Roofman

Sunday, September 7: This screening will be presented with open captions. Live captioning will be provided for the live onstage components.

Powered by Channing Tatum and Oscar nominee Kirsten Dunst, this big-hearted drama from Oscar-nominated director Derek Cianfrance (TIFF ’12’s The Place Beyond the Pines) tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Jeffrey Manchester, the “Rooftop Robber,” and his fiercely imaginative efforts to evade capture.

A US military veteran unable to make ends meet, Jeffrey (Tatum) gets caught robbing McDonald’s restaurants to provide for his kids. He’s tried, sentenced, incarcerated — and promptly breaks out. While on the run, he finds his way into a Toys “R” Us, where he crafts a makeshift hideout behind a wall. Months pass, the manhunt is all but forgotten, and Jeffrey finds himself falling for Leigh (Dunst), one of the store’s employees. A connection is forged, though Leigh knows nothing of Jeffrey’s criminal status nor his current residence inside her workplace.

Exuding both strength and compassion, Tatum is perfectly cast as this most amiable of outlaws, a devoted father who does his best in whatever fraught circumstances he finds himself. Tatum and Dunst are joined by a dream team that includes Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield, and Ben Mendelsohn. Whether intimate or grand, Cianfrance — who wrote the script with Kirt Gunn — makes every scene in this wild story gorgeously cinematic. Roofman will have you cheering for the criminal, knowing that, sometimes, justice lies outside the tidy boundaries of the law.