TIFF Titles

In 1976, the Toronto International Film Festival, then named the Festival of Festivals, was launched with the intention of bringing the best cinematic works from film festivals around the world to Canadian audiences. After 55 years, TIFF has become the second largest film festival in the world, and has screened hundreds of films. Now considered to be one of the premiere platforms for premiering world-class films, it’s hard to imagine what cinema landscape in Canada would look like without the TIFF.

To celebrate TIFF 2021 and highlight the achievements of a homegrown cultural institution, the team at Films We Like has put together a new collection of films titled TIFF Titles. The TIFF Titles collection includes films that have screened at past iterations of the festival, from some of the greatest directors from Canada and around the world.

Bear witness to the evils of humanity in Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn’s THE ACT OF KILLING. Laugh, cringe and maybe even cry with Roy Andersson’s ABOUT ENDLESSNESS. Confront the sinister implications of silence in Vivian Qu’s ANGELS WEAR WHITE. Reclaim your love for all-things music and guitars with Ron Mann’s CARMINE STREET GUITARS. Question the concepts of justice and evil in Margarethe von Trotta’s HANNAH ARENDT. Ponder the intersection of love, art, and dogs in Laurie Anderson’s HEART OF A DOG. Revisit the mastery of one of Germany’s greatest living auteurs in Christian Petzold’s JERICHOW. Travel across time, space and Shaanxi, China in Jia Zhangke’s MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART. Hit the road in iconic Canadian director Bruce McDonald’s WEIRDOS. Watch as the genius and talent of a young artist upends the contemporary art world in Sarah Driver’s BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. Contemplate the intersection of love, violence, and modernization is Jia Zhang-Ke’s ASH IS PUREST WHITE. Observe passion and jealousy dissolve the pastoral ideal in Carlos Reygada’s OUR TIME. Cheer on change making young women as they unionize a clothing factory in Rubaiyat Hossain’s MADE IN BANGLEDESH.

Whatever your tastes, the Films We Like TIFF Titles collection has something for everyone, and highlights the significance of a hometown hero, The Toronto International Film Festival.

TIFF TITLES COLLECTION

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendour and banality.

We wander, dreamlike, gently guided by our Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments take on the same significance as historical events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe; a defeated army marches to a prisoner of war camp.

Simultaneously an ode and a lament, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

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ASH IS PUREST WHITE

Qiao is in love with Bin, a local mobster. During a fight between rival gangs, she fires a gun to protect him. Qiao gets five years in prison for this act of loyalty. Upon her release, she goes looking for Bin to pick up where they left off.

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MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

China, 1999. In Fenyang, childhood friends Liangzi, a coal miner, and Zhang, the owner of a gas station, are both in love with Tao, the town beauty. Tao eventually marries the wealthier Zhang and they have a son he names Dollar.

2014. Tao is divorced and her son emigrates to Australia with his business magnate father.

Australia, 2025. 19-year-old Dollar no longer speaks Chinese and can barely communicate with his now bankrupt father. All that he remembers of his mother is her name..

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HEART OF A DOG

"Hello, little bonehead. I'll love you forever." So begins HEART OF A DOG, creative pioneer Laurie Anderson's wry, wondrous and unforgettable cinematic journey through love, death and language.

Centering on Anderson's beloved rat terrier Lolabelle, who died in 2011, HEART OF A DOG is a personal essay that weaves together childhood memories, video diaries, philosophical musings on data collection, surveillance culture and the Buddhist conception of the afterlife, and heartfelt tributes to the artists, writers, musicians and thinkers who inspire her.

Fusing her own witty, inquisitive narration with original violin compositions, hand-drawn animation, 8mm home movies and artwork culled from exhibitions past and present, Anderson creates a hypnotic, collage-like visual language out of the raw materials of her life and art, examining how stories are constructed and told — and how we use them to make sense of our lives.

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ANGELS WEAR WHITE

In a small seaside town, two schoolgirls are assaulted by a middle-aged man in a motel.

Mia, a teenager who was working on reception that night, is the only witness. For fear of losing her job, she says nothing. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Wen, one of the victims, finds that her troubles have only just begun.

Trapped in a world that offers them no safety, Mia and Wen will have to find their own way out.

