The Toronto Film Festival has announced the first batch of films that will be screened as part of the 45th edition of the festival, which includes the Mexican film Fauna, the ninth feature film by prolific Mexican director Nicolás Pereda.
Starring Pereda’s regulars Gabino Rodríguez and Luisa Pardo, Fauna offers a commentary on how narco violence has taken a toll in Mexico, its society and its imagination. According to a synopsis published by Variety, “in the larger frame narrative, estranged offspring Luisa and Gabino revisit their parents in a ghost village. Their father’s only interest in them is sparked by Luisa’s actor boyfriend when he acts out the role of narco kingpin. In the acerbic inset, played by the same actors, a man arrives at a hotel looking for a lost friend, becomes embroiled with the sister of the girl who’s going out with the thuggish son of the local kingpin. The man’s life becomes a nightmare, the gross brutish blind he suffers contrasting with the glamor of narco fiction.”
This year’s festival, taking place September 10-19 will be hybrid combining physical socially-distanced screenings and drive-ins with digital screenings, virtual red carpets, press conferences, and industry talks. This year’s selection will be notoriously smaller, comprised of 50 new feature films—as opposed to close to 300 films last year,, plus five programs of short films, as well as interactive talks, film cast reunions, and Q&As with cast and filmmakers.
TIFF also announced the participation of Good Joe Bell by U.S. Afro-Latinx director Reinaldo Marcus Green in this year’s lineup, and also named Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) as one of the 50 TIFF Ambassadors, comprised of celebrated filmmakers and actors invited to help deliver a strong festival for the film industry.
