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TIFF 2026: Here are 200 movies to watch at the Toronto International Film Festival
A new documentary about Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope and movies directed by Courteney Cox and Chris Rock join more than 200 films at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
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Director: Darren Dale | Australia
This four-part documentary series investigates the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Warlpiri Luritja teenager Kumanjayi Walker by 27-year-old police officer Zachary Rolfe in the remote Northern Territory community of Yuendumu, Australia.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Anna Foglietta | Italy
This debut feature follows nascent empty nesters in Italy who encounter old desires while seeking new meaning in their lives.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Zou Jing | China
A Girl Unknown follows a Chinese girl from age six to 18 as she moves through three different families, each giving her a new name and altered existence.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Shawn Garry | Chile, Colombia and Italy
When a family's matriarch dies, four relatives are forced to confront decades of silence, resentment, and buried affection. Led by Alfredo Castro, this sharp ensemble balances humour and melancholy in a moving portrait of grief and reconciliation.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Stéphane Brizé, France
Carla is pushed to her moral limits when she is recruited to rebrand a company’s image, compromising people for profit to serve her corporate supervisors.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Ang Geck Geck Priscilla | Singapore
Ah Girl is a curious young girl. At the tender age of seven, she spends her days drawing, quarrelling with her sibling, catching spiders, imitating adults, and wishing her whole family could live together. Since her parents’ separation, she has lived in a small apartment with her younger sister, her taciturn father who works the night shift, and her cantankerous grandmother. On weekends, the children see their needy, unpredictable mother who attempts to make up for her absence with treats and gifts.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Virginie Verrier and Guillaume Lonergan | France and Canada
As Paris flourishes with cultural and scientific advancements, some traditions remain frustratingly unchanged. The expectations placed on women, for example, are maddeningly decorous for Alice, who dreams of a life beyond the domestic. When she secures a position working in the office of Léon Gaumont, the aperture of her life widens irrevocably.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Marc Fitoussi | France
After decades spent struggling to make advances in her country’s notoriously inaccessible film industry, Corinne Maclou remains a background actor. While being known as a dependable extra has its perks, Corinne still aspires to strut her stuff among the stars. She spies her chance when she meets Sandrine Kiberlain and, little by little, uses her eccentric charms to befriend the celebrated actor. But will friendship alone provide Corinne with the tools necessary to break into the fickle family of le cinéma français?
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi | France, Japan, Germany and Belgium
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi brings Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto together in a poignant drama about friendship, illness, art, and the responsibilities of care, creating a film that makes the world seem gentler, more open, and more humane.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Scarlett Bermingham and Andrew Rhymer | USA and Canada
Reeling from a painful breakup, 30-something Emma decides to nurse her wounds with a night out clubbing. That’s how she meets the cute, charismatic, and notably younger Luke. It isn’t until the next morning that the pair’s age gap fully hits: Emma, it turns out, was once Luke’s babysitter.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: David Zellner and Nathan Zellner | USA
When you think of alien invasions of Earth, you typically think big — epic battles, mass destruction, and ambitions of global conquest. But according to filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner, that takeover would actually be contested by something much smaller and more human: emotions.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Sue Kim | USA
K-pop idol–turned–global superstar Lisa stars in this intimate and transformative documentary tracing her journey from childhood ambition through BLACKPINK stardom into the artist she is today.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Various | USA
In Indianapolis in 1977, local radio reporter Fred Heckman enjoys widespread trust from his listening public and respect from his colleagues. He’s even caught the interest of some New York media bigwigs; their job offer is weighing on his mind, spurring him to repeatedly discuss the pros and cons with his wife. But Heckman’s personal quandaries are suddenly sidelined when the station hears word of a developing story unfolding downtown.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: David Turpin | Ireland and United Kingdom
An Irishman abroad at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in his homeland, Beau spends his days working in a neighbourhood café and his nights with his loyal confidante, Shell. When the enigmatic Tiny enters Beau’s life, an unlikely bond forms — until Tiny suddenly disappears. Beau embarks on a search that reveals not simply what has been lost, but the unseen threads of love, friendship, and care that bind one generation to the next.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Matt Barats | USA
When an overeager artist proposes to his Broadway-bound girlfriend, her perturbed appeal that they “take space” sends him spiralling into a reverie of desperate nostalgia and pitiable self-reflection. Impulsively moving into a sailboat moored by a New York airport, our jilted lover seeks solace by sifting through a stack of home movies, only to be confronted by his own arrested adolescence and the creeping dread that he might indeed be a loveless loser.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Lars Vega | Sweden
