Ivan Sen’s Limbo and Noora Niasari’s Shayda have joined the Australian contingent bound for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), announced as part of the event’s Centrepiece program.
Featuring 47 titles from filmmakers representing 45 countries, the program, previously known as Contemporary World Cinema, is designed to honour and celebrate global cinematic achievements.
Limbo, produced by Bunya Productions, stars Simon Baker as Travis Hurley (Baker), a detective who arrives in a small outback town to investigate a 20-year-old unsolved murder of a local Aboriginal girl. Forming bonds with the victim’s fractured family, Travis unravels a series of hard truths, highlighting the complexities of loss and injustice experienced by First Nations Australians.
Sen served as writer, director, editor, cinematographer, and composer, as well as co-producer alongside Bunya’s David Jowsey and Greer Simpkin, and Rachel Higgins.
The film, which also stars Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen, and Nicholas Hope, had its world premiere in competition at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival in February, going on to be released locally in May via Dark Matter Distribution and Bonsai Films.
Shayda has also created buzz internationally following its premiere at Sundance in January, where it won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.
The story follows a young Iranian mother (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) who finds refuge with her six-year-old daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) in an Australian women’s shelter during the two weeks of Iranian New Year (Nowrooz) in 1995. Aided by the strong community of women at the refuge, they seek their freedom in this new world of possibilities, only to find themselves facing the violence they tried so hard to escape – namely Hossein, Shayda’s domineering and abusive husband (Osamah Sami), who seeks to be reunited with his daughter.
Written and directed by Niasari, co-founder of Parandeh Pictures, Shayda was produced by Vincent Sheehan through Origma 45, with Dirty Films’ Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini serving as executive producers.
The film opened the Melbourne International Film Festival this month where it is also screening as part of the $140,000 Bright Horizons competition, after which it will close Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, and compete for the $100,000 CinefestOz prize in WA. Madman will release the film into cinemas September 28, while Sony Pictures Classics will launch it in North America, Latin America, Benelux, Eastern Europe, Portugal, the Middle East, and Turkey.
Shayda and Limbo’s selection comes after Lee Tamahori’s New Zealand co-production The Convert, Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel, and Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy were announced as part of the festival’s initial line-up announcement last month.
Also set to screen is Dumb Money from Australian director Craig Gillespie’s and Ellen Kuras’ Kate Winslet-starrer Lee, of which Brouhaha Entertainment’s Troy Lum and Andrew Mason are producers and John Collee is a writer.
This year’s TIFF takes place amid the US actors and writers strikes, with members of SAG-AFTRA barred from promoting struck projects by attending premieres or film festivals, conducting interviews, or via social media.
The festival runs from September 7–17.