Toronto Film Festival 2022 Photo Gallery: ‘The Swimmers’ World Premiere, ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ And More

the first Oscar front runner of 2022 in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans following the film’s win of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. And now Spielberg himself has spoken out in thanks to all those that have supported his film. It’s somewhat surprising that Steven Spielberg had never previously entered a film he directed into the competition of TIFF,  but he certainly had a memorable experience the first time.

The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival came to an end on Sunday and with it the announcement of its always-hyped People’s Choice Award. And it was no surprise that Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” took the prize voted on by festival moviegoers.

Steven Spielberg is enjoying another triumph, with his quasi-autobiographical drama “The Fabelmans” earning this year’s People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival came to an end on Sunday and with it the announcement of its always-hyped People’s Choice Award. And it was no surprise that Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” took the prize voted on by festival moviegoers.

The People’s Choice Award from the just wrapped 2022 Toronto International Film Festival has gone to Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.  First Runner Up is Canada’s own Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. And Second Runner Up was Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The Documentary Award went to Black Ice, and the Midnight Madness winner was Weird: The Al Yankovich Story             .

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical coming-of-age story “The Fabelmans” took home the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, providing a major boost to its awards season chances. TIFF’s People’s Choice Award is one of the most reliable predictors of eventual Oscar success.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran film, theater and opera director Julie Taymor has been set as the president of the competition jury at next month’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Taymor (“The Lion King”) will head a small group that selects the winners from the 15 competition titles that unspool in Tokyo between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2, 2022. The other four members of the jury will be announced later. Taymor is the second woman to head the jury in as many years and follows Isabelle Huppert in 2021. There was no competition in 2020 due to COVID. And in 2019, the jury was headed by China’s Zhang Ziyi.

The world premiere of documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me will fire up the 36th AFI Fest on Nov. 2.

Michaela Zee editor The American Film Institute has announced that the world premiere of “Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me” is set to open the 36th edition of AFI Fest on Nov. 2. “AFI is proud to launch AFI Fest 2022 with ‘Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me,’ a film as profoundly powerful as it is personal,” AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale said in a statement. “Selena is a global force in art and entertainment, and we are honored to partner with her, Alek and Apple to shine a light upon her journey in this beautifully crafted celebration of optimism, vulnerability and hopefulness.” Directed by Alek Keshishian (“Madonna: Truth or Dare”), the documentary explores Gomez’s rise to stardom as an actress and singer, along with the personal crises she’s endured throughout her life.

Toronto Film Festival returned in spectacular fashion after two years of virtual premieres or limited capacity screenings. The parties were packed (which may lead to COVID outbreaks down the road, but… that’s showbiz?), the red carpets were glittering and the atmosphere was electric, bordering on euphoric, as director Rian Johnson’s acclaimed sequel “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story,” Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans” and the Harry Styles-led romantic drama “My Policeman” debuted to blockbuster-starved audiences in Canada. Hollywood seemed eager to make up for lost time. So, as the curtain comes down on TIFF, here’s a look back at the major trends and takeaways from the 10-day festival.

Naman Ramachandran Jason Howden, the writer and director behind 2015 cult horror hit “Deathgasm,” is returning for “Deathgasm 2.” The sequel, which is produced by Raven Banner Entertainment, is set to start shooting in New Zealand next year. Howden, who also wrote and directed “Guns Akimbo” starring Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving, will write and direct. He has also already been in talks with the original cast – Milo Cawthorne, James Blake and Kimberley Crossman – about returning. “Deathgasm,” which debuted at SXSW and went onto win a slew of horror awards including the Palm D’Gore at Knoxville Horror Film Festival, tells the story of two high-school metal-heads, Brodie (played by Cawthorne) and Zakk (Blake), who form a band called Deathgasm. One day, while delving into some dark magic to escape their mundane lives, the duo unwittingly summon an evil entity called The Blind One.

Asghar Farhadi will preside over the jury for the International Feature Film Competition at this year’s Zurich Film Festival.