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WEIRDOS

Nova Scotia. 1976. The weekend of the American Bicentennial. When 15-year-old Kit decides that living with his father is too repressive, he hits the road to move in with his mother. Accompanied by his girlfriend Alice, Kit will explore his very core - his sexuality, his sense of place and self - in an attempt to find a place to call home.

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THE ACT OF KILLING

In this chilling and inventive documentary executive produced by Errol Morris (The Fog Of War) and Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), THE ACT OF KILLING examines a country where killers are celebrated as heroes and the filmmakers challenge unrepentant death squad leaders to reenact their real-life mass-killings in the style of the American movies they love. The hallucinatory result is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass-murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit. Shaking audiences at the 2012 Toronto and Telluride International Film Festivals, THE ACT OF KILLING is an unprecedented film and according to CNN, "could well change how you view the documentary form."

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CARMINE STREET GUITARS

Once the centre of the New York bohemia, Greenwich Village is now home to lux restaurants, and buzzer door clothing stores catering to the nouveau riche. But one shop in the heart of the Village remains resilient to the encroaching gentrification: Carmine Street Guitars.

There, custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej, build handcrafted guitars out of reclaimed wood from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings. Nothing looks or sounds quite like a Rick Kelly guitar, which is the reason they are embraced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, just to name a few.

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HANNAH ARENDT

The film portrays Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) during the four years, (1960-64), that she observes, writes, and endures the furious reception for her work about the trial of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. Watching Arendt as she attends the trial, staying by her side as she is both barraged by her critics and supported by a tight band of loyal friends, we experience the intensity of this powerful Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany in 1933. The fierce, chain-smoking Arendt is an exile who is happy and flourishing in America, but whose penetrating vision makes her an outsider wherever she goes.

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JERICHOW

erichow, a town in Germany’s northeast lies in an impoverished area with few jobs to be had. Following his mother’s death Thomas returns to his hometown, a former soldier who has been dishonourably discharged from the army. He has inherited his mother’s house and wants to renovate it and look for job.

Fate brings Thomas and Ali together. Ali owns, leases and supplies 45 takeaways in the local area. He always comes through yet is mistrustful and always suspicious that he’s being duped by his leaseholders. Ali likes Thomas. He trusts him. He offers him a job as a driver and assistant with an attractive salary.

Laura is Ali’s wife, attractive, cool and always a little sullen. Thomas comes face to face with her whenever he drives his delivery truck up to Ali’s brick-fronted villa deep in the woods in the mornings and evenings. She treats Thomas coolly, almost disdainfully. He’s the driver her husband has chosen to befriend. And her husband is merely the man she kisses goodbye in the morning – a man who becomes frantic when he can’t reach Laura on her mobile.

Thomas watches on and sees Laura and Ali’s strained relationship. He sees them perform the everyday rituals, watches them stagnate. He sits next to Laura on the beach, during their outing to the Baltic Sea. Ali dances, drunken and absent- mindedly, to the notes of a Turkish tune. Without wanting to, he lures Laura and Thomas into his web of desire, changing the course of all of their lives.

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OUR TIME

A family lives in the Mexican countryside raising fighting bulls. Esther is in charge of running the ranch, while her husband Juan, a world-renowned poet, raises and selects the beasts. Although in an open marriage, their relationship begins to crumble when Esther falls in love with an American horse-breaker and Juan is unable to control his jealousy.

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MADE IN BANGLADESH

Shimu, 23, works in a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Faced with difficult conditions at work, she decides to start a union with her co-workers. Despite threats from the management and disapproval of her husband, Shimu is determined to go on. Together the women must fight and find a way.

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BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT follows Basquiat's life pre-fame and how New York City, the times, the people and the movements surrounding him formed the artist he became.

Using never- before-seen works, writings and photographs, director Sara Driver, who was part of the New York arts scene herself, worked closely and collaboratively with friends and other artists who emerged from that period: Jim Jarmusch, James Nares, Fab Five Freddy, Glenn O’Brien, Kenny Scharf, Lee Quinones, Patricia Field, Luc Sante and many others.

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About Films We Like
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Carmine Street Guitars) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent, and international films in Canada. Recent releases include All the Streets are Silent, Moby Doc and Undine.

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