TIFF, Sunday, Sept 18

The last day of the festival. There were numerous travel glitches that could have kept people away from the downtown. The DVP was closed. The subway was closed from Bloor to Eglinton with shuttle buses. Even so, the subway does not start till 9 am on Sunday. But still the theatre at 9.00 am was full.

The film was Terraferma, from Italy. It is set in an island off the southern coast of Italy, and centres on a fishing family, as they face the future of declining fisheries, the economy slowly turning to tourism, and the seas around the island full of African refugees on flimsy boats or even swimming to shore. One night fishing, they find a number of Ethiopian refugees on a raft, and some try to swim to board their ship. They take them onboard, even though it is against Italian law. Among the passengers is a pregnant woman with her son. They give them shelter in their home, where the Ethiopian woman gives birth. The family, although torn about it, continues to give her sanctuary and they try to find a way to get her to her husband who is working in Turin. The film is at once charming and thought provoking. I highly recommend it.

One of the programmes at this festival was City to City, and this year the focus city was Buenos Aires, Argentina. I chose a film The Stones from this programme. A mistake. About 15 minutes into it, I realized I had made a mistake, and I relaxed after that. No plot, virtually little dialogue. The only saving grace was that it was filmed in a canal area of Buenos Aires. It was like a student film. C

My final film was Rampart, the only American film I saw in this festival. Generally, I don't choose them because they are bound to open commercially in the next few months. I chose this one to fill in the day. And that is about all it did.

It had a good cast...Woody Harrelson, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Ned Beatty, Ice Cube, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon. It was about a rogue cop in the LA Police Department. At first we see him as kind of a quirky individualist trying to keep his job in a public institution. But eventually, there is little respect for him, and the whole film is empty.

I could have stayed for the free showing of the winner of the People's Choice Award. This is the result of voting by audiences throughout the festival. Last year's winner was The King's Speech which went on to win the Academy Award. This year the People's Choice Award went to Where Do We Go Now? from Lebanon which I saw on Saturday. It is interesting that a small budget foreign language film won.