Gritty Realism Lights Up Toronto

11 September 2008

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With Toronto Film Festival now in full swing, and enjoying an excellent run of top quality films, but it's not the big named films such as Burn After Reading starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney or Benicio Del Toro's Che that's grabbing the limelight but the smaller pictures that are lighting up the festival.

And it's the gritty realism, at the point in the year where American cinema is experiencing a slump after the big spending of blockbuster summer, that really is winning over the audiences and having critics singing their praises.

Leading the way is British filmmaker Danny Boyle with Slumdog Millionaire who returns to a film of harsh reality, a formula that brought him success with trainspotting, as he looks at the brutal way of life of growing up in India.

Already having been well received at the Telluride Film Festival Slumdog Millionaire is already surrounded in Oscar hype.

Also doing well is Irish Drama Kisses which follows two pre-teens Dylan and Kylie who come from troubled families who run away to Dublin in search of a better life for themselves.

The film will be screened at this year's London Film Festival and has already gathered major support in Toronto and could follow in the footsteps which was a major Irish success last year on the festival circuit.

Rachel Getting Married is another movie on a roll after being one of the very few standout movies, and American movies, at Venice Film Festival last week.

Perhaps to be the defining role of Anne Hathaway's career so far the film tackles the idea of a dysfunctional family as well as battling addiction. Along with the likes of Keira Knightley Anne Hathaway's performance has been ear marked as a possible Oscar contender.

Also doing the rounds are a pair of war movies one from Denmark Flame & Citron is a World War II epic that depicts the Danish resistance against Nazi occupation.

The second comes in the form of Good, a Holocaust drama which have always done well with the Academy with Schindler's List and The Pianist being recognised, as Viggo Mortensen going for a second straight Best Actor Oscar nomination.

But last night some of Hollywood's biggest names, in the form of Oscar winners Rachel Weisz and Adrian Brody, graced the red carpet for the premiere of new movie The brothers Bloom.

The Brothers Bloom" tells the tale of the Bloom brothers, two young con men whose lives change forever upon meeting a beautiful young heiress named Penelope (Weisz).

While initially, the brothers plan to con her, she becomes an unlikely partner in their latest scheme.

The plot thickens when Penelope's beauty and brains enchants one of the brothers, and threatens to break a lifelong bond of kinship.

Toronto Film Festival runs until Saturday.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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