MUMBAI: British films make a strong showing at this year’s Toronto Film Festival with nine of the 25 films British films co-funded by the UK Film Council.
The films, some of which are new and some of which have already scored success through being previously selected for Berlin and Cannes, are raising the profile of UK film in the international marketplace.
UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund head Lenny Crooks says, "The range of British films screening at Toronto this year, from documentary to contemporary realism, fantasy, comedy and period drama, highlights the incredible breadth of filmmaking talent and being chosen for Toronto signals a significant level of international interest in new British filmmaking."
Nine of the features are backed directly by the UK Film Council including the new documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit: a Popumentary by Jamie Jay Johnson (New Cinema and Development Funds); Duane Hopkins’ Better Things and Michael Winterbottom’s Genova (New Cinema Fund); Gabor Csupo’s The Secret of Moonacre and Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (Premiere Fund); and Saul Dibb’s The Duchess, Stephan Elliott’s Easy Virtue and Anthony Fabian’s Skin (Development Fund). Terence Davies’ Of Time and City, shown to great acclaim in Cannes and supported by a UK Film Council initiative with North West Vision and the BBC, is also being shown at Toronto.
The full British film line-up includes:
* Weijun Chen’s Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
* Richard Parry’s Blood Trail
* Toa Fraser’s Dean Spanley, a UK/New Zealand co-production
* John Latham’s Encyclopedia Britannica
* Kari Skogland’s Fifty Dead Men Walking
* Rosalind Nashishibi and Lucy Skaer’s Flash in the Metropolitan
* Vicente Amorim’s Good
* Steve McQueen’s Hunger screened in Cannes
* John Crowley’s Is There Anybody There?
* Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles
* Richard Eyre’s The Other Man
* Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla
* Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire
* Charles Martin Smith’s Stone of Destiny
* Paul Cronin’s A Time to Stir
* Fabrice du Welz’s Vinyan