An extraterrestrial visitor upends the lives of two elderly brothers in northern Sweden in Lars Vega’s disarming blend of sci-fi fable and small-town comedy.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: SABU | Taiwan and Japan
A seasoned detective recently diagnosed with dementia is doggedly pursued by both cops and crooks after he unwittingly wanders off with a multimillion-dollar ransom in a new absurdist crime caper from cult auteur SABU.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Anton Corbijn | United Kingdom and Italy
This smouldering chamber thriller stars Oscar winner Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich (Fair Play) as opponents in a strange confrontation between a youthful literary agent and The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Beatrice Gibson | United Kingdom and France
Central to the configuration is B, a filmmaker in the midst of losing her grasp on her current project, and wanting to reconnect with her now-distant friend Didi, a single mother defiantly resisting society’s systemic attempts to confine her. Other women include a former sex worker reflecting on the complexities of her past and a poet who confronts the unspoken grief caused by infertility. Together, these nocturnal denizens give voice to a rare and liberating dialogue, exploring womanhood, motherhood, sexual desire, isolation, class privilege, race, societal malaise, and the delicate nature of family and care.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Ashley Duong | Canada
Ba’s Book is a documentary recreation inside a documentary, inspired by a memoir. Fascinated by the idea that her quiet father has recently put his entire life story — including growing up in a Vietnamese village during the Vietnam war, and a brief foray into Iran — into a book, written as a series of letters to her, documentary filmmaker Ashley Duong gamely decides to adapt his written word for the screen.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Lauren Miller Rogen | USA
After 17 years of happy coupledom, Annie and Aaron routinely get the question: are you two going to have kids? Their answer is always a solid “maybe.” But they’re about to get an opportunity for some serious field study. Having just left her husband Luke, their pal Eliza comes to stay while she looks for a new home — and brings her young daughter along with her. Will witnessing the joys and sorrows of parenting up close tip the scales one way or another? Will ambivalence reign until Annie and Aaron simply age out?
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Stephanie Ahn | USA
This powerful and raw feature debut from writer-director Stephanie Ahn explores the complexities of diasporic experience through a chance encounter between two thirtysomething, second-generation Korean Americans. Tracking their relationship as it moves from circumstantial to friendly to romantic, Bedford Park brings deeper insight to what it means to self-actualize between cultures.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Siân Heder | USA
Being Heumann tells the remarkable true story of the woman who led a world-changing campaign for accessibility. Judy Heumann rallied a handful, then dozens, then hundreds of ordinary Americans with disabilities to push the US government to live up to its commitments.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Jamie Childs and Jesse McKeown | Canada
In the small coastal village where Calvin Penney lives, there’s a long tradition of intimate connection to the sea. Commercial fishery and, more recently, harvesting ice from icebergs that have drifted into the bay, are the backbone of the local economy. It’s a family way of life that Calvin hopes to sustain and pass down to at least one of his children — the wayward Wade, the adventurous Mary, or the entrepreneurial Jay, home for a visit from his money-making venture in Calgary.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo | Rwanda, Gabon, France and Norway
In this powerful, feminist debut feature, which won the Caméra d’Or at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo brilliantly explores the issue of forgiveness in the wake of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar | Spain
Elsa gave up art-house filmmaking for gainful employment as an advertising director long ago, but the urge to craft something personal and creative comes creeping back: she begins writing a new screenplay, drawing upon the misfortunes of her friends for material.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: James Marcus Haney | Ukraine and USA
Black Sunflowers immerses us in the lives of 20-something Ukrainians as they come of age during wartime. The film embodies a youthful spirit as it shifts between eclectic settings, from an underground dance club to a frontline barracks to a countryside swimming hole. We get to experience this generation in all its complexity as people grapple with tragedy, duty, disillusionment, and yearning for a better future.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Andrew Morgan | USA
This real-life love story follows the charismatic musicians Zella Day and Jesse Woods as they team to create the alt-country band Chaparelle with collaborator Beau Bedford, in a documentary with as much drama as a season of Nashville.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: David Nawrath | Germany
This gripping thriller depicts the investigation — and its shortfalls — in the months before the December 2016 attack at the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz, Berlin.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Amanda Kernell | Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Bulgaria
Amanda Kernell’s luminous third drama is a richly observed portrait of love, resilience, and the enduring strength of Sámi women in northernmost Europe.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Werner Herzog | USA
The Holbrookes speak in unison, dress alike, have shared dreams, and, consequentially, fall in love with the same man. The sisters’ obsession with their lover reaches a boiling point which ultimately must be resolved in court. Jean and Joan passionately defend themselves side by side as they have their whole lives, showing their unusual bond. A media frenzy, driven by the sisters’ strange and inextricably bound lives, inevitably ensues.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Florian Zeller | France and Spain
