Toronto Film Festival unveils its opening and closing films

David Gordon Green and Rebel Wilson join TIFF roster.

The next Toronto International Film Festival will run from September 5 to 12, and announcements will continue to fall throughout the summer. On Tuesday, TIFF unveiled the addition of two feature films: Nutcrackers And The Deb.

Nutcrackersthe new film by David Gordon Greenwill be presented at the opening of the Festival. The director of Express Delirium is expected to turn after his trilogy Halloweenvariously appreciated, and the flop of The Exorcist: Devotion. He returns to dramatic comedy, a genre in which he had notably excelled with Prince of Texasawarded at the Berlin Festival in 2013.

The film features Ben Stiller as a workaholic who arrives in Ohio to take care of his four orphaned and unruly nephews after the death of their parents. This is, incidentally, Stiller’s first leading role since The Meyerewitz Stories (2017) by Noah Baumbach. In recent years, the actor has focused on directing episodes of the series Severanceseason 2 of which will be available in early 2025 on Apple TV+.

Linda Cardellini, Tim Heidecker, Edi Patterson and Toby Huss complete the cast of Nutcrackerswhich does not yet have a distributor and therefore a release date.

Another Toronto event, The Deb (photo above) marks the beginning of the production of Rebel WilsonThe selection of this musical as the closing film comes a week after an incendiary Instagram post from the actress who accused the producers of bad behavior during the production of the film, particularly towards the main actress!

Rebel Wilson explained that they wanted to bury the film, including blocking its programming at the Festival, as retaliation for her denunciations. A spokesperson for the film’s producers told Indiewire that her allegations were “false, defamatory and deceptive“.

The Deb is an adaptation of an Australian musical about two teenage girls preparing for a debutante ball in a small town.

Other films have already been announced by the Toronto Festival, including Edenthe new Ron Howard with
Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas and Vanessa KirbyThe full program will be announced on August 13.