Natalie Portman‘s Jackie biopic and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, for A24 and Brad Pitt‘s Plan B Entertainment, will compete in the Platform juried competition at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.
The films will be among 12 indie titles to compete for a $25,000 prize, organizers said Thursday.
Jackie, which will receive a North American premiere in Toronto, also stars Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig and John Hurt. Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain (No, El Club) directed the pic, his first English-language feature from a 2010 Black List screenplay by Noah Oppenheim.
Moonlight, which is getting an international debut in Toronto, is the lone American entry in the Platform competition and stars singer-songwriter Janelle Monae, James Bond actress Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali.
The Platform section also features world premieres for William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth; Mijke de Jong’s Layla M., about a young Dutch woman joining a group of radical Muslims; and two Canadian films, Zacharias Kunuk’s Searchers and Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves by Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie.
Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama and Ivan Sen’s Goldstone also will get international premieres as part of the Platform lineup. The section also includes North American first looks for Fien Troch’s Home and Katell Quillevere’s Heal the Living, starring Tahar Rahim and Emmanuelle Seigner.
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Another Rahim-starrer, Daguerrotype, previously announced as part of the Special Presentations sidebar, will now screen in Platform. TIFF launched the Platform competition last year to spotlight foreign-language titles coming into the September event without distribution or big-name stars.
“The lineup this year aims to shine the spotlight on fearless, artistic films that will inspire a global dialogue around issues that affect us all, and we are thrilled to honor the next generation of filmmakers who are capturing the evolving discourse with their transformative visions,” TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling said Thursday in a statement.
Offering the Platform competition along with its long-standing People’s Choice audience awards comes as Toronto increasingly competes with the Telluride and Venice festivals for the latest work by international filmmakers.
The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival is set to kick off Sept. 8 with Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven remake, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, and close Sept. 18 with the Hailee Steinfeld-starrer The Edge of Seventeen.
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