NZNTV

CREATIVITY. Lots of biopics, lots of LGBT visibility, these and more are among the promising highlights of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, which starts Sept. 10.

The Danish girl

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Ben Whishaw, Sebastian Koch, Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts Directed by: Tom Hooper In another major entry in this extraordinary year of trans visibility, recent Oscar winner Redmayne plays Lili Elbe, a landscape painter living in 1920s Copenhagen who becomes one of the first trans women to undergo sex reassignment surgery. The film already debuted to wide acclaim for Redmayne and co-star Vikander (as Lili’s wife, Gerda) at the Venice Film Festival, but in Toronto, perhaps unfairly, this film is fated to be compared with About Ray. The two films seemingly have little in common with each other, other than they are about two trans people — and those people are both played by cisgender actors. Twitter should be interesting! —A.B.V.

Room

Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, Sean Bridgers Directed by: Lenny Abrahamson Room, which has already generated ecstatic reviews for star-in-waiting Larson out of its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, has the kind of premise that might require a trigger warning. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Emma Donoghue, who also wrote the screenplay, it’s about a young woman (Larson) who, seven years before, was kidnapped by a man who’s kept her and the son (Tremblay) she conceived captive in a shed in his backyard. It’s an understatement to describe this as difficult subject matter (inspired by the real-life case of Elisabeth Fritzl), but the story is as much about how a 5-year-old who’s been kept in isolation all his life starts to experience the world as it is one about intense trauma. —A.W.

The Program

Starring: Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd, Guillaume Canet, Dustin Hoffman, and Jesse Plemons Directed by: Stephen Frears Two and a half years ago, Lance Armstrong gave a shocking and at times bizarre interview to Oprah Winfrey in which he finally admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during his career as a competitive cyclist. The challenge for this film, about Armstrong’s systematic efforts to evade detection and win an unprecedented seven Tour de France championships, is whether it can match the high drama of that interview and the media firestorm surrounding Armstrong’s confession. Foster (Kill Your Darlings, The Messenger), who is pretty much always great, has never really been given as big a role as Armstrong. And because few people probably want to see this story just from Armstrong’s perspective, the film also tracks the efforts of journalist David Walsh (O’Dowd) to discredit the cyclist amid his smokescreen of denials. —A.B.V.