Tartan Takes on Toronto Film Festival

Independent film distributor Tartan Films will bring some of the most edgy, sophisticated and provocative cinema from around the world to this year’s Toronto Film Festival where it has seven highly progressive and innovative films invited. Winner of this year’s Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Oscar© winner Andrea Arnold’s feature film debut Red Road, is an atmospheric and intense drama starring brilliant newcomer Kate Dickie. Red Road opens theatrically in New York on February 9th 2007.

Winner of the Camera d’Or Prize for best first feature at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival is Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East Of Bucharest. Bringing together an eclectic group of characters to discuss a highly charged and debatable past, this festival favorite has received invitations from Telluride, Karlovy Vary, Seville and Jerusalem. It will play theatrically spring 2007. Playing in Midnight Madness at Toronto, Princess is a Danish film that blazes its own trail entirely. A clergyman returns home after a long absence to avenge the death of his famous porn star sister, aided by her five-year old daughter. This part-animated/part-live-action film marks a fiercely original and visually dazzling directorial debut by Anders Morgenthaler’s, whose comic strip WulffMorgenthaler, is being made into a cartoon series for MTV. Princess will open theatrically winter 2007.

From legendary Hong Kong director Johnnie To, a recent presenter at the prestigious 2006 Asian Excellence Awards in Los Angeles, comes a double billing of cool. Election II (aka Triad Election), recently shown at Cannes, and selected to play at the upcoming New York Film Festival, is a follow up to the prolific Hong Kong helmer’s stylish and super intense Hong Kong gangster thriller Election. Both films open this winter. The Page Turner, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, is an intense psychological thriller, written and directed by Denis Dercourt, who prior to filmmaking played solo viola for the French Symphony Orchestra. It stars Catherine Frot (le Diner de Cons, Le Trilogie de Lucas Belvaux) and talented newcomer Deborah Francois, who made her debut in last year’s Palme d’Or winner L’Enfant. The Page Turner opens theatrically March, 2007.

Tartan’s second Midnight Madness selection, Sheitan combines anarchic knockabout comedy with nerve-shredding suspense, jet-black humour and gut-wrenching bloody horror. Sheitan marks the feature film debut from Kim Chapiron, a member of Kourtrajmé, a loose collective of vibrant, cutting-edge young French filmmakers championed by Vincent Cassel, who produces and stars as the demonic Joseph. Sheitan opens theatrically next summer. "We are extremely thrilled to have so many wonderful and exciting films from all over the world in our catalogue" says Laura De Casto, Managing Director of Tartan Films. "To have the Toronto Film Festival recognize our treasures and invite these pictures into its prestigious program is just brilliant." Known for releasing intelligent, diverse, cutting edge cinema, Tartan Films is a leading UK film and home entertainment distribution company, celebrating its 21st Birthday this year.