregor, and Michael Winterbottom's Trishna.
Based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Trishna is set in contemporary India and tells the tragic love story between the son of a wealthy businessman and the daughter of a rickshaw driver.
The film stars Slumdog Millionaire actress Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed.
Francis Ford Coppola - the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now - will premiere Twixt, a murder mystery with Val Kilmer.
Of his opening U2 documentary, Guggenheim said: "In the terrain of rock bands - implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable.
"U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction, this band has endured and thrived. The movie From The Sky Down asks the question why."
Guggenheim won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, his documentary on climate change featuring former US vice-president Al Gore.
A second rock documentary, Pearl Jam Twenty by director Cameron Crowe, will also have its world premiere at the 10-day festival, which was founded in 1976.

Madonna royal drama to screen at Venice Film Festival

 

Madonna's film about King Edward VIII's romance with American divorcee Wallis Simpson will have its world premiere at this year's Venice Film Festival.

W.E, which the singer directed, screens out of competition at the event, which runs from 31 August to 10 September.
British actress Andrea Riseborough plays Mrs Simpson in the film, which contrasts her scandalous relationship with a contemporary romance.
In all, 21 titles will compete for the prestigious Golden Lion award.
The new film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - starring Gary Oldman as John le Carre's legendary spy George Smiley - features in the competition line-up.
It is joined by Andrea Arnold's new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Roman Polanski's new film Carnage, and Shame, the latest film from Turner Prize winner-turned-director Steve McQueen.
Other titles in contention include A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg's new film about the conflict between the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender play Freud and Jung, while Keira Knightley plays a troubled patient who comes between them.
Fassbender also appears in Shame, a family drama about a wayward brother and sister in which he stars opposite Carey Mulligan.
Polanski's and Cronenberg's films are both based on plays, by Yasmina Reza (God of Carnage) and Christopher Hampton (The Talking Cure) respectively.

 

Newcomer James Howson plays Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights

Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster appear in Carnage, about two sets of parents who come together after their children fight at school.
New works from Abel Ferrara, Exorcist director William Friedkin and 'indie' film-maker Todd Solondz further swell the diverse line-up.
As previously announced, this year's festival will open with The Ides of March, a political drama which Venice regular George Clooney directs, produces, co-writes and appears in - also in contention.
Actor Al Pacino will be honoured at the event, while Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky will chair the competition jury.
Pacino's film Wilde Salome - an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's notorious 1891 play - will receive an out of competition screening, as will Steven Soderbergh's virus-based thriller Contagion.
The festival will close with Damsels in Distress, the latest feature from US film-maker Whit Stillman - his first film as writer-director since 1998's The Last Days of Disco.
The festival in Venice, together with the Toronto Film Festival - which runs concurrently - are often used as launch-pads for films hoping to triumph during the forthcoming awards season.
Last year's festivities saw Sofia Coppola - daughter of US film-maker Francis - receive the Golden Lion for her semi-autobiographical drama Somewhere.