The organizers of the Toronto International Film Festival have announced that Emily, a biopic of author Emily Brontë, will make its debut at the upcoming festival. The film will be one of a handful of films to be shown on Toronto’s emerging Platform program, along with being the feature directorial debut for director Frances O’Connor.
Emily was first announced in 2020 and will center around real-life author Emily Brontë, best-known for writing Wuthering Heights, which is now considered a piece of classic literature, but also wrote a slew of poems with her sisters Charlotte and Anne Brontë and sometimes wrote under the name Ellis Bell. Emma Mackey, best known for her appearances on Sex Education (2019), will play Emily in the upcoming biopic, with fellow cast members including Amelia Gething (The Spanish Princess) as Anne Bronté, Fionn Whitehead (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) as Emily’s brother Branwell Brontë, Oliver Jackson-Cohen (The Invisible Man) as William Weightman, Harry Anton (Ransom) as Bill Heathcliff, and Sacha Parkinson (Mr. Selfridge) as Ellen Nussey, among others.
‘Emily’ at the Toronto Film Festival Platform
Emily makes its debut as one of 10 films chosen as a part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Platform program, which, according to Variety, was established in 2015 and takes its name from the 2000 Jia Zhang-ke film of the same name. The executives behind the Platform program have stated that its goal is to promote and provide support for a small handful of promising films from new and upcoming creators. After screening at the festival and facing an international panel of judges, the winning film will be awarded $200,000 and the Platform Prize; Variety reports that previous Platform Prize winners include Moonlight (2016), The Death of Stalin (2017), and Jackie (2016).
Regarding the mission of the festival, Toronto Film Festival CEO Cameron Bailey told Deadline, “We launched Platform to shine a brighter light on some of the most original films and distinct voices at our Festival…Now in year seven, it’s become a true home for international auteurs on the rise.”
Toronto’s Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee also stated the following about the Platform selections:
“Eclectic in vision, this year’s selection not only represents all World Premieres of exciting, on-the-rise voices from around the world, but it also reflects the very timely and unique perspectives of racialized filmmakers from diasporic communities broadening the canvas.”
Frances O’Connor will be entering the running for the Platform Prize with Emily as her feature film debut. Some of O’Connor’s other roles include Monica Swinton in A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Emily Hughes in The Missing (2014), and Nina Locke in Netflix’s Locke & Key (2017), among others.
The Toronto International Film Festival, featuring Emily by Frances O’Connor, will begin on September 8th and run until September 18th, 2022.