Features from R.T. Thorne and Jason Buxton are among the Canadian films making their world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September.

TIFF unveiled the full lineup for its Gala and Special Presentations programmes for its 49th edition, totalling 63 films.

The Canadian films include 40 Acres (pictured), Thorne’s feature directorial debut, a post-apocalyptic thriller about a Black family trying to survive in rural Canada after the world falls into famine. It is co-written by Thorne and Glenn Taylor.

40 Acres is produced by Jennifer Holness of Hungry Eyes Media, with Thorne, Taj Critchlow and Danielle Deadwyler serving as executive producers. Mongrel Media is the film’s Canadian distributor.

Buxton will bring the Canada/Ireland copro Sharp Corner to world premiere Toronto following its sales debut at the European Film Market earlier this year.

Sharp Corner is written and directed by Buxton and stars Ben Foster. Vancouver-born Cobie Smulders also stars.

The film is produced by Alcina Pictures’s Paul Barkin, Jason Levangie and Marc Tetreault of Halifax’s Shut Up & Colour Pictures, Susan Mullen of Dublin’s Kobalt Films, Buxton and Cameron Maclaren. Elevation Pictures is the Canadian distributor and Neon International is handling international sales.

Toronto writer-director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço will premiere his debut feature Young Werther, based on the 1774 epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Featuring Canadian actors Alison Pill and Patrick J. Adams, the film stars U.K. actor Douglas Booth as a young man enamoured by a woman (played by Pill) who is engaged. It is produced by Matt Code, Julie Strifler, Natalie Urquhart and Charlotte Lytle of Toronto’s Wildling Pictures and is distributed in Canada by levelFILM, with the U.K.’s Mister Smith Entertainment handling international sales.

Rounding out the Canadian films making their world premieres is Ann Marie Fleming’s Can I Get a Witness? (AMF Productions).

The film features Canadian actor Sandra Oh and is set in a world where humans must die at age 50 and young people are hired to witness and document their deaths. The film is written, directed and produced by Fleming and is distributed in Canada by Mongrel Media.

Among the Gala lineup is the North American premiere of David Cronenberg’s feature The Shrouds (Prospero Pictures, SBS Productions, Saint Laurent Productions), which had its world premiere earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival. Sphere Films is the Canadian distributor.

Another Canadian film making its North American premiere is the Canada/Germany copro Rumours (Buffalo Gal Pictures, Maze Pictures, Square Peg) from Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, which also debuted in Cannes. It is running as a Special Presentation. The Vancouver-shot A24 thriller Heretic is making its world premiere in the Special Presentation programme.

The international films making their world premiere as TIFF Gala selections are Cosima Spender’s Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe (U.K.), Thom Zimny’s Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band (U.S.), Peter Cattaneo’s The Penguin Lessons (Spain/U.K.), Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (Italy/U.K.) and William Goldenberg’s Unstoppable (U.S.).

The 49th edition of TIFF runs from Sept. 5 to 15.

Image courtesy of TIFF