From Snow Leopard to The Tundra Within Me to Without Air, these are the best acquisition titles (films still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and/or the UK) at TIFF 2023.
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Every year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), we focus on seeking out and highlighting the festival’s hidden gems. In particular, we focus on films still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and/or the UK, and thus are in danger of not becoming available to wider audiences. Without a distributor, most films will never become available on VOD, and may never again screen in cinemas in Canada, the US, and/or the UK outside of a festival context.
We don’t want that to happen! These films deserve your attention. This list aims to draw attention to excellent films that might not get coverage elsewhere. If you’re at TIFF (or heading to another festival this fall), these are films that you’ll want to prioritize because this may be your only chance ever to see the films (and even more likely, the only chance to see them on a big screen). At the same time, by drawing audiences, press, and industry to these screenings, we hope to help generate buzz around the films that could lead to a distribution deal.
It can happen! Our enthusiasm for films has landed them distribution deals in the past. For a sense of how well our picks have fared in the past, check out our 2021 “Where Are They Now?” piece about every film that made our list from 2016-2019 inclusive. You can also check out our 2021 and 2022 lists — many films are still seeking distribution.
Below is our list of the best TIFF films still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, the UK, or all three. This list will be updated throughout the festival as I see more films and embargoes lift. We’ll have reviews of most of these films but can’t publish most of them until after the first public screening.
A Happy Day (Hisham Zaman, Norway)
Hisham Zaman’s A Happy Day is a dark dramedy about three boys on the cusp of adulthood living in a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in remote northern Norway. At times poetic, and at times following conventions of a teen movie, it’s the story of children becoming adults where this rite of passage is tantamount to a death sentence: deportation.
Read our review of A Happy Day. It will be published 9/11 at 11:45pm when the embargo lifts. You can also check our TIFF23 homepage for updates.
A Happy Day is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Banel & Adama (Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Senegal)
First-time filmmaker Ramata Toulaye-Sy’s (co-screenwriter of Seventh Row favourite Our Lady of the Nile) story of star-crossed lovers in a remote village in Senegal is a visually stunning tale of bucking convention and paying the price.
Banel & Adama is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Chuck Chuck Baby (Janis Pugh, UK)
Leave it to the British to make working in the most bleak environment possible, a chicken factory, a site of joyous outbursts into song and dance. Janis Pugh’s Chuck Chuck Baby belongs to that genre of working class feel good film that the British do best — think Pride, Fishermans’ Friends, and Bank of Dave — but with a welcome queer twist. It’s about a traumatized middle aged woman who finally comes out of the closet (in more ways than one) when a childhood sweetheart returns to town. Having spent her adult life cow-towing to other people’s needs, the death of a loved one and the possibility for romance for her to come into her own and put her needs first.
Fortunately, she has a soundtrack of upbeat pop hits to accompany her, as she, her friends, and her love interest break into song and dance by singing along to someone else’s singing. The film is particularly sensitive to the way trauma buries deep inside you, no matter how hard you try to run away from it, and how that can get in the way of the best intentions for yourself and those you love. But it’s the sort of film whose bright colours remind you that, if you do the work, a happy ending is possible.
Chuck Chuck Baby is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Days of Happiness (Chloé Robichaud, Canada)
Emma, a queer conductor (Sophie Desmarais) preparing for a Mahler concert, must find a way out from under her abusive father’s (Sylvain Marcel) thumb, who is also her agent, and learn to find confidence and validation from within in the latest film by Québécois director Chloé Robichaud (Pays, Sarah Prefers to Run). Whenever Emma is at work, Robhicaud ensures that Emma’s father is either quietly hanging over Emma, listening from the dress circle at the edge of the frame, or pushing his ideas on her. Rather than freeing her from her father, adulthood has only made Emma beholden to him professionally, which makes it difficult for her to avoid having him control her life.
The wounds from this seep into her budding relationship with slightly-in-the-closet Naëlle (Nour Belkhiria) as Emma is so needy she’s burdensome, pushing Naëlle to progress their relationship when she’s reasonably not ready because Emma needs constant reassurance. Emma is so insecure that she tends to follow her father’s bad advice, even if it’s likely to land her in hot water because it’s about him, not her. Although I spent much of Days of Happiness wishing that Emma would see a therapist and start sorting through this, every frightened move she makes is entirely believable. Desmarais’s small frame makes Emma seem particularly vulnerable, but Emma’s command on stage reminds us that she’ll find a way through.
Days of Happiness will be released by Maison 4:3 in Quebec in October. It’s unlikely to screen in Canadian cinemas outside of Quebec outside of a festival context. The film is still seeking distribution in the US and the UK (Sales Agent: Visit Films).
The Monk and the Gun (Pawo Choyning Dorji, Bhutan/France/USA/Taiwan)
It’s 2016, and Bhutan has just started to embrace modernity: TVs have been legalized, and the monarch has stepped down, meaning the country must prepare for an election even though most people don’t see the purpose of democracy. At the same time, a monk is bafflingly searching for a gun.
Read our review of The Monk and the Gun.
The Monk and the Gun is still seeking distribution, though given it’s by an Oscar-nominated director, it will likely get picked up. On September 8, 2023, Bhutan announced that The Monk and the Gun would be its Best International Film submission for the Oscar.
