10 Most Exciting Films Premiering At Toronto Film Festival 2014

5. Phoenix

What It's About: Phoenix is about a woman, a concentration camp survivor, who ends up needing facial reconstruction surgery after being disfigured during the war. After she gets the surgery, she sets out to find her husband, but when she does find him, he doesn't realize that it's her. What he does know, however, is that she has a striking resemblance to his (allegedly) dead wife, and asks if she'd like to pretend to be her so that he can get access to his wife's inheritance. So essentially, she has to pretend to be herself, and is starting to have serious doubts about whether this guy ever even loved her. Why You Should Be Excited: This one's pretty straightforward: it just sounds like an interesting film, a different take on the aftermath of the Holocaust in postwar Europe than what we're used to seeing. It's a German film, and it doesn't have any major stars in it. Neither Nina Hoss, the lead, or Ronald Zehrfeld, who plays her husband, have had much of a career outside their native Germany. So this film made it to the Toronto Film Festival on the strength of its story and performances along, with no big Hollywood names to smooth the way for them. So we're hopeful that this will be a really strong film.