EJ Panaligan editor “Bros” co-writer and star Billy Eichner had sincere words to share about his upcoming romantic comedy at the Variety Cover Party at TIFF sponsored by Skyy. “I could have never imagined in a million years that we would have been able to premiere in such a spectacular way,” Eichner said about the buzz behind the film leading up to its release. “Thank you to everyone at Variety, this feature really was the most beautiful, accurate thing that’s ever been written about me.” In a lengthy interview with Variety, Eichner discussed the film’s entirely LGBTQ cast along with the many distinctive ways in which his personal life has influenced the development of the movie’s characters and plot lines. “I’ve worked so hard on it, I care so much about it, and I want it to do well for the sake of the LGBTQ stories getting greenlit,” he told Variety‘s Brent Lang. “So there’s a burden I feel, much as I want to sit here and just talk about how funny the movie is.”

Drew Barrymore had a blast at Britney Spears and Sam Asghari’s wedding in June.

Harry Potter alum is not active on social media, and while he’s appeared on the red carpet a few times with his new girlfriend Erin Darke, we haven’t learned a whole lot about how they came to be together. Until this year, when he shared a hair-oriented tale about how he and his girlfriend came to be a couple.  Radcliffe has been candid dealing with the papparazzi and wanting privacy in the past, but he has also been out and about on red carpets this year to promote his upcoming movie Weird: The Al Yankovic Story at TIFF.

Of all the directors making TIFF debuts this year, none are more revered or accomplished than Steven Spielberg. The highest-grossing director of all time normally premieres his films in late fall.

enter our giveaway for a chance to win before the giveaway closes on Sept. 30.Director Tobe Hooper’s film opened in 1982 and scared audiences across the world thanks to Steven Spielberg’s spooky screenplay and Hooper’s tight direction.

Studio sponsors include GreenSlate, Moët & Chandon, PEX and Vancouver Film School.

Brendan Fraser fought back tears as “The Whale” received a passionate standing ovation at its Toronto International Film Festival premiere on Sunday. The crowd stood for roughly five minutes until festival organizers quieted the applause to begin a question and answer session with Fraser, director Darren Aronofsky, writer Samuel D. Hunter and cast members Sadie Sink and Ty Simpkins. The reception was one of the strongest yet at this year’s festival, a gathering that has already included the premieres of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” TIFF was set to be a big festival for Fraser even before “The Whale” screened to huge acclaim. The actor is receiving the TIFF Tribute Award for Performance at the 2022 festival, with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey saying, “Brendan Fraser gives a performance of staggering depth, power, and nuance in ‘The Whale.’ This former Torontonian has been an action star, a screen comic, and a romantic lead. We’re thrilled to welcome him home as the actor behind one of the finest performances of the year.”

also prides themself on not being emotionally available?”In the R-rated comedy, already being cited for its realistic depictions of gay men having sex, Eichner plays Bobby, a brash, blunt podcaster who spearheads an LGBTQ+ museum and falls for Macfarlane’s Garth Brooks-loving estate lawyer Aaron, who is quite a different representative of the community they both inhabit.“It’s interesting to see, as an actor, how many flaws I can have [with a character] and still get away with making the love story happen,” Macfarlane said, adding that he sometimes pushed back on his character’s rougher edges, thinking they might be too off-putting. “I saw the movie yesterday and I thought, ‘Aaron, you are such a dick!'”Eichner agreed, noting that Bobby and Aaron are “both dicks at various points, but that’s how people are.”Stoller assured Macfarlane he was in good stead: “I remember telling you, the more flawed and real you are, the more the audience is going to root for you for figure out your shit.”Apatow, a veteran of film exploring minefield relationships and stubborn male growth (“Knocked Up,” “This is 40”), commented on the historic nature of “Bros.” “It’s a very special experience, but it starts out with Nick and Billy having this really great idea,” Apatow said.

Steven Spielberg has described his semi-autobiographical picture The Fabelmans, delving into the teenage experiences that led him into filmmaking, as the most “daunting” project of his six-decade, blockbuster filmmaking career.