A Road to a Village (Nabin Subba, Nepal)
One of several Asian films at TIFF about the trials and tribulations of encroaching modernity and capitalism, A Road to a Village follows a family in a remote village in Nepal dealing with these stumbling blocks.
A Road to a Village is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Sisterhood (Nora El Hourch, France)
Nora El Hourch’s directorial debut is a thoughtful story about how saying #metoo still has class and racial barriers. Like Seventh Row favourite The Teachers’ Lounge, Sisterhood is also about how well-meaning intervention in a problem you don’t understand can make things worse. When white-passing Amina (Léah Aubert) learns that her friend Zineb (Salma Takaline) has been sexually threatened by a local teenage boy, she decides to enact her own kind of justice — anonymously exposing his predation online. But the many unintended consequences of what was supposed to be a heroic act highlight the divisions of privilege between Amina, Zineb, and their best friend Djeneba (Médina Diarra).
Although they all attend school together in a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Paris (the ‘banlieues”), Amina’s upwardly mobile parents are relatively wealthy: a lawyer, the surgeon. To shield Amina from racism, her father has also deliberately not exposed her to the Arabic culture he hails from. While Amina can escape retribution in her slightly further away and fancy home, her friends are left to deal with more immediate consequences. As the friends find a way to reconcile, Amina has to learn to check her privilege and break down communication barriers in her home to challenge her relationship with her well-meaning but sometimes misguided father.
Snow Leopard (Pema Tseden, China)
Snow Leopard is the final film from the late Pema Tseden who made our TIFF 2019 favourite Balloon, which was on that year’s list of the festival’s best acquisition titles but has still yet to be picked up.
Snow Leopard is still seeking distribution. Pema Tseden’s films, like Balloon (2019), often do not receive distribution despite being excellent.
Solitude (Ninna Pálmadóttir, Iceland/Slovakia/France)
Ninna Pálmadóttir’s first feature is a beautifully directed, touching story of intergenerational friendship and loneliness set in Iceland.
Read our review (The link goes live 9/11 1:30pm ET)
Solitude is still seeking distribution.
Solo (Sophie Dupuis, Canada)
After working with the incredible Théodore Pellerin (his Genèse performance was one of our top 50 of the 2010s) on her two previous films — Family First and Souterrain — Sophie Dupuis has reteamed with the rising star for a portrait of a drag artist learning to detach from toxic relationships and find his artistic voice.
Solo will be released in Canada by Axia Films this month. It is still seeking distribution in the US and the UK.
Songs of Earth (Margareth Olin, Norway)
If you can’t visit northern Norway, the next best thing would be to watch Margareth Olin’s stunning documentary Songs of Earth. The sweeping cinematography — by Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo, Herman Lersveen, Torbjørn Martinsen, and Dag Asle Mykløen — immerses you in the stunning mountainous Arctic landscape with clear blue skies and even clearer turquoise-blue water. It’s a place that feels untouched by human intervention, and one of the film’s greatest pleasures is to sit in awe of nature. Olin’s film is also personal, documenting her parents’ relationship, her relationship with them, and their collective relationship with the land where she (and many of their ancestors) grew up.
As non-Indigenous Norwegians, Olin and her family’s relationship to the land differs significantly from that of the Sámi people depicted in TIFF 2023 films The Homecoming and The Tundra Within Me. Hundreds of years in one place can’t compare to thousands of traditions. Olin’s family doesn’t have to deal with the hardships of colonialism, which make living on the land financially and physically difficult for the Sámi people. Nevertheless, this is a transporting film about a love for the land.
Songs of Earth is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
The Teacher (Farah Nabulsi, United Kingdom/Palestine/Qatar)
A Palestinian teacher and activist, Basem (Saleh Bakri), looks for productive ways to fight against Israeli settler oppression while protecting the younger generation, his students, in Farah Nabulsi’s The Teacher. Imogen Poots co-stars as a British volunteer helping previously incarcerated high schoolers to get onto the right path. As someone largely clueless about the stakes Palestinians face daily — where what seems like the worst thing is only a drop in the bucket — she serves as our surrogate character as the brutal realities unfold. Although you can feel the plot machinations creak into place like so many first features, Nabulsi’s film deals with such important subject matter so sensitively that its clunkiness and predictability matter little. Bakri’s Basem is weighed down by quiet grief and weathered cynicism but Bakri still reveals a man just looking for someone to father and a way to make the world a little less terrifying.
The Teacher is still seeking distribution.
The Tundra Within Me (Sara Margarethe Oskal, Norway)
After programming the fantastic South Sámi period piece Sami Blood at TIFF 2016, TIFF has programmed a contemporary Sámi film from first-time feature director Sara Margarethe Oskal, The Tundra Within Me, about a Sámi woman returning to her community after years of self-imposed exile in the city. Tensions rise as she falls in love and grapples with her divided identity as an artist and a Sámi woman.
Full review coming soon!
The Tundra Within Me is still seeking distribution.
Without Air (Katalin Moldovai, Hungary)
When a high school English teacher recommends Agnieska Holland’s film Total Eclipse (in which David Thewlis and pre-Titanic Leo DiCaprio play poets and lovers), a conservative parent accuses her of promoting the “homosexual lifestyle.” The film would make for a great double feature with TIFF 23 title The Teachers’ Lounge, as both films are about how the more you fight the system to help your students, the more problems you create for yourself while the struggle is futile.
Full review coming soon!
Without Air is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
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