Payal Kapadia’s award-winning doc ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’ to screen at TIFF

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s documentary “A Night of Knowing Nothing”, which won the Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, will have its international premiere in the Wavelengths Features segment of the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the festival organisers announced Wednesday.

“A Night of Knowing Nothing” was screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight, a section that runs parallel to the film gala in Cannes.

The film, helmed by the Mumbai-based director, follows a university student in India, who writes letters to her estranged lover, while he is away.

Kapadia, an alumna of the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), also has films such as the documentary “And What is the Summer Saying” (2018) and “Last Mango Before the Monsoon”, the 2015 short, to her credit.

Also part of the lineup are “Futura”, “The Girl and the Spider”, “Ste. Anne”, “The Tsugua Diaries”, and “Neptune Frost”, which will open the Wavelengths Features section.

In the Wavelengths Shorts segment, there are six entries including titles like “The Capacity for Adequate Anger”, “Dear Chantal”, “Inner Outer Space”, and “Train Again”.

The TIFF also unveiled the films in its TIFF Docs and Midnight Madness sections.

Stanley Nelson’s “Attica” will serve as the opening film of the TIFFS Docs section, which will showcase 12 titles.

Also part of the slate are “Beba”, “Becoming Cousteau” — a National Geographic doc on the inventor-explorer-environmentalist-filmmaker, “Burning”,

“Comala”, “The Devil’s Drivers”, “Flee” and “Hold Your Fire”, among others.

Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner “Titane” from Julia Docournau will open the Midnight Madness section, which in total comprises six films — “After Blue (Dirty Paradise)”, “DASHCAM”, “Saloum”, “You Are Not My Mother”, and “Zalava”.

Joana Vicente, Executive Director and Co-Head of the festival, said they are proud to present the films selected for the popular programmes TIFF Docs, Wavelengths and Midnight Madness.

“Always provocative, exhilarating and engaging, this year’s offerings are guaranteed to thrill Festival audiences,” Vincente added in a statement.

Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director and Co-Head of the TIFF, said as an audience-first film festival, mesmerising film lovers with boundary-pushing stories is pivotal.

“It’s exciting that even in this exceptional time in our industry, we’re able to bring such thought-provoking selections to these coveted TIFF programmes,” he added.

The prestigious film gala will run from September 9-September 18. As previously announced, first-time filmmaker Nithin Lukose’s Malayalam language feature film “Paka” will also have its world premiere under TIFF’s Discovery section.