World premieres of Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer, Joe Wright’s M. Son of the Century, Tomas Alfredson’s Faithless and Thomas Vinterberg’s debut TV series Families Like Ours were unveiled as part of the Toronto Film Festival‘s Primetime program on Friday.
The Toronto focus on new TV series has booked a Canadian premiere for Disclaimer, the seven-part psychological thriller for Apple from Cuarón that stars fellow Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Cline. The Apple Studios series will bow Oct. 11 and marks Cuarón’s first show under his overall deal with the streamer.
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There’s also a world bow for Alfredson, the director Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and co-helmer Sara Johnsen’s Faithless, an adaptation of the 2000 feature Faithless — directed by Liv Ullmann from a script by Oscar winner Ingmar Bergman — as a limited TV series.
Lena Endre will reprise her role as Marianne for the series with Jesper Christensen (Quantum of Solace) playing the older David Howard. Fremantle’s Miso Film Sweden is producing Faithless in co-production with public broadcasters SVT and ARTE.
The Primetime strand also booked a Sept. 7 world premiere for the BBC drama The Listeners, directed by Bravo and starring Rebecca Hall. Based on the novel by Jordan Tannahill, the five-part series centers on Claire, played by Hall, a popular English teacher who begins to hear a low humming sound that no one else around her can hear, but which upsets her own life and that of her family.
The TIFF TV sidebar has also booked a North American debut for Darkest Hour director Joe Wright’s M. Son of the Century, an 8-part drama about fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to lead Italy in 1922. Italian actor Luca Marinelli will play the young fascist leader in the series to have a world premiere in Venice before having a first screening in Toronto on Sept. 10.
Elsewhere, there’s a North American bow for Vinterberg’s debut TV series, Families Like Ours. The seven-part StudioCanal series follows the lives of people in Denmark in the wake of a great flood that effectively wipes the country off the map. Vinterberg’s 2020 Danish feature Another Round that starred Mads Mikkelsen won the best international feature Oscar.
Also getting a world premiere in Toronto is Dylan River’s Thou Shalt Not Steal, an eight-part Australian road trip drama for Stan. The series follows a young Aboriginal delinquent who escapes from detention in search of a family secret, and is joined by another teenager to travel across the outback, and all with a sex trafficker and a preacher father in pursuit.
Amazon Prime is bringing the Primetime section as its opening title a world bow for Mike Downie’s No Dress Rehearsal – The Tragically Hip story, a 4 part documentary series about the fabled Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip and its frontman, the late Gord Downie.
Another Canadian series getting a world premiere in Toronto is The Knowing, a four-part docuseries from Courtney Montour and Tanya Talaga as the latter searches for her family’s matriarch, Annie Carpenter, which reveals a story deeply intertwined with Canada’s residential school system.
Toronto also announced its short film entries for its 2024 edition, which includes directorial debuts from Dakota Johnson with Loser Baby and Maika Monroe with The Yellow. There’s also world premieres of new films by Oscar-winner Torill Kove, Pier-Philippe Chevigny, Connor Jessup, Joyce A. Nashawati and Amanda Strong.
The latest Primetime lineup comes as Toronto gets set to launch in 2025 an official content market to drum up sales of films, TV series and other entertainment content to U.S. and other international buyers.
The Toronto Film Festival is set to run from Sept. 5 to 15.