Oscar winners Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem play a couple whose bond is tested when a mysterious billionaire’s proposal prompts an ethical impasse in the latest from Oscar-winning writer-director Florian Zeller.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Mike Flanagan | Canada and USA
As Carrie White walks the halls of her high school for the first time, her peers barely make eye contact, staring instead at the devices in their hands. Sheltered Carrie doesn’t have a smartphone, the parameters of her young life constricted by her paranoid and fervently religious mother, Margaret. Encouraged by the kindness of Principal Grayle, Carrie hopes school will offer some freedoms.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Taimi Arvidson | USA
Cheyenne follows a group of fearless cowgirls who compete at riding wild broncos on the rodeo circuit after nearly a century of being excluded because of their gender.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri | USA and Nigeria
While preparing for a big reception, Clarissa recalls her teenage years. At that time, her heart was torn between Richard and Peter, a promising young writer who has suddenly reappeared in Clarissa’s life.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Cody Fern | Australia and Canada
When an internationally renowned movie star invites her estranged family to the opening night of her Broadway play after decades of silence, old wounds resurface almost as quickly as old habits. Her emotionally fragile sister remains determined to hold onto a lifetime of resentment, while her nephew sees an opportunity to forge a relationship with his famous aunt.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Jordan Firstman | USA
In his exuberant debut feature, writer-director Jordan Firstman stars as a carousing New York City club promoter whose lifestyle is upended by the unexpected responsibility of raising a 10-year-old son he never knew he had.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Rafiki Fariala | Central African Republic, France, Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy
Robert is still a teenager, but he’s always hustling. Civil war forced his family to flee the Democratic Republic of Congo and try to make a new life in the Central African Republic, leaving Robert to look after his four siblings while going to high school and doing whatever work he can to make ends meet to pay for food and an exam to go to medical school, following in his father’s footsteps.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Muayad Alayan | Palestine
Condemned to pay the social security contributions owed by his son, a father desperately tries to prove his death in the moving drama Conversation With The Sea.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Lukas Dhont | Belgium
Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s poignant third feature celebrates a love that blooms amid the hardships and horrors of the First World War.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Michael Lennox and Brad Caleb Kane | USA
Camp Crystal Lake: to the uninitiated, the name sounds pastoral, serene, perhaps even a little nostalgic. To those who know the name Jason Voorhees, it’s ground zero for what will become the many horrors of Friday the 13th. The tragic drowning of young Jason, and its impact on his loving mother Pamela, spark a spiral of violence that will come to have a very high body count.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Barry Avrich | Canada
Now in her eighties and still utterly magnetic on camera and on stage, Darlene Love recounts her journey, starting with her early days singing in a church choir in Los Angeles.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Wayne Wang | Japan and USA
The night before his 69th birthday, Utsugi had a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. Since then, he’s been cared for by his sister-in-law Hana and his daughter-in-law Susu. When the family is set to go on holiday for the summer, Utsugi insists on staying home — with Susu as his sole caregiver. While Utsugi believes his stroke has reduced him to a wretched state, he becomes convinced that Susu is flirting with him. Left alone together, Utsugi and Susu bond over suspicions, extravagances, and increasingly erotic gestures.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Lisandro Alonso | Chile, Argentina, Luxembourg, Germany and United Kingdom
Less follow-up or sequel to his breakout debut than a sly and clever echo, Lisandro Alonso’s graceful and extraordinarily beautiful Double Freedom returns us to the daily life of Misael, a solitary labourer in Argentina’s rural La Pampa.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Sung Kang | USA
Fast & Furious alum Sung Kang directs and stars in this alternately melancholy and exhilarating character study of a lonesome racetrack custodian with a secret talent for drifting.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Abinash Bikram Shah | Nepal, France, Germany, Brazil and Norway
A village matriarch (Puspa Thing Lama) must choose between her heart’s desires and her duty to her community when a young woman disappears into the forest in this delicate, riveting thriller.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi | USA
Thousands of people have ascended Mount Everest from the southeast ridge in Nepal. But only five had ever summited from the more daunting direct North Face route from China. This became a quest for Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, who sought not only to summit, but then to ski down through the near vertical Hornbein Couloir. It’s a test of athleticism that only a few have attempted with a zero success rate. The last person to try disappeared on the descent.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Sandra Wollner | Austria and Germany
A grieving mother and her late daughter’s boyfriend explore questions of guilt, grief, and forgiveness on a family holiday, in Sandra Wollner’s bold and haunting Un Certain Regard winner.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Courteney Cox | USA
Erie, Pennsylvania, 2003. From a phone booth outside a waffle joint, Bill Rothstein calls the police to report the corpse of a murdered man stashed in a freezer in the garage of Bill’s former paramour, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong. But who is this murdered man? And exactly how did his body wind up in that freezer?
