TorontoFilmFestivalReviews.com: Vanguard Toronto Film Festival

New Vanguard Series at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival

This year, the Toronto International Film Festival will feature a new Vanguard series—focusing on Avant-garde—as a new programme concentrating on sex and youth. With 11 films including Shortbus starring Toronto’s own Sook-Yin Lee, Vanguard centers on cutting-edge cinema.

Noah Cowan, festival co-director states, "The festival has felt the need for some time to establish a program for `early adopters,' people who delight in movies that push the envelopes of technology, culture, sexuality and cinema itself. These films are edgy, irreverent, definitely sexy, and have a palpable, youthful zing."

Some of the Vanguard films featured as world premieres include Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr’s Chacun sa Nuit of the murder of a small-town bisexual playboy and John Barker’s Bunny Chow, a film that journeys alongside three stand-up comics across South Africa.

The programme also includes some North American premieres such as Christian Volckman’s Renaissance, a film noir set in 2054 Paris, Gerardo Naranjo’s Drama/Mex, showing stories of a 15 year-old hooker, a troubled corporate character and three youths. The programme will also feature the Canadian premiere of Bobcat Goldthwait’s Sleeping Dogs Lie, about a young woman with an alarming sexual fixation.