Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces to open TIFF 2007

Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 6:56am.

Posted in Film News , USA & Canada, Toronto Film Festival 2006.

On the eve of Cannes, is it too early to start talking about the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival? Well the TIFF Group do not seem to think so, as they announced yesterday that Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces will be the opening film for this years edition of TIFF. Because so many of us at Twitch are local, expect mondo coverage this year (as always) from the usual suspects around here.

The choice is a low key one as it has been 8 years since Podeswa’s The Five Senses and the man has been busying himself with mainly TV drama. It is rather surprising that TIFF went with this rather than the much higher profile David Cronenberg film Eastern Promises currently in post-production (and features festival friendly folks like Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl), but then again, the opening film has often been the lower-key one, such as last years Inuit Epic, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.

Based on the bestselling Canadian novel from Anne Michaels, “Fugitive Pieces tells the story of Jakob Beer, a man whose life is haunted by his childhood experiences during the Second World War. As a child in Poland he is orphaned during wartime then saved by a compassionate, Greek archeologist. He then spends the rest of his life trying to come to terms with the losses he has endured. Through his writing, and then through the discovery of true love, Jakob is given the opportunity to free himself from the legacy of his past.”

Expect things to gear up more in July when the new TIFF website goes live.

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Reader Comments

Monkey Monk 05/11/2007 @ 5:14pm

I’ve never much cared for Podeswa’s films. Plus, I think the festival should refrain from programming films from ex-staffers as their opening night films. Sets a bad precedent and looks like a conflict of interest.