Looking For Grace selected for prestigious new Platform program at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015f
Director Sue Brooks and the creative team behind the film Looking For Grace, has been selected into the inaugural Platform program at the Toronto International Film Festival. Platform is made of up to 12 films of high artistic merit that demonstrate a strong directorial vision by significant international filmmakers.
Richard Harris, Head of Business and Audience at Screen Australia, says: “It is such an incredible achievement for Looking For Grace to be selected for the new Platform category at the festival and a real credit to esteemed director Sue Brooks and her team. This new section, Platform provides a unique opportunity for world class films to be recognised and rewarded for their innovation and artistic expertise and vision. We are very proud to have an Australian film chosen as one of the dozen films.”
Director of Looking For Grace, Sue Brooks, says: “To be accepted into the inaugural Platform Selection of the Toronto Film Festival is an amazing honour for our film. It is the perfect acknowledgement for a film like Grace. After years of work it feels like it has landed in exactly the right place. When you like to see films that are different, it is fantastic that this new section even exists and even better to have the film we have just made accepted in it. Not only will our film have an opportunity to be seen by an international audience, but we will have the opportunity to see the films of and meet some of the film makers from around the world who are making artistically ambitious films and meet some of our heroes of contemporary cinema.”
Looking For Grace is a profound and touching work about the complexity of the simple things in life. It tells the story of Grace, 16, who runs away from home. Her parents, Dan and Denise, head off on the road across the Western Australian wheatbelt with a retired detective, Norris, to try and get her back. But life unravels faster than they can put it back together. Grace, Dan and Denise learn that life is confusing and arbitrary, but wonderful. Looking For Grace is about how we make sense of the mess of our lives and what it all means. It is a wry drama about lies, secrets, small and large griefs and love.
Looking For Grace is produced by Lizzette Atkins, Sue Taylor and Alison Tilson. Key investors in the film include Gecko Films, Taylor Media, Unicorn Films, ScreenWest and Lotterywest, Screen Australia, Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund, Soundfirm and Film Victoria.
Sue Brooks is an established director with a number of accolades already under her belt. She directed Japanese Story in 2003 which screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival. It won 29 awards, including the FIPRESCI award and eight AFI (now AACTA) awards. Sue directed Road to Nhill in 1997 which won the Thessaloniki prize for best film as well as the award winning short film Drover’s Wife and An Ordinary Woman and a number of episodes of SeaChange, a popular ABC drama. Looking For Grace is the first feature film Sue has written.
The Toronto Film Festival Platform program will showcase films made in the spirit of true directors' cinema: free, daring and transformative. It will offer a new opportunity for audiences to discover first-class international cinema while giving the next generation of talented filmmakers a platform to reach audiences and increase their global profile.
International high-profile filmmakers Jia Zhang-ke, Claire Denis and Agnieszka Holland make up its impressive jury, with the winning film receiving a $25,000 prize at the September 20 awards ceremony.
The Platform section was inspired by Jia’s own 2000 film Platform, named after a popular song about waiting at a railway platform. The film is set in China and follows a group of twenty-something performers as they face personal and societal changes. Platform was voted the second best film of the past decade by the Toronto International Film Festival’s Cinematheque, by more than 60 film experts from around the world.
The Australian film presence will be strongly felt at the Toronto International Film Festival this year as Looking For Grace joins four already selected films, The Dressmaker, The Daughter, Sherpa and Women He’s Undressed.
Source: Screen Australia
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