By Travis Johnson
Garth Davis’ Lion, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, is set to debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Based on the life of Saroo Brierly, as chronicled in his book, A Long Way Home, Lion tells the story of an Indian-born adoptee (Patel) who tracks down his birth parents using Google Earth. David Wenham and Rooney Mara also feature. The film was shot in Tasmania and India.
First time feature director Davis (who directed episodes of Top of the Lake Season 1) joins a stellar line up of filmmakers bringing projects to this year’s festival, including Werner Herzog and Denis Villeneuve, Jim Jarmusch, Mia Hansen-Løve, Rebecca Zlotowski, Tom Ford, François Ozon, Andrea Arnold, Maren Ade, Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee woon, Kenneth Lonergan, Antoine Fuqua, Damien Chazelle, Pablo Larraín, and Paul Verhoeven. This year’s opening night film is Fuqua’s highly anticipated Western remake, The Magnificent Seven, while the closing night film is the work of another debut director, The Edge of Seventeen by Kelly Fremon Craig.
Other standouts include Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, Jeff Nichols’ Loving, the Rob Reiner-directed biopic LBJ, Oliver Stone’s Snowden, and Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation.
Further program announcements for the festival, which this year runs from September 8 – 18, are expected soon.
For more info, head over to the TIFF official site.
