Aretha Franklin documentary withdrawn from Toronto Film Fest

After the film’s north-of-the-border debut was met with an enthusiastic standing ovation, Moore provided Slovenia college applications and distributed German-made pencils to the audience. Once the festival is happening, it’s incredibly hard to get time to see a lot of films if you also want to interview anyone, so this is a wonderful solution, even if it does seem to make TIFF last for about a month.

Directed by Canadian Jean-Marc Vallee, it tells the story of an investment banker whose life unravels following the death of his wife. But in recent decades, eventual Oscar Best Picture winners like 1999’s “American Beauty” and 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire” received a big dose of publicity from the festival, helping them receive the big prize.

Vallée earned widespread accolades and Oscar nominations for his 2013 film, the Matthew McConaughey-led Dallas Buyers Club. In “The Martian“, adapted from Andy Weir’s novel by Drew Goddard (“Cabin in the Woods”), Scott trades horror and aliens for humor and science. The movie stars Matt Damon, who plays an astronaut fighting for survival on Mars.

Certain screenings at TIFF feature the opportunity for audience members to ask questions of a film’s director and cast – a rare chance for fans to interact directly with the talent without having to press up against red carpet barricades for hours.

Founded by Bill Marshall, Henk van der Kolk and Dusty Cohl, the new festival served as a place where the best films from other festivals held around the world were shown at Toronto’s Windsor Arms Hotel.

The TIFF runs for ten days, and will close on September 20.

Last week, a Colorado judge granted Aretha Franklin a temporary restraining order blocking the new documentary unbelievable Grace from being screened at Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival, and now the film’s producers have pulled the flick from the upcoming Toronto global Film Festival.

British director Stephen Frears helms the film recounting the meteoric rise of cyclist Lance Armstrong, and Sunday Times journalist David Walsh who dared to expose the truth behind his Tour de France wins. This year’s fest, which kicks off Thursday, is no different, and might be especially crowded with dramatizations ranging from the infamous (Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger in “Black Mass”) to the blacklisted (Bryan Cranston as screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in “Trumbo”). It also promises another Oscar for Eddie Redmayne – but we’ll get to that later. The documentary looks at the events leading up to the attack and the aftermath, including Yousafzai’s speech to the United Nations. But the performance I am most excited to see is Brie Larson’s in Room, based on Emma Donoghue’s novel.

Emily Blunt stars as an idealistic Federal Bureau of Investigation agent opposite shadowy government operatives Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro in this gritty drug-war thriller set in the lawless border area between the U.S. and Mexico.