Fugitive Pieces

The opening film of the festival is typically directed by a Canadian filmmaker and this year is no exception. TIFF describes the film as:

FUGITIVE PIECES (directed by Jeremy Podeswa) tells the story of Jakob Beer (Stephen Dillane), a man whose life is haunted by his childhood experiences during the Second World War. As a child in Poland he is orphaned during wartime then saved by a compassionate, Greek archeologist. He then spends the rest of his life trying to come to terms with the losses he has endured. Through his writing, and then through the discovery of true love, Jakob is given the opportunity to free himself from the legacy of his past.

I'm guessing that Rade Sherbedgia (pictured above) portrays the archeologist.

Podeswa's film "The Five Senses" was the opener at my first festival in 1999. Lately, it appears that he has been focusing on TV directing episodes of (John from Cincinnati, The Riches, The L Word, Queer as Folk, Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Rome, Carnivale) among others.

The film is based on a novel by Anne Michaels which won the Orange Prize in 1997. The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is awarded annually for the best original full-length novel by a female author of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK in the preceding year.