My favorite Toronto premiere memory was the one where eventual Best Picture winner Spotlight played to a raucous crowd reaction at the Princess of Wales Theatre, the emotion ratcheted up even further when the Boston Globe journalists who cracked the Catholic Church pedophile scandals took the stage and stood next to the actors who played them onscreen. It has been several years since TIFF has been able to show why this is such a special festival, because of the Covid epidemic and Canada’s protective lockdown of its borders. Last night marked a turning point for TIFF as a preeminent showcase for awards season movies, with the back to back Princess of Wales Theatre world premieres of Netflix’s Rian Johnson-directed Knives Out sequel Glass Onion, followed by the premiere of Amblin/Universal’s Steven Spielberg love letter to his family and a movie camera, The Fabelmans. Both of these films land squarely in the awards conversation.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, the director’s semi-autobiographical movie based on his own family and upbringing, has released its official trailer.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Steven Spielberg has said that mining his family history to make “The Fabelmans” was a “very daunting experience” that was at times “very, very hard to get through.” The iconic filmmaker’s latest project world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night to raves from critics and largely favorable reviews. The semi-autobiographical movie, which is already being tipped as an Oscar contender, tells the story of Sam Fabelman, a young boy who falls in love with cinema, but finds himself fighting family turmoil to keep his dream alive. In a so-called press conference on Sunday, that was effectively a Q&A with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey (the festival did not take any questions in the room from the gathered journalists, who had to submit questions almost 24 hours in advance), the “Jaws” director said he thought making the movie “would be a lot easier than it turned out to be because I know the material and I’ve known the characters for my entire life.”

“The Fabelmans” made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, and a new trailer offers a glimpse of the latest film from acclaimed director Steven Spielberg.

Sift through some of his best work, and you will find that Steven Spielberg has always been a filmmaker charged by notions of love and ache for families, both those we are born into and those we select for ourselves. Though his tender devotion to domestic, often suburban bonds and rhythms—a well-documented and endlessly discussed through-line in his filmography—has perhaps never been as evident as in the soul-baring “The Fabelmans.” It’s Spielberg’s most personal film, one that gorgeously revives the memories of his childhood and youth with a lavish sense of wistfulness and an aptly Hollywood-ized, fable-like touch.  That beautiful Hollywood sheen is fitting for the on-screen autobiography of an escapist filmmaker, one whose name we came to pronounce synonymously with the magic of movies.

Carson Burton Steven Spielberg is taking audiences on an intimate stroll through his childhood in the first trailer for “The Fabelmans.”The semi-autobiographical film follows the formative years of a young man as he discovers a shattering family secret, causing him to use movies as a means to help him see the truth about others and himself. Spielberg based the film on his own early years in Arizona and co-wrote the script with “Lincoln,” “Munich” and “West Side Story” screenwriter Tony Kushner.On Saturday, “The Fabelmans” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, earning a standing ovation in the crowd of movie lovers, who cheered loudly for the Oscar-winning auteur as he made his first appearance at the Canadian gathering. 

Of all the directors making TIFF debuts this year, none is more revered or accomplished than Steven Spielberg. The highest-grossing director of all time normally premieres his films in late fall, but this year he’s changed tack, with his long-awaited semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans,” set to headline TIFF’s Special Presentations section on September 11.

The Fabelmans is coming!

