Toronto’s Open Roof Festival (ORF) has moved to the city’s newest cultural hotspot. The Lower Junction in Toronto’s Junction Triangle neighbourhood. The festival kicks off June 20 with Wes Anderson’s Rushmore and will present screenings every Wednesday for 10 weeks. The Festival will once again offer filmgoers an eclectic mix of Hollywood and indie flicks paired with emerging musicians or bands in a variety of genres. A combination that has established ORF’s reputation as Toronto’s ultimate summer date night and meeting spot.

SCHEDULE OF FILM SCREENINGS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20
FILM: RUSHMORE
MUSIC: TBA

Open Roof kicks off its ninth season with a 20^th anniversary screening of Wes Anderson’s beloved comedy Rushmore. A student of the prestigious Rushmore Academy, Max Fisher (Jason Schwarzman) achieves more in extracurriculars, than in grades and as a result is put on academic probation. In love with his teacher (Olivia Williams), he befriends rich industrialist Herman Blume (Bill Murray) and substantial complications ensue. Marking the ascent of Wes Anderson as a key American-indie pioneer, the film’s distinct visual style and singular brand of acerbic comic gold (spearheaded by Swartzman and Murray) inspired a new generation of comedy innovators. Not to mention the film’s soundtrack, featuring music from The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Faces went onto to become on the most influential of the 1990s.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCNDpvGyss&ab_channel=ryy79

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27
FILM: THOROUGHBREDS
MUSIC: MOSCOW APARTMENT

Moscow Apartment, a Canadian indie rock band with folk roots based in Toronto will enliven the ORF stage with their signature cool sounds. After that, we have Corey Finley’s Thoroughbreds, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim. Heathers meets American Psycho in this black comedy centred on two affluent teen girls played by breakout stars Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy, who seek out to murder a pervasively sinister stepfather. With thrilling visual style and a powerful soundtrack featuring Tanya Tagaq, Thoroughbreds is “wickedly funny and superblyunpredictable.” (A.A. Dowd, The A.V. Club)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPcV_3D3V2A&ab_channel=FocusFeatures

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 4
FILM: BOOST
MUSIC: THE HEAVYWEIGHTS BRASS BAND

Evening festivities kick off with The Heavyweight Brass Band, the New Orleans Jazz-inspired ensemble featured frequently at the TD Toronto Jazz Festival. After that, the fast-paced raucousness continues with a screening of Darren Curtis’s Boost – a gritty and thrilling look at the lives of two teenage best friends (Nabil Rajo and Jahmil French) from Montreal who become entangled with the mob after a car they stole is involved in a fatal accident. The Quebec-produced, English-language action thriller features raw, critically-lauded performances, with Rajo having won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Actor for this role. Fast paced, “Curtis freshens up the familiar premise with interesting locations, distinctive characterizations and genuine stakes. And it moves like a shot.” (Norm Wilner, NOW)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44_fuSQNmCY&ab_channel=FilmoptionInternational

WEDNESDAY, JULY 11
FILM: LOVE, SIMON 
MUSIC: TOMI SWICK

ORF favourite Tomi Swick returns to our stage with his multi-instrumental talents and rock sensibilities. From there, the celebrations continue with the heartwarming coming-of-age comedy Love, Simon. A top notch teenage romance, Love, Simon stars Nick Robinson as Simon Spier, a high school student coming to terms with his identity as he struggles to keep his sexuality a secret from his parents (Jennifer Gardner and Josh Duhamel) and classmates. With Love, Simon “the high school teen romcom is reborn for 2018. Funny, sentimental and smart: John Hughes would be proud.” (Terri White, Empire)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0cbWdlQg_8

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18
FILM: GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI 
MUSIC: CHELSEY BENNETT

Chelsey Bennett, a fresh voice on the Canadian music scene, brings hot soul originals with a contemporary flavour to the ORF stage. Bennett is seamlessly paired with the music-infused documentary Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami from director Sophie Fiennes. Nearly a decade in the making, Bloodlight and Bami premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and fashion/music/acting/artistic icon Grace Jones took the documentary world by storm with the film’s electrifying concert performances and intimate, personal footage of her remarkable life. Unconventional and visually astounding, the documentary perfectly matches the allure of its singular subject, the incomparable Grace Jones.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJ8bZrr9hc&ab_channel=UmbrellaEntertainment

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25
FILM: THE DEATH OF STALIN
MUSIC: RUBĒHILL

RubēHill, Ontario-born artist Alex Stavropoulos-Laurie’s LCD-Soundsystem-inspired musical project, will have ORF audiences enthralled. From there the latest from Veep and In the Loop writer and director Armando Iannucci, The Death of Stalin takes centre stage with its darkly absurd comedy. Recounting the last days of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the film finds comedic gold in the chaos, anarchy and outwardly zany hijinks of Stalin’s political party and hilariously inept potential successors. Starring Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin, Jason Isaacs, Rupert Friend, Paddy Considine and Andrea Riseborough, The Death of Stalin is a timely political satire, and accordingly “is by turns entertaining and unsettling, with laughs that morph into gasps and uneasy gasps that erupt into queasy, choking laughs.” (Manhola Dargis, The New York Times)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiJ-0cjMD60&ab_channel=ElevationPictures

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1
FILM: GAME NIGHT
MUSIC: TERRELL MORRIS 

Toronto artist Terrell Morris starts off the evening with his rhythm and blues musical stylings. Then the fun continues with Game Night, the dark comedy starring Jason Batman and Rachel McAdams. A murder mystery game gets a little too real after a group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves entangled in a real-life mystery. Unexpected twists and turns make this film as thrilling as it is funny. “With its clever, whip-smart script and enthusiastic ensemble cast firing on all cylinders, crime comedy filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein score big.” (Amy West, Empire)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNtLIcyjsnI&ab_channel=ZeroMedia

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8
FILM: TBA
MUSIC: LIAM RUSSELL

Local singer-songwriter Liam Russell once again graces the ORF stage to deliver some of the best indie music Toronto has to offer. Film announcement coming soon.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15
ANNOUNCEMENT COMING SOON

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22
ANNOUNCEMENT COMING SOON