We have a trio of Gala Presentation offerings to announce. Best Picture winning director of Coda will see her follow up feature open and world premiere the 51st edition of the Toronto Intl. Film Festival – this clears it off the deck for what some thought might be a Telluride or Venice showing. Based on an adaptation of the bestselling memoir, Siân Heder‘s Being Heumann is story of Judy Heumann, a disability activist who led a 28-day sit-in at the San Francisco Federal Building in 1977 (the production was shot in Toronto). Ruth Madeley stars, with a supporting cast that includes Mark Ruffalo and Dylan O’Brien.… Read the rest
It’s difficult not to feel a sense of schadenfreude in following the drastic downfall of a long-married Bulgarian couple in Black Money for White Nights, the latest from directing duo 
There’s a short list of feature length queer films in Czech cinema, and one would have to search even harder for narratives not steeped in despair or defined by (at least a sense of) miserabilism. With his fourth feature, Chica Checa (which means ‘Czech Girl’), director Šimon Holý formulates something of a hopeful novelty with a coming out narrative which might seem familiar but is bolstered by homegrown specificities bolstering its impact. Parallel perspectives focusing on a mother and son who at last give themselves the opportunity to live out loud assist in skirting around predictable beats, while Holý showcases Pavla Tomicová in an exceptional performance.… 
