Who Won Day 3 of TIFF 2018? The Bros of The Sisters Brothers

Last night, a theatre of 2000 people was utterly charmed by the banter and palpable bromance between the cast of The Sisters Brothers. Close to midnight, after the film’s North American premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Riz Ahmed, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly took to the stage alongside their film’s director Jacques Audiard and screenwriter Thomas Bidegain. (The author of the book the film is based on, Canadian Patrick deWitt, was in the audience.)

Hilarity ensued. Audiard, who is French, relied on Bidegain to do the translation for each of the questions and answers, and though there’s nothing inherently funny about that, there was something in the air after the screening of this dark comedy that seemed to make the room prone to a little extra bit of silliness.

Reilly took the lead in terms of answering most of the questions, quipping, “I feel like I’m only speaking because I speak English,” and then when Bidegain piped in in French, Reilly turned back to the audience saying, “That’s right, this is a bilingual country, motherfuckers!" The crowd went nuts.

Though the rest of the cast didn’t pipe up much (like I said, Reilly took the lead), they were all eyes for each other, a loving glance here, a pat on the back there. When asked about the chemistry between the leads on-set, and the vulnerability and dynamics that played into their characters’ stories, which isn’t often seen in Westerns, Reilly said, “All the men that I know in my life are very vulnerable guys. That’s the truth of it. If you’re going to tell the truth about life, men are sensitive.”

And that’s certainly true about the men on stage that night. Gyllenhaal, when asked about what it was like to work with Ahmed again (their first film together was 2014’s Nightcrawler), said “I loved it. It was very interesting to see him change and evolve as a human being and also as an artist and find his place and who he was, or show people more of it. It was really inspiring.”

Ahmed followed that up simply with, “I love you, man.”

What did I tell you about these guys?