The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) returns from 6th to 16th September and, as usual, brings with it an impressive selection of highly anticipated cinema from East Asia including Koreeda’s Shoplifters, the latest from Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke, and a long awaited return from Lee Chang-dong.
Cambodia
-
Graves Without a Name – Rithy Panh’s documentary followup to The Missing Picture explores the continuing effects of the Cambodian genocide.
China
- An Elephant Sitting Still – four troubled people make their way to Manzhouli where an elephant is said to be sitting still, free of worldly troubles in the first, and sadly last, film from Hu Bo who took his own life shortly after the film’s completion.
- Ash Is Purest White – Zhao Tao stars in Jia Zhangke’s latest attempt to chart the course of modern China through crime thriller as a gangster’s moll takes the fall for her man only to be released and discover the world has changed and he has someone new.
- Baby – Yang Mi stars as a woman who was abandoned at birth because of a genetic defect and tries to stop the same thing happening to another baby in Liu Jie’s latest social drama.
- Hidden Man – Eddie Peng stars in Jiang Wen’s ’30s epic as a spy who comes back to China with revenge on his mind but finds himself in the middle of something much bigger.
- Legend of the Demon Cat – Director’s Cut – Chen Kaige directs Shota Sometani as a monk who comes to China to study and ends up investigating a mysterious cat entity with the help of an eccentric poet (Huang Xuan)
- Long Day’s Journey Into Night – a man returns to his home village after many years for his father’s funeral and to look for lost love in Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues followup.
- Shadow – Zhang Yimou returns to the world of period epics with a tale of proxy war as a great general (Deng Chao) makes use of a double to combat palace intrigue.
- The Crossing – a schoolgirl turns smuggler to keep up with a wealthy friend in Bai Xue’s coming of age drama.
Japan
- Asako I & II – Ryusuke Hamaguchi adapts Tomoka Shibasaki’s novel in which a young woman spots a man who looks exactly like her long absent lover in cafe, only he has a completely different personality.
- Complicity – first time director Kei Chikaura charts a course of cross cultural interaction through the tale of an undocumented man from China trying to survive in Japan who is unexpectedly offered the chance to become an apprentice to a soba chef.
- Killing – Shinya Tsukamoto takes on the samurai drama as a ronin (Sosuke Ikematsu) falls for a farmer’s daughter (Yu Aoi) while the winds of change blow all around them.
- Shoplifters – Hirokazu Koreeda’s Palme d’Or winning drama follows a family of shoplifters who take in an abused little girl.
- Vision – Juliette Binoche goes rare herb hunting in Japan in the latest from Naomi Kawase.
Korea
- Burning – Lee Chang-dong makes a long awaited return with an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story in which a lonely author’s burgeoning crush on a childhood friend is threatened by a wealthy playboy.
- Hotel by the River – Hong Sang-soo’s latest follows a poet, his sons, and two women to a gloomy hotel.
- Our Body – a disaffected middle-aged woman becomes obsessed with a graceful female runner in Han Ka-ram’s pressing social drama.
Singapore
- Folklore: A Mother’s Love & Folklore: Pob – Eric Khoo produces a two-part anthology movie as Indonesia’s Joko Anwar and Thailand’s Pen-ek Ratanaruang muse on the idea of folkore.
Taiwan
- Cities of Last Things – Ho Wi Ding works backwards from the suicide of a depressed policeman to find out what prompted him to take his own life.
Thailand
- Manta Ray – a fisherman takes in a Rohingya refugee in the debut film from Phuttiphong Aroonpheng.
Tibet
- Jinpa – delivery driver Jinpa knocks over a sheep and then finds himself picking up a hitchhiker also called Jinpa who is on a journey to avenge the death of his father.
Vietnam
- The Third Wife – a 14-year-old girl becomes the third wife of a wealthy landowner in 19th century Vietnam.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs from 6 – 16th September, 2018.
The complete festival programme as well as full information on all the films can be found on the festival’s official website, and you can keep up with all the latest details through the official Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram and YouTube channels.
Raya Martin adapts the novel by F.H. Batacan in which two priests investigate a series of killings targeting young boys in the slums of Manila.
Chengxi’s dad has just died. He’d left the family sometime before and despite the best efforts of Chengxi’s mum, Chengxi knew perfectly well that it was to be with another man. The problem now is Chengxi’s dad has left everything to his new partner Jay and Chengxi’s mum is not at all happy about it… 
Park Bae-il’s Soseongri follows a community of elderly farmers facing rural depopulation problems who find themselves in conflict with the police when the decision is taken to place the THAAD anti-aircraft system in their village.
Heart rending animation inspired by Kenji Miyazawa’s classic Night on the Galactic Railroad. Brothers Junpei and Kanta face the loss of their home when the northern island of Shikotan is reclaimed by Russian troops in the aftermath of the second world war.
Charming puppet animation in which Chieri, who has recently lost her father, develops an intense bond with her stuffed toy, Cherry. Travelling to her grandmother’s house for her father’s funeral, Chieri experiences a fantastic adventure which helps her to cope with grief and fear of the future.
Following on from the 
Lee Byung-hun stars as a conflicted high school teacher who begins to see echoes of a woman he loved and lost years ago in a male student.
Kim Ki-young recasts the folly of war as a romantic melodrama in which a Korean conscript to the Japanese army receives harsh treatment from his sadistic superior but later falls in love with a Japanese woman.
Moon Jeong-suk stars as a determined young woman hellbent on becoming a judge in defiance of social convention which views marriage and motherhood as the only paths to female success. Encouraged by her father but forced to dodge her mother’s constant attempts to marry her off, she pursues her dream in spite of intense disapproval.
Kim Ki-duk (the old one!) draws inspiration from Ko Nakahira’s Dorodarake no Junjo for a tragic tale of love across the class divide as poor boy Du-su (Shin Seong-il) and Ambassador’s daughter Johanna (Um Aeng-ran) meet by chance and fall in love. Faced with the impossibility of their “pure” love in an “impure world” the pair find themselves an impasse, unable to reconcile their true feelings with the demands of the society in which they live. 
Im Kwon-taek’s “artistic breakthrough” stars Ahn Sung-ki as a young man who has abandoned his girlfriend and university studies to become a Buddhist monk but later meets an older man who indulges all of life’s Earthly pleasures such as wine and women.
Park Kwang-su revisits the democratisation movement in its immediate aftermath as a student who hides from the authorities in a small mining village finds himself at odds with his environment while haunted by the possibility that his longed for revolution will not come to pass.
Montreal’s 
The 
Windows on Worlds 