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Cristian Mungiu | Romania, France, Norway, Sweden and Denmark
Unlike their new neighbours, the Gheorghius enforce daily bible study and don’t allow trappings like smartphones and YouTube. The family’s rigid beliefs cause a stir when one of the children is accused of introducing religious bias into their school by criticizing another student’s sexual orientation. This, however, is just the beginning of the family’s problems. When a teacher notices a bruise on another of their kids, a cascade of events — mimicking the avalanches we see behind the schoolyard in the icy locale — is set in motion.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Kamila Andini | Indonesia, France, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Singapore
Pertiwi returns to her remote hometown after 20 years to rebuild her life. The introduction of electricity seemed hopeful for the village at the time of her departure, but to her surprise, it hasn’t done much for the place. In fact, the village is darker than ever.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Rami Kodeih | Lebanon and Brazil
In a stifling, sticky Beirut, two sisters devise a meticulously planned, yet dangerous, nighttime caper to recover their money and fund a life-saving procedure. Teaming up with two men with shady pasts, the sisters go all out in a thrilling race against the clock.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Jenna Cato Bass | South Africa and Australia
Cape Town, South Africa. In a near future on the brink of climate collapse, Lwando and his girlfriend Tara are among the privileged few who win the opportunity to travel back to 1647 and a pre-colonial past to experience nature in its wildest form. Lwando is an underground activist who dreams of changing the course of history. Tara wants to save her relationship with him. Together, the couple must choose whether to risk life as they know it for a potentially better world.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Michael Maxxis | Canada
A follower of the group since 1995, Gail is readying herself for their winter cross-country tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of making music. To every New Yorker she encounters during her preparation, which includes doctor and dental appointments and buying new shoes, she becomes an unofficial ambassador for both Canada and Our Lady Peace.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Marie Kreutzer | Austria
Can we ever truly know anyone else, even the people with whom we’ve chosen to spend our lives? This is the chilling question at the core of Austrian writer-director Marie Kreutzer’s follow-up to TIFF ’22’s Corsage. Featuring an emotionally intricate performance from Léa Seydoux and an elegant cameo from Catherine Deneuve, Gentle Monster considers what monstrousness lies hiding in our very homes.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Rebel Wilson | United Kingdom
Rebel Wilson takes the lead — writing, directing, and starring — in this story of Tassie Young, a pop singer who leaves her hit band to attempt a solo career, until some ill-advised choices tank her ambitions. After a DUI, she finds herself paying for the consequences of her actions. Booked to do community service, she’s assigned to be the mentor for a handful of young girls who aspire to be in the spotlight themselves.
