Director Wayne Wang's new film "Diary of a Mad Old Man", starring Fan Bingbing and Lily Franky, is set to have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, with a newly released exclusive clip showing its provocative central dynamic. The film adapts Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's classic Japanese novel about a stroke-afflicted elderly patriarch whose physical decline is matched by an undimmed libido, and marks a return by Wang to themes of desire and psychological tension explored in his earlier work.

Franky plays 69-year-old widower Utsugi, who suffers from failing health after a stroke and relies on his daughter-in-law Susu, played by Fan, for care; the clip shows him interpreting her innocuous comments as sexual invitations, which he records in a private diary. Wang, now in his late seventies, said he identifies with Tanizaki's own struggle between "eros and the will to live" after writing the novel following his own stroke. The film, sold internationally by Beijing's Rediance Films, will also screen at Busan, and Fan is separately due to receive a Special Tribute Award at TIFF, which runs from 10 to 20 September.