Which film should I see at the Montreal World Film Festival?

August 23, 2013 8:44 PM

I will be in Montreal during the World Film Festival and would love to catch at least one film during it (subtitled in English), however there are 400 something films to choose from, and thus it's extremely difficult to narrow it down. Does anyone know of anything exceptional that will be there, or perhaps an amazing director's next film that shouldn't be missed?

If it helps to guide you, here are a smattering of films of various types that I love-- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Oldboy, Charade, Pontypool, In Bruges, Primer, 8 1/2, All About Eve, Run Lola Run, City of God and so on.

posted by haveanicesummer to Media & Arts (1 answer total)

Best answer: I don't have a simple shortlist of films to suggest, but I do have some sources where you can browse and see if anything appeals to you. The festival is known to be one where the best thing is to be on the ground and listen to the buzz.

The festival already opened on August 22 and there will be further information coming out as critics see more movies.

For some of these links you'll want to be using Chrome and letting it translate for you unless you're comfortable reading French.

Radio-Canada's picks are bound to be good ones. In French.

More trailers on the city's tourism site. French.

A Quebec film called L'Autre maison opened the festival and is getting some attention. Voir has an article about it. The film and the article are in French, but I believe if you can see the movie it will be subtitled in English for the festival.

You can see some terrific classic and well-known movies for free at giant outdoor screenings at the Quartier des Spectacles next to Place des Arts.

Here's a quick look at the Indian films, the Greek films and the Iranian films at the festival. Hollywood Reporter has a short piece on the films in competition, which are only a fraction of those shown.

Unfortunately, the city's one English-language daily has come out against the festival in recent years and, rather than writing about its offerings, mostly sulks and whines that the World Film Festival is not trying harder to be the Toronto festival. So you can disregard the Gazette's advice, pretty much.

Montreal has three French-language dailies. La Presse, the most mainstream and respected one, has a whole section devoted to articles on the festival's offerings.

The site CultMTL covers cultural things in English but hasn't posted anything yet on the festival. I expect they probably will.
posted by zadcat at 10:14 PM on August 23, 2013 [5 favorites]