TIFF '16 Overachievers

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overachievers overachievers

The Review/ Short Read/

TIFF '16 Overachievers

The tireless filmmakers and actors who have more than one film at this year's Festival

by
Sep 2, 2016

Making a film (or starring in one) is a pretty big undertaking. It tends to require huge reserves of time, energy and money, and it's frankly amazing how many incredible films end up getting made and coming to TIFF each year.

But even more amazing is the fact that some people have more than one film at TIFF. And some have more than two. Below is a list of some of the folks who are attending Festival this year to promote multiple films.

How do they do it? We have no idea. But we're glad they do.

If you're a fan of these filmmakers and actors, this is your year to catch them in at least one thing, and (if you're really dedicated) in all of the things. And although this is by no means a contest, we'd like to note that Isabelle Huppert won.

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Kristen Stewart

Number of films: 2

Personal Shopper / MASTERS

Kristen Stewart reunites with director Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria) for this artful ghost story about a young woman trying to reconnect with the spirit of her departed brother.

Certain Women / MASTERS

Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy, Night Moves) directs Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone in this tripartite portrait of striving, independent women whose lives intersect in suggestive and powerful ways.

Jim Jarmusch

Number of films: 2

Gimme Danger / TIFF DOCS

Jim Jarmusch recounts the hard-rocking history of Iggy Pop and The Stooges, who burst out of Michigan in the late ’60s with a savage and endlessly influential fusion of rock, blues, R&B, and free jazz.

Paterson / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

The new film from Jim Jarmusch focuses on a working-class poet (Adam Driver) in a small New Jersey town who practices his craft amidst the quiet magic of everyday life.

Riz Ahmed

Number of films: 2

City of Tiny Lights / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

In the teeming, multicultural metropolis of modern-day London, a seemingly straightforward missing-person case launches a down-at-heel private eye (Riz Ahmed, Nightcrawler) into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.

Una / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Rooney Mara (Carol) and Ben Mendelsohn (Mississippi Grind, Netflix’s Bloodline) star in this adaptation of David Harrower’s play Blackbird, about a young woman who arrives in the workplace of an older man from her past, seeking answers for the long-ago events that have fatefully shaped both of their lives.

David Oyelowo

Number of films: 2

Queen of Katwe / GALA PRESENTATIONS

David Oyelowo (Selma) and Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) star in the true story of a young girl from rural Uganda (played by newcomer Madina Nalwanga) who discovers a passion for chess, and sets out to pursue her dream of becoming an international champion.

A United Kingdom / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Amma Asante (Belle) helms this biopic of Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), the former African royal who courted controversy with his interracial marriage to Englishwoman Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) and later led his nation to independence from the British Empire as the first president of Botswana.

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Armie Hammer

Number of films: 3

Free Fire / MIDNIGHT MADNESS

Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, and Cillian Murphy star in the hotly anticipated new film by Ben Wheatley (Kill List, High-Rise), about a weapons deal gone wrong that escalates into a manic, bullet-riddled standoff inside an abandoned warehouse.

Nocturnal Animals / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal and Armie Hammer headline the second feature from director Tom Ford (A Single Man), about a woman who is forced to confront the demons of her past as she is drawn into the world of a thriller novel written by her ex-husband.

The Birth of a Nation / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Writer-director Nate Parker reclaims the title of D.W. Griffith’s KKK-boosting 1916 milestone for this epic chronicle of the life of Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion against white plantation owners in 1831 Virginia.

Isabelle Huppert

Number of films: 3 (and an on-stage talk)

Souvenir / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Isabelle Huppert stars as a middle-aged factory worker whose long-ago brush with fame comes to the fore again when she begins a romance with a young aspiring boxer.

Elle / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Isabelle Huppert stars in the daring new film from perennial provocateur Paul Verhoeven, about a high-powered businesswoman whose brutal sexual assault elicits both erotic fantasies and dreams of revenge.

Things to Come / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden, Goodbye First Love) directs the great Isabelle Huppert in this delicate and affecting tale about a middle-aged professor whose carefully structured life is thrown into disarray when her husband leaves her for another woman, and who finds an unlikely new companion in a former student and radical young communist.

