I’ve added more photos from a few of Isabel’s appearances this year, namely from the recent Scream Awards, and from the Sydney screening of Transformers in the summer. I’ve also added caps from the trailer for The Waiting City – you can watch the trailer at the official site, which will be linked on the sidebar very soon!

• Spike TV’s Scream Awards x35 more
• Paris Fashion Week Haute Couture A/W 2010 Chanel Arrivals & Show x1 more
• Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Sydney Screening x6 more
• Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) > Stills x1 more
• The Waiting City (2009) > Trailer #1 Screencaptures x5

The Waiting City received it’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week, and with it came some new material from the film. You can see the first poster from the film to your left, and a few posts down is the first review. There is no official site for the movie yet, but the film is featured on the distribution company’s website, H20 Motion Pictures, and you can also watch the trailer there.

Finally, you can see some photos of director Claire McCarthy and star Radha Mitchell at the premiere at TorontoLife.com. Isabel unfortunately did not attend the event.

The journey looks like an overly familiar one as “The Waiting City” begins. Westerners confronting, then being rejuvenated by the mysterious East is by now a cliche. Yet Sydney-based writer-director Claire McCarthy proves too smart to fall into that trap. She appreciates and, even better, understands the power Indian spiritualism can have on foreigners, and so has made a persuasive, intimate account of a couple’s encounter with the subcontinent.

By this description alone, you understand this is no “Monsoon Wedding” or even “City of Joy.” While the film’s grip on a viewer dramatically increases as the story moves deeper and deeper into an experience that exposes a couple’s troubled relationship, McCarthy makes no concessions to commercial considerations. The film is solely designed for festivals and art venues but word of mouth should help “The Waiting City” reach a receptive audience.

Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton play a 30-something Australian couple, who comes to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) to claim an adopted daughter, Lakshmi. Red tape delays things so they are forced to wait in this exotic and often trying city.

Whilst browsing for more info on The Waiting City after reading the news that it’s going to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, I came across the first still of Isabel in the movie! She plays a character named Scarlett, but I don’t know any more details about her part yet.

I’m glad there is finally some news on this film! It looks like an interesting project and it will be great to see Isabel in a different genre of movie.

New Australian feature The Waiting City is set to make a splash at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. The film as directed by young Australian filmmaker Claire McCarthy, whose previous credits include Sisters and the feature film Cross Life, starring Paul Caeser and Tony Barry. The Waiting City is a definite step up for McCarthy in terms of her cast’s notoriety, with such big Australian names as Radha Mitchell, Joel Edgerton and Isabel Lucas starring. It also has the unique distinction of being the first Australian film to be shot entirely in India.

The Waiting City follows the story of a young, seemingly happy couple travelling to Kolkata to finalise the adoption of an Indian child. However, whilst on the unfamiliar, intoxicating streets of a new city they start to drift apart from one another, the vulnerability of their marriage eventually revealing itself. It is a complex love story set against the epic backdrop of the bustling, historical city of Kolkata.

The Waiting City has been selected as a part of the TIFF’s Special Presentation section, a distinction usually reserved for older, more experienced filmmakers, which shows just how impressed the Toronto programming team is with the film. This fact will go a long way to distinguishing Claire McCarthy as an elite film director.

The Waiting City was developed in association with the former Australian Film Commission’s INDIVISION program and was financed by Screen Australia, the new Producer Offset, Spectrum Films, Efilm, Exodus and the NSW Film and Television Office. Radha Mitchell is also an Executive Producer. The Waiting City joins other Australian films Bright Star, Mao’s Last Dancer and The Boys are Back at the festival. All films will be released by Hopscotch in the coming months.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from 10th-19th September.

TIFF Links:
TIFF Reviews
Official TIFF Site ‘The Waiting City’ page