Olivier Sarbil’s Viktor represents documentary in the Platform competition at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The festival announced the 10 films that will screen in the competitive slate, which carries a purse of $20,000. Viktor is an artistic portrait of Ukraine amid the Russian invasion seen and heard through the experience of a Deaf citizen navigating the chaos. Sarbil uses the audio tracks to evoke the protagonist’s experience during wartime.
Sarbil previously directed the Hot Docs selection On the President’s Orders with James Jones, a gripping look at Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody stance against crime in the Philippines. He also served as cinematographer on Matthew Heineman’s acclaimed war doc Retrograde and is a veteran war photographer. Viktor will have its world premiere at Toronto and is seeking distribution.
The competition also includes the hybrid film The Wolves Come Out at Night. Directed by Gabrielle Brady, the Australian-Mongolian-German co-production follows a young Mongolian couple displaced by climate change. Brady previously directed the hybrid film Island of the Hungry Ghosts, which won Best Documentary Feature at Tribeca and screened at Toronto’s Planet in Focus. The film will have its world premiere at the festival and is also a sales title.
Viktor marks a return for documentary to the competition after an extended absence. The only documentary to screen in Platform previously was Alan Zweig’s Hurt, which won the inaugural competition in 2015. However, the festival has included hybrid works in the slate including the Canadian drama Those Who Make Revolutions Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves in 2016.
On the Canadian front, the competition includes Sook-Yin Lee’s latest drama Paying for It. The film adapts Chester Brown’s autobiographical 2011 graphic novel and twists fact with fiction as the former Much Music VJ and veteran cultural commentator blends her story within the tale. The film is also a world premiere.
TIFF’s jury for this year’s competition will be headlined by veteran Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), South Korean filmmaker Hur Jin-ho (A Normal Family), and up-and-coming American indie filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow). Previous winners in the competition include Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country, and Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps. Today’s announcement follows yesterday’s slate of Galas and Special Presentations with more TIFF titles rolling out this week and next. The TIFF Docs line-up is expected after this week.
The 2024 Toronto Platform line-up is as follows:
Daniela Forever Nacho Vigalondo | Spain/Belgium
World Premiere – Opening Film
Sales Title
Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) soulfully portrays a bereaved man who enrolls in a clinical trial for a drug that allows him to reunite with his lost lover, played by Beatrice Grannò (The White Lotus) through lucid dreams.
Daughter’s Daughter Huang Xi | Taiwan
World Premiere
Sales Title
Taiwanese filmmaker Huang Xi’s (Missing Johnny, Twisted Strings) latest work is Daughter’s Daughter. After a terrible accident takes the life of her youngest, a mother must confront her eldest daughter who she gave up after a teenage pregnancy.
Mr. K Tallulah H. Schwab | Netherlands/Belgium/Norway
World Premiere
Sales Title
This is a second feature by Amsterdam-based director Tallulah H. Schwab (Confetti Harvest). Mr. K star Crispin Glover brings his best to Schwab’s delightfully Kafkaesque tale of a travelling magician who finds himself in a hotel full of unusual guests — with no way out.
Paying For It Sook-Yin Lee | Canada
World Premiere
Sales Title
Canadian filmmaker, musician, and actor Sook-Yin Lee connects the past with the present, bringing together Canadian underground artists and innovative cross-generational musicians in a cultural snapshot of turn-of-the-millennium Toronto in Paying For It. With subtle comic energy and a great cast, this adaptation of Chester Brown’s autobiographical 2011 graphic novel is a movie only Lee could make… because it’s her story, too.
Pedro Páramo Rodrigo Prieto | Mexico
World Premiere
Unfolding in a seemingly abandoned Mexican town where past and present beguilingly coexist, the feature directorial debut of legendary cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Killers of the Flower Moon) is a mesmerizing story of desire, corruption, and inheritance.
The Wolves Always Come at Night Gabrielle Brady | Australia/Mongolia/Germany
World Premiere
Sales Title
Australian director and screenwriter Gabrielle Brady (Hungry Ghosts) lays bare the emotional ruptures of climate change and urban migration on Mongolian herders, told through the experiences of one family. After a devastating storm wrought by climate change forces them from their home in the Mongolian countryside to the city, a young couple are forced to adapt to a new way of life in this breathtaking and heartbreaking hybrid film.
They Will Be Dust (Polvo serán) Carlos Marqués-Marcet | Spain/Italy/Switzerland
World Premiere
Sales Title
Spanish film director, screenwriter, and film editor Carlos Marqués-Marcet, whose 2014 film 10.000 KM won the Goya for best new director, treats the audience to a unique, daring, and rewarding look at our unavoidable death. Unequal parts contemporary dance-musical and ensemble drama, They Will Be Dust reaches for the raw emotional core of humanity in all its inherent messiness.
Triumph Petar Valchanov, Kristina Grozeva | Bulgaria/Greece
World Premiere
Sales Title
This latest work from co-directors Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva, combined with their previous films The Lesson (TIFF ’14) and Glory (2016), forms a trilogy inspired by sensationalist news stories from their homeland that prove once and for all that truth is stranger than fiction.
Viktor Olivier Sarbil | Ukraine/USA
World Premiere
Sales Title
This bold documentary from filmmaker and veteran war photographer Olivier Sarbil offers a deeply personal perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Crafting an audiovisual experience carefully designed to match that of its subject, Viktor is an intimate portrait of a Deaf person navigating chaos and violence.
Winter in Sokcho Koya Kamura | France
World Premiere
Sales Title
In this debut from filmmaker Koya Kamura, a young woman struggling to claim her identity and independence has her routine disrupted when a French artist checks into the small guesthouse in snowy Sokcho where she works.
TIFF runs Sept. 5 to 15.
