After traveling to New York City to promote »Flatliners« by having a radio interview on SiriusXM Insight on Wednesday and making an appearance on AOL Build on the following day, Ellen Page returned to the Toronto International Film Festival where »My Days of Mercy« screened as a gala presentation on Friday evening. Together with her costars Kate Mara and Amy Seimetz, director Tali Shalom-Ezer as well as some of the film's crew, she walked the red carpet in front of the Roy Thomson Hall, took time to pose with fans for photos, had some small talk with journalists from eTalk, ET Canada, CP24 and The Canadian Press, and eventually enjoyed the warm welcome inside of the cinema auditorium. The live streams by TIFF itself and ET Canada are embedded below in case you missed them. We can especially recommend the latter one in which we received a couple of mentions by host Graeme O'Neil (at 7:17, 10:28 and 11:08)!

Prior to this first public premiere, Tali Shalom-Ezer and her three leading actresses already did some press work at the beginning of the week following the very first screening for press and industry representatives on September 8, 2017. They sat down with Deadline, MTV News, ET Canada and the Los Angeles Times to play a word-association game and to chat about the well-written script by Joe Barton, their respective roles, the relationships between the characters, emotional scenes, Page and Mara's influence as producers of the movie and "Tiny Detectives - The Motion Picture." On Monday evening, the cast and crew then came together one more time for a pre-screening party held at Soho House's third floor bar.

Because of the aforementioned early press screening, the first reviews for »My Days of Mercy« already came in on the festival's second night - and they all turned out to be very positive so far. Variety's Dennis Harvey put the very first article online stating that "Page [...] gives one of her best performances in a tailor-made role. Mara is fine as a character whose elusiveness ultimately transcends plot device. Seimetz excels as a woman who's held it together under duress for so long she may no longer know how to live in a state of non-crisis. Supporting roles are very well cast." Todd McCarthy from The Hollywood Reporter describes the movie as "an unlikely but affecting female love story" while predicting that it "won't go far commercially but will be embraced in circles particularly attuned to same-sex romance and death penalty subject matter." Writing for IndieWire, Jude Dry thinks "the greatest triumph of »My Days of Mercy« is that it handles such heavy subject matter with grace and — mercifully — as light a touch as good taste will allow" and also adds that "the movie doesn't buckle under the weight of its ambitions, and in straining to find the light it ends up engaging and compelling — even if it is overly complex" resulting in a solid B- grade. Jordan Hoffman says in the review for Vanity Fair that Ellen Page "is outstanding in an extremely difficult role" and Israeli director Tali Shalom-Ezer's American debut "is ultimately a very powerful, emotional, and universal story, despite the peculiarity of mixing an issue-oriented political film with an LGBT coming-of-age story." Susan G. Cole from the local "NOW" newspaper mentions "Joe Barton's script [...] is pointed and very smart [...] and the performances are excellent" while The Cinemaholic's Nicholas Maylor believes you should "definitely keep an eye out for this one" as the "resulting drama is emotional and riveting in a very affecting way; with Page, Mara, Koteas, Seimetz and Shotwell all delivering great performances."

Despite these rave reviews and receiving good response from festival visitors, »My Days of Mercy« is still looking to be picked up as no distribution deals have been announced at this stage. Considering the great buzz it has created in Toronto in the past days, it hopefully won't be long before a wider audience gets to see this promising film. Up next is the world premiere of »Flatliners« in Los Angeles. So stay tuned for another update soon!