Toronto unveils four Chinese films at TIFF 2014

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The Chinese film presence will be ramped up at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) , according to organizers who announced a portion of their line-up on Tuesday.

Director Ning Hao's latest film, "Breakup Buddies," is set to make its world premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), while both Zhang Yimou's "Coming Home" and Wang Xiaoshuai's "Red Amnesia" will be making their respective North American premieres. [Photo: ifeng.com]

Unveiled during a press conference at downtown Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox, four Chinese films were amongst the 59 galas and special presentations, a small portion of the estimated 300-film line-up in this September, .

Ning Hao's Breakup Buddies is set to make its world premiere at the festival, while both Zhang Yimou's Coming Home and Wang Xiaoshuai's Red Amnesia will be making their North American premiere.

The information is still limited at this point, but TIFF's artistic director Cameron Bailey revealed they'll be announcing a much more extensive list of Chinese films in the coming weeks.

"This feels like a big year for China and we're just beginning to make announcements," Bailey told Xinhua. "But we do have the Zhang Yimou film which was at Cannes, called Coming Home with Gong Li, a re-uniting of Zhang Yimou and Gong Li who had worked together so successfully in the past. She kind of came out of retirement to do this film for director Zhang."

TIFF, known as a launchpad for celebrities and films, has been shining the spotlight on the Chinese film industry in recent years. Besides bringing in big Chinese filmmakers and stars like Jackie Chan to Toronto, the festival has also made the Asian Film Summit which started two years ago a regular part of their program.

Besides bringing Chinese talent to Toronto, TIFF's CEO Piers Handling said they're now considering the idea of taking some of TIFF's programming to China.

"We're doing a lot more work in China. I was there myself twice in the last six months going to Shanghai and Beijing, talking to many representatives in the film industry, visited the opening night of the Beijing Film Festival," he said. "So we're just engaging with China much more seriously and we're also thinking very seriously about taking some of our programming to China."

"Not just taking Chinese films back to Toronto, but also taking some of the programming we're involved with to Shanghai and Beijing," Handling added.

This year's festival will also get a slight makeover. TIFF will be taking their mission to engage the public to a new level. For the first four opening days, organizers are planning to close off a portion of Toronto's busy downtown street for a brand new street festival which will include free programming, pop-up performances and an outdoor stage.

While the opening night film is still unknown, Alan Richman's A Little Chaos, starring Rickman, Kate Winslet and Stanley Tucci, was announced as the closing-night gala.

Films starring Reese Witherspoon, Kirsten Stewart, Denzel Washington, Adam Sandler and many more celebrities will also be heading to the festival, which was founded in 1976 and now is seen as one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world.

Organizers are expected to unveil more of its lineup in the next few weeks for the 39th festival, which runs from Sept. 4 to 14.

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