Monsoon Opens Top 10 Film Festival
by Staff
(January 2, 2015 – Toronto, ON) There are six film festivals that we know of this month in Canada. Seems like a lot for a winter month but on the other hand where else would you want to be on a cold and blustery day than sitting in the comfort on a large cinema, surrounded by hundreds of other warm bodies, enjoying hot, buttered popcorn and a latte watching a movie that’s been chosen by experts to be one of the best.
Today in Toronto, the Top 10 Film Festival kicks off its 14th run with a stunning documentary Monsoon by veteran filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson, director of the award-winning David Suzuki documentary Force of Nature. With climate change and its effects making the news almost everyday, this is a very suitable film to launch this festival. This time out Gunnarsson sets off in pursuit the rains that sweep across India beginning when they hit land in the south to their passage through large cities like Calcutta and Mumbai and on into the northern sections of the country. To get more than just a visual story, Gunnarsson speaks to Indians from all walks of life about the monsoon’s manifold effects, finding in the storm a force capable of both sustaining life and destroying it — a duality that sparks profound reflections on the nature of order, chaos, creation, and faith in a perpetually mysterious universe. Shot in 4K, the new darling format of high-definition, the The Hollywood Reporter said this of Monsoon: It is “a film that was waiting to be made: a great subject, a vast scale, dramatic cinematography and even a bit of humor.”
Gunnarsson will be at the screenings of Monsoon today and tomorrow. The festival runs until January 10 and in addition to the Top 10 features, screenings are rounded out with shorts and there are a number of other events, special appearances and parties that make up the event.
