4 Chinese films to be screened at Toronto film festival

The Chinese film presence will be ramped up at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) when organizers announced a portion of their lineup on Tuesday.

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

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

TIFF's artistic director Cameron Bailey revealed they will be announcing a much more extensive list of Chinese films in the coming weeks.

The festival 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.

Meanwhile, TIFF's CEO Piers Handling said they were considering the idea of engaging with China much more seriously and 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."

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 Rickman's A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet and Stanley Tucci, was announced as the closing-night gala.

The festival, which was founded in 1976, 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 on Sept. 4-14.