Toronto International Film Festival Raising Money for Female Filmmakers
Female led films will be out front at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival.
The Toronto International Film Festival is highlighting women in front of and behind the camera at this year’s festival. In an effort to raise money to support female filmmakers, organizers of the Toronto Film Festival have begun a charity drive. The announcement was made via a statement from Festival Vice President Maxine Bailey who also announced that all donations made are being matched by Festival supporters Beth Anne-Heggie and Anne Marie Canning.
The announcement comes as more of the Toronto International Film Festival lineup is coming to light and we’re seeing larger numbers of female led film step into the spotlight. TIFF 2017 is set to feature contributions from Angelina Jolie, Greta Gerwig, Mary Herron and Dee Rees among others as women take center stage at one of the most important festivals of the Awards season.
Among the highlights people can look forward to at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, is the latest film from 28-year-old Canadian rising star producer Erika Olde. Olde made her name Executive Producing for Natalie Portman on A Tale of Love and Darkness and became so sought after that she has four features in progress toward the big screen including Reese Witherspoon’s upcoming comedy Home Again. Olde will be at TIFF with the movie Woman WalksAhead which is directed by Susannah White, best known for Nanny McPhee Returns, and stars Academy Award-nominee Jessica Chastain.
Woman Walks Ahead tells the story of Catherine Weldon, a portrait painter from Brooklyn, New York who, in the late 1880s, traveled from New York to what is now South Dakota, then known as the Dakota territories, to paint a portrait of legendary Native American leader Sitting Bull. There, she became involved in the Lakota Sioux freedom movement and became a well-known Indian rights activist. The women in front of and behind the came on Woman Walks Ahead are a perfect example of the support TIFF is highlighting for female filmmakers.
Also featured at this year’s festival is the highly anticipated Mary Shelley from director Haiffa Al-Mansour. Mansour, the director of the critically acclaimed Wadjda, is behind the project which chronicles the young love affair that led Mary to write her masterpiece Frankenstein. Elle Fanning stars as Mary Shelley alongside Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams as Isabel Baxter and newcomer Douglas Booth as poet Percy Shelley.
Everything about Mary Shelley fits the Toronto Film Festival’s attempts to highlight the work of women from the writer and director to the young stars to the subject, Mary Shelley who became a legend when she wrote Frankenstein in 1816 while on holiday with Percy Shelley and fellow poet Lord Byron, a meeting that was chronicled briefly in the opening scenes of the legendary Frankenstein movie.
If you would like to help the Toronto Film Festival raise money to support women in film, you can make your donation via Ticketmaster at the link here. Also, at that same link, you can buy your tickets for the Toronto International Film Festival which will feature 33 films in special presentation and feature 12 gala premieres including Woman Walks Ahead and Mary Shelley. The full list of movies at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival is below.
Here’s a full list of films:
GALAS
Breathe
The Catcher Was A Spy
Darkest Hour
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Kings
Long Time Running
Mary Shelley
The Mountain Between Us
Mudbound
Stronger
The Wife
Woman Walks Ahead
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Battle of the Sexes
BPM (Beats Per Minute)
The Brawler
The Breadwinner
Call Me By Your Name
Catch the Wind
The Current War
The Children Act
Disobedience
Downsizing
A Fantastic Woman
First They Killed My Father
The Guardians
Hostiles
The Hungry
I, Tonya
mother!
Novitiate
Omerta
Plonger
The Price of Success
Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
The Rider
A Season in France
The Shape of Water
Sheikh Jackson
The Square
Submergence
Suburbicon
Thelma
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing
Untitled Bryan Cranston/Kevin Hart Film
Victoria and Abdul
About the Creator
Sean Patrick
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. I am a voting member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
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