Toronto Festival Becomes Center of Film World

18 September 2010

Actor and director Woody Allen arrives at the premiere of the feature film "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010.

As a major film production center, Toronto is no stranger to top stars; but at the Festival even publicity-shy Oscar-winner DeNiro submits - albeit uncomfortably - to reporters' questions about his role in the new film "Stone."

"Uh, I mean the story …in general, my character and what he goes through is something that I could empathize with a lot, to say the least, and I think a lot of it is a classic situation," he said.

As the tense prison drama "Stone" unspools, in another cinema audiences can chuckle through "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," the new comedy from Woody Allen, also in town and fending off questions about the film's perplexing ending. "I didn't want the characters to neatly wrap up his or her story with a nice 'MGM' ending or something. I wanted the people to wander around in agonizing limbo …you know, like in real life. Naturally, nobody is going to pay to see this," he said.

But audiences, indeed, do pay to see the films at the TIFF, as the Festival is known locally. It's a terrific experience for directors like Andrew Lau, who arrived from Hong Kong just in time for the North American premiere of his martial arts drama "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen". "I was very happy. When I jumped out of the car I saw all the people outside the theater and I said "oh, this is wonderful," because a director loves to see that kind of thing: a long queue …we love that kind of things, so I'm so happy about that," he said.