The 2006 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 7 to September 16, 2006. Opening the festival was Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a film that "explores the history of the Inuit people through the eyes of a father and daughter."
In a press release dated June 27, 2006, twenty-six international film selections were announced which previously premiered at major film festivals worldwide. Of the films announced, twenty-five of them will receive their North American premiere.
Among the many anticipated films were Babel by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Volver by Pedro Almodóvar, Election 2 (aka Triad Election) by Johnnie To, The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky and The Host by Bong Joon-ho.
Bella took top prize at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival by winning the highly-coveted "People's Choice Award", a distinction which puts them in the company of such Oscar-winning films as Chariots of Fire, American Beauty, Life Is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hotel Rwanda. Last year's winner of the "People's Choice" Award, Tsotsi, won an Oscar for best foreign-language film.
Bella marks the feature directorial debut for Alejandro Monteverde, who also co-wrote its original screenplay with Patrick Million. Bella features Manuel Perez, Angélica Aragón, Jaime Terelli and Ali Landry. Bella was produced by Sean Wolfington, Eduardo Verastegui, Leo Severino, Alejandro Monteverde and Denise Pinckley and executive produced by J. Eustace Wolfington, Ana Wolfington and Stephen McEveety. The film was financed by producers Sean Wolfingtonand Eustace Wolfington. McEveety (Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, Passion of the Christ) consulted on the script and signed on as an Executive Producer to help market the movie. Bella is McEveety's first release under his nascent Mpower Films moniker and marks his first feature since ankling Mel Gibson's Icon productions.
Read more about 2006 Toronto International Film Festival: Awards, Galas, Special Presentation, Masters, Real To Reel, Discovery, Visions, Contemporary World Cinema, Midnight Madness, Vanguard, Canada First!
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“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or despatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Sabbath. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)