In Conversation with… Isabelle Huppert / IN CONVERSATION WITH

Isabelle Huppert stands among the greatest actors working today. As the Festival presents her three latest films — Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, Mia Hansen-Løve's Things to Come, and Bavo Defurne’s Souvenir — we are honoured to welcome her for an in-depth conversation about her staggering four-decade filmography that includes work both with established masters (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke) and emerging auteurs (Hansen-Løve, Joachim Trier).

Olivia Cooke

Number of films: 2

The Limehouse Golem / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

In Victorian-era London, an intrepid police inspector (Bill Nighy) investigates a series of brutal killings that seem to be linked to a fearsome creature of Jewish legend, in this atmospheric thriller based on the bestseller by Peter Ackroyd.

Katie Says Goodbye / DISCOVERY

A truck-stop waitress (Olivia Cooke, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) believes she has found a way out of her dead end when she falls in love with a handsome young mechanic, in this heartrending character study co-starring Christopher Abbott (James White), Mary Steenburgen, and Jim Belushi.

Ethan Hawke

Number of films: 2

Maudie / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Academy Award nominees Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Blue Jasmine) and Ethan Hawke star in the true story of Maud Lewis, who overcame the physical challenge of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis to become one of Canada’s premier folk artists.

The Magnificent Seven / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

An all-star cast — including Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun and Peter Sarsgaard — saddles up for this blazing remake of the 1960 western classic from director Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer), about seven gunslinging mercenaries protecting a small community from a rapacious robber baron.

Sandra Oh

Number of films: 2

Catfight / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

A reunion between two old school friends (Sandra Oh and Anne Heche) sparks a no-holds-barred war of attrition, in this outrageously madcap black comedy.

Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming) / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Sandra Oh, Elliot Page and Don McKellar lend their voices to this warm and witty animated feature by Ann Marie Fleming (The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam), about a young Canadian poet who undergoes a life-changing experience when she attends a poetry festival in Iran.

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Rooney Mara

Number of films: 3

Una / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Rooney Mara (Carol) and Ben Mendelsohn (Mississippi Grind, Netflix’s Bloodline) star in this adaptation of David Harrower’s play Blackbird, about a young woman who arrives in the workplace of an older man from her past, seeking answers for the long-ago events that have fatefully shaped both of their lives.

Lion / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Dev Patel, Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman star in the true story of Saroo Brierley, who was adopted by an Australian couple after being separated from his family in India at the age of five, and then located his original home using Google Earth 25 years later.

The Secret Scripture / GALA PRESENTATIONS

The hidden memoir of an elderly woman confined to a mental hospital reveals the history of her passionate yet tortured life, and of the religious and political upheavals in Ireland during the 1920s and ’30s. Rooney Mara, Jack Reynor, Eric Bana and Vanessa Redgrave star in this adaptation of Sebastian Barry’s award-winning 2008 novel from Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father).

Michael Shannon

Number of films: 2

Salt and Fire / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal star in this ecological thriller from the great Werner Herzog, about a scientist and a corporate CEO who must overcome their ideological differences in order to avert potential disaster from a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Loving / GALA PRESENTATIONS

Jeff Nichols (Mud) directs Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, who waged a decade-long legal battle that led to the overturning of the state of Virginia’s law prohibiting interracial marriage.

Werner Herzog

Number of films: 2

Salt and Fire / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal star in this ecological thriller from the great Werner Herzog, about a scientist and a corporate CEO who must overcome their ideological differences in order to avert potential disaster from a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Into the Inferno / TIFF DOCS

The great Werner Herzog teams up with volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer for this globe-trotting tour of some of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes.

Dakota Fanning

Number of films: 2

Brimstone / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, and Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington and Carice van Houten star in this gritty revenge western, about a young woman in a frontier community who must go on the run when she is targeted by a diabolical preacher.

American Pastoral / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Ewan McGregor makes his directing debut and stars alongside Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning in this ambitious adaptation of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, about a "perfect" American family that is torn apart by the social and political upheavals of the 1960s.

Sigourney Weaver

Number of films: 2

A Monster Calls / GALA PRESENTATIONS

Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones star in this adaptation of the award-winning children’s book by Patrick Ness, about a lonely young boy struggling with the imminent death of his terminally ill mother who is befriended by a friendly, shambling monster that arrives in his room nightly to tell him stories.

(re)ASSIGNMENT / SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

This jaw-droppingly audacious revenge thriller from the great Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) stars Michelle Rodriguez as a lowlife killer put through full male-to-female gender reassignment surgery by a score-settling surgeon (Sigourney Weaver).