The Inspection,” one of the festival’s opening night films and the story of a gay man who enlists in the army during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. Director Elegance Bratton drew on his own service to craft the picture and sees it as an important corrective. “For most of our country’s history, we were forced to be silent, to suffer in silence,” Bratton told Variety.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic No director has done more to deconstruct the myth of the suburban American family than Steven Spielberg. Dissertations have been written and documentaries made on the subject. And now, at the spry young age of 75, Spielberg himself weighs in on where his preoccupations come from in “The Fabelmans,” a personal account of his upbringing that feels like listening to two and a half hours’ worth of well-polished cocktail-party anecdotes, only better, since he’s gone to the trouble of staging them all for our benefit. Spielberg’s a born storyteller, and these are arguably his most precious stories. From the first movie he saw (“The Greatest Show on Earth”) to memories of meeting filmmaker John Ford on the Paramount lot, this endearing, broadly appealing account of how Spielberg was smitten by the medium — and why the prodigy nearly abandoned picture-making before his career even started — holds the keys to so much of the master’s filmography. More similar to Woody Allen’s autobiographical “Radio Days” than it is to European art films such as “The 400 Blows” and “Amistad” (the more highbrow models other directors typically point to when re-creating their childhoods), “The Fabelmans” invites audiences into the home and headspace of the world’s most beloved living director, an oddly sanitized zone where even the trauma — which includes anti-Semitism, financial disadvantage and divorce — seems to go better with fresh-buttered popcorn.

There is definitely a trend of late for film directors to take a look in thinly disguised cinematic memoirs of their early influences that shaped the artist and person they have become. Kenneth Branagh with Belfast and Paolo Sorrentino with The Hand Of God did it last year. Of course there is Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, others over the years. Sam Mendes, while not drawing a portrait of his younger self revisits the movie palaces of his youth in another 2022 offering, Empire Of Light, which premiered last weekend at Telluride and will also hit the Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF is also where the man I recently described as the GOAT, Steven Spielberg, has chosen to debut his own story where the names have been changed but the story is  clearly his. The Fabelmans basically chronicling his early Jewish family life and infatuation with making movies  had its World Premiere Saturday night, the first of Spielberg’s directed movies ever to premiere at a film festival. This one seems entirely appropriate, and it has been gestating in the director’s head ever since he and his co-writer Tony Kushner started kicking it around during the making of Lincoln over a decade ago. He says he finally made it primarily as a way to bring his late parents Leah and Arnold (to whom the film is dedicated) somehow back to his life. Movies can do that, and no one knows it better than Steven Spielberg.

Every director, it seems, has a deeply personal coming-of-age story to tell, from Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” to Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” to Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.” And lately every Toronto International Film Festival has made one of those films a centerpiece of its lineup. Last year, it was Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” which won TIFF’s audience award and went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture; this year, it’s Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” which had its world premiere on Saturday night in the Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre.Based on Spielberg’s childhood in New Jersey (briefly), Phoenix (longer) and Northern California (for a stormy stretch in high school), “The Fabelmans” is a sweet look back at a boy who was transfixed by the movies from the moment he saw “The Greatest Show on Earth” in 1952, and who started his own adventures in filmmaking with the help of his dad’s camera and a Lionel train set in the basement.

Clayton Davis Steven Spielberg brought his semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans,” to the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 10, his first feature ever to debut at TIFF. To say that Spielberg is performing at the top of his game is no hyperbole. This dramatic opus, which pulls at the heartstrings, could bring Spielberg his third directing statuette (after “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan”), and maybe his second for best picture (after “Schindler’s List”). “The Fabelmans” is the story of Sam Fabelman, a young boy who falls in love with cinema, but finds himself fighting family turmoil to keep his dream alive. Spielberg’s direction is the glue that holds “The Fabelmans” together, and the film touches on many of his landmark styles, nodding to “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Saving Private Ryan” and more.

Michelle Williams and Paul Dano are stepping out for the premiere of their new movie at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival!

Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” earned a roaring standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, as the crowd of movie lovers cheered loudly for the Oscar-winning auteur as he made his first appearance at the gathering. “I’m really glad we came to Toronto,” a visibly moved Spielberg said after taking the stage as the credits rolled.  The director said he was inspired by the COVID pandemic to tell his most personal story yet, a look at his early filmmaking efforts, his childhood in Arizona and Northern California, and the dissolution of his family. However, he reassured the crowd at TIFF that this would not serve as his farewell to movies.“This is not because I’m going to retire and this is my swan song,” he said. “Don’t believe any of that.”