Originally Published: 2009-08-09

Atom Egoyan, Don McKellar, Sandra Oh and Christopher Plummer are just some of the names in Canadian cinema whose faces we’ll see on the big screen at the 34th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 10-19.
Rumour had it Egoyan originally chose Venice for the premiere of this new film Chloe, an erotic thriller starring Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson. Instead, the Armenian-Canadian director has chosen his adoptive city, and TIFF, for Chloe’s debut. Egoyan became known on the international cinema scene with The Sweet Hereafter (winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival), Ararat, Exotica, Felicia’s Journey, and Adoration (winner of the Ecumenical jury prize at Cannes in 2008).
Julianne Moore (Blindness, The Hours, Hannibal), plays a successful doctor seized with the suspicion that her husband, played by Liam Neeson (Gangs of New York, Star Wars, Schindler’s List), is being unfaithful. To test him, she decides to hire a call girl, played by Amanda Seyfred (American Gun, Alpha Dog, Mamma Mia!), to seduce him. Back in March, Neeson took time off from the film set after the sudden death of his wife Natasha Richardson in a skiing accident in Quebec.
Canadian actor Don McKellar (Blindness, Slings and Arrows, Childstar) plays a New Delhi chef in the movie Cooking with Stella, by Dilip Mehta. Instead, Sandra Oh (Sideways, Hard Candy, and best-known as Dr. Cristina Yang in the TV series Grey’s Anatomy) is co-protagonist with Woody Harrelson in Peter Stebbings’ Defendor.
TIFF is also the venue for the North American premiere of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a film tribute to Heath Ledger by Terry Gilliam. The film also screened at Cannes. There’s no doubt that this Faustian story — where the magical world of the circus plays a central role — has the aura of the quasi-legendary actor Heath Ledger.
Ledger died halfway through shooting, forcing Gilliam to rethink the entire film in light of the tragic event. In The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassu, Ledger plays Tony, who accompanies the delusions of omnipotence of Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), the owner of a traveling circus, who travels the world and through time. A thousand years before Parnassus enters the scene, he makes a pact with the devil (played by Tom Waits) to become immortal. He bargains again, in exchange for love, but he has to give the devil his daughter when she turns 16. To save her he starts an acrobatic race against time, involving all the fauna from his fantastic circus.

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