Toronto 2006

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006 North America's largest film festival came and went with some 350 films for its 31st edition. Toronto's prominence has as much to do with it being Hollywood's choice of setting for its fall product launches as it does with its time-sensitive obligation to introduce the currency of world cinema to domestic theatrical markets. This year however, films endowed with prestigious budgets or prizes failed to garner general favour. Here are notes on ten titles deemed too unfamiliar by a mainstream media fixated on familiarity: 2:37 (Murali K. Thalluri, Australia 2006)In a stunning debut, a director just past his teenage years injects the high school coming-of-age genre with a subversive dose of adrenaline. Opening with the discovery of a suicide in a school but without revealing the deceased, 2:37 peels away in flashback and introduces several characters all in various extremities of...