In Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda’s elegant and oddly topical thriller Inescapable, Adib Abdul-Kareem (Alexander Siddig) is a computer operations manager at a Toronto bank who fled Syria some 30 years ago. Married to a Canadian with whom he’s fathered two pretty teenage girls, he’s kept his checkered past a secret from his family the whole time, but after the disappearance of the older of his two daughters (Jay Anstey) during a clandestine visit to Syria in order to find out where her father is from, Adib heads to Damascus despite the possibility of repercussions for long ago sins. With combative ex-flame …

My fifth year in a row of attending the Vancouver International Film Festival in my hometown has been unique thus far—I’m at the precise halfway point of the 16-day event as I write this—in that it’s the only time that I’ve already caught many of the films playing thanks to my trip to Locarno in August. This has afforded me the freedom to venture beyond the “festival-of-festivals” programming of obligatory Cannes leftovers and such, to explore, among other things, the Dragons & Tigers section for which VIFF is renowned. For those that don’t know, Dragons & Tigers is a long-running …

Rock “documentaries” are self-serving films that fawn over their subjects so their record companies can move more product. The typical rock doc strings together concert highlights with studio clips and innocuous musician quotes that add up to a fun, but facile movie. The L.A. band 30 Seconds To Mars turns this formula upside-down in Artifact, which enjoyed its world premiere at TIFF on Friday. Actor/musician Jared Leto’s band wants to leave their record label, EMI, when multimillionaire British tycoon Guy Hands devours the ailing company and sues 30 Seconds To Mars for $30 million. Artifact tells their battle as they struggle to …

“When the doors slid open, furious flashes of light jolted me out of my reflections. That’s why they had cuffed by hands in front. As far as I could see, reporters and photographers were crowded into the lobby. Trying hard not to look surprised, I lifted my head, straightened my back and between the two agents, made the long walk through the light flashes and staccato questions toward the caravan waiting outside.” These lines from Angela Davis’s 1974 autobiography, written at the age of 28 and edited by Toni Morrison, describe the way she remembers a humiliating perp walk four …

Ruba Nadda, whose Cairo Time captured Best Canadian Feature in 2009, returns to TIFF with Inescapable. Both star leading man Alexander Siddig and are set in the Middle East. However, Inescapable is anything but a charming romance, but rather a fast-paced political thriller set in the most dangerous country in the world, Syria. When he learns that his daughter has gone missing in Syria, Adib (Siddig) leaves his comfy business in Toronto to track her down in Syria. Turns out that the Syrian government has abducted Adib’s journalist daughter and that a shady Canadian diplomat (Joshua Jackson) knows more about it …

It was horrific. One April night in 1989, a woman was jogging through New York’s Central Park when she was beaten and savagely raped. She lost 75% of her bodily fluids, lay in a coma for days and her face was pulverized so badly that friends identified her by a ring on her finger. Police picked up five black and Latino teenagers, secured confessions and launched one of the ugliest trials in New York’s history. Newspaper pundits and Donald Trump called for the death penalty. Even the African-American community turned their backs on the teens. After all, they were savages. …

The optimist and the contrarian may find common ground in anticipation; to be a festivalgoer at the Toronto Film Festival is to be a bit of both. Particularly when preceded by negative reviews trickling out of earlier festivals in Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Berlin or less-than-enticing trailers, the debut of new work from filmmakers who have proven themselves capable of greatness can have cinephiles’ hearts in their throats. What if the hype is true, and your favorite living director is no longer creating essential work? Yet with reports of boos just might come a sneaking desire to go to that movie anyway. See …

Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Alps, the follow-up to his Oscar-nominated cult hit Dogtooth. According to indieWIRE, the film will be released in the spring of 2012. Kino also released Dogtooth in the States. The fourth feature by Lathimos, Alps follows an unusual group who offers grieving family members the opportunity to have their troupe reenact and continue the lives of deceased loved ones. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay, and the Toronto International Film Festival. It will screen next at AFI Fest in L.A. If we …

You probably know by now that the West Memphis 3 (Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin) were released from prison after giving an Alford plea — a guilty plea but not admitting to the act and asserting innocence — in August. At the time directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were locking up their third film on the WM3, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, when they heard the news of the surprise development and raced down to Arkansas. Unable to put the footage of the three being freed in the film before screening it at the Toronto International Film …