Entertainment

Andy Serkis’s directorial debut to premiere at Toronto Film Festival

Breathe stars Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy.
Breathe stars Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy. Breathe stars Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy.

Andy Serkis’s directorial debut Breathe will receive its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The feature debut of the Lord Of The Rings star will screen at the prestigious Canadian event in September before opening the London Film Festival in October.

It stars Andrew Garfield as disability rights advocate Robin Cavendish and Claire Foy as his wife Diana.

Serkis will not be the only actor-turned-director with a film in the festival – Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father, a drama about the Cambodian genocide that she made for Netflix, will screen there, as will George Clooney’s crime comedy Suburbicon, starring Matt Damon and Julianne Moore.

British director Joe Wright will head to Canada to screen Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, while Scottish film-maker Paul McGuigan will take his movie Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, starring Annette Bening as Gloria Grahame.

Stephen Frears is also expected to attend for the premiere of Victoria And Abdul, in which Dame Judi Dench reprises her role as Queen Victoria, more than 20 years after she starred opposite Sir Billy Connolly in Mrs Brown.

Mary Shelley, a biopic of the Frankenstein author starring Elle Fanning, Game Of Thrones star Maisie Williams and Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt, will receive its world premiere at the festival, as will The Mountain Between Us, starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet.

I, Tonya, which stars Margot Robbie as Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding, will also receive its world premiere, alongside The Current War, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon.

Other highly anticipated films set to screen at the festival include mother!, a horror film Darren Aronofsky made with his reported girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence, and Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, in which Matt Damon shrinks to the size of a cracker, and Stronger, in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays a man who loses his legs in the Boston Marathon bombing.

The 42nd Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7 to 17.