(Rebel Wilson)
Director: Benjamín Naishtat | Argentina and Brazil
This riveting adaptation of Hernán Ronsino’s novel, transforms a single betrayal into an absorbing tale of guilt, loyalty, and memory, weaving personal tragedy with Argentina’s turbulent twentieth-century history through an atmosphere of mounting mystery and suspense.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Alex Liu | New Zealand and Australia
"Unhappy? Need a change?" It's a question, a sales pitch, and perhaps a warning. When charismatic American salesman Marco arrives in New Zealand touting a revolutionary new cleaning product, he's looking for ambitious recruits to build an army of door-to-door salespeople.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Hans Petter Moland | Norway
Nobel Prize-winner Knut Hamsun’s novel about a farmer’s struggles in early 20th-century Norway gets a powerful and richly textured adaptation by director Hans Petter Moland and his superb cast.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka | USA
Haru always has one foot in fantasy. When she and her husband Luis take to the dance floor, they ascend high above their fellow hoofers. When Luis is suddenly taken from Haru, her passion for ballroom dancing — her passion for life — is gutted in tandem.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Samjad | India
Following a wintery prologue that establishes our vamps Ethan and Ivy, twin siblings whose interspecies parentage grants them supernatural abilities and spares them from the usual inconveniences, we catch up with the pair as they are traversing the desolate roads of the Rajasthan desert.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Ghasideh Golmakani | Iran and Germany
Iranian filmmaker Ghasideh Golmakani’s absurd and sharply satirical debut feature explores what happens when a female director forces male actors to wear skirts and headscarves.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Gael García Bernal | Mexico
Everything changes the day Cuban lifeguard Camilo rescues Mexican businessman Abel from drowning. A night of drinking at Havana’s best tourist spots leads to an invitation for Camilo to come work for Abel’s seal manufacturing business, which leads to Camilo wooing, wedding, and having a child with Abel’s daughter Juana, and residing in Abel’s luxurious Yucatán country manor.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Marie Clements | Canada
In 1950s Oklahoma, a single mother and her three young daughters take a risk on the Native American Relocation Program, and journey to Los Angeles. But instead of the promised career and stability, they find the opposite. A traumatic event takes place in the Los Angeles’ river’s concrete channel, which then becomes a crucial place for the sisters in its aftermath.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Sharon Kleinberg | Mexico
A transgender taxi driver’s dream of fatherhood becomes a reality when he gets pregnant, forcing him to confront his own notions of masculinity while navigating unexpected social, moral, and emotional consequences.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Peter Farrelly | USA
Sylvester dreams of being an actor, but he grew up poor, shuttled from home to home, and at one point lived on the street. Now in his twenties, the closest he's come to the big screen is acting in a porno and working as an usher. Then he sees Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner, and inspiration hits: in a few fevered days, he writes a screenplay about an underdog boxer who goes the distance.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Irene Dionisio | Italy
When two childhood friends meet after years to fulfill the broken promise of climbing Mount Etna, Adele and Sofia realize that like the mountain, old wounds loom over everything.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Directors: Jaap van Heusden and Vinnie Karetak, Netherlands and Canada
When a suicidal Inuk teen accidentally pierces an oil pipeline with a bullet, the FBI launches a full-scale manhunt across the northern wilderness in this drama starring Noomi Rapace and newcomer Leo Matthew Temela.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Banjong Pisanthanakun | Thailand
The Manasvanichs look like they have it all — a beautiful family, a mansion, power, and wealth — until an unexpected relative shows up at their door and unveils their dark secrets. Grandma Woranart’s striking beauty and youth aren’t the only things suspicious about her. Unnatural deaths happen wherever she goes, and it’s obvious she has an agenda for her visit — to find a new host for the centipede demon within her. Unfortunately, Oui, the youngest of the family, may just be the targeted heir.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Danny Boyle | United Kingdom, France and USA
Rupert Murdoch persuades newspaper editor Larry Lamb to oversee his newly acquired but flagging daily, The Sun. But how to grab readers in the highly competitive British media market? Be extreme, throwing anything onto the page that will make a splash, the more titillating, the better. The tactic works, and soon the notorious Sun sees a massive spike in circulation.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Yonfan | Hong Kong
Neither a documentary nor a conventional film-on-film essay — and conceived almost like a musical compilation — Intermission draws from the wealth of beauty, elegance, and the extraordinary constellation of stars populating Yonfan’s 15 films spanning nearly 40 years.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Nyla Innuksuk | Canada
Anna Lambe leads as Yura Ivalu, the latest darling of the Toronto art world, whose virtual reality piece promises to blow your mind. Presented with a new opportunity to develop a film, she offers to lean into a traumatic story from her youth, which involves a friend who believed she was a shaman. But when that friend, Sesi, re-enters her life, Yura’s sheen of perfection in this polite society begins to show cracks.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Phuong Mai Nguyen | France and Belgium
Set under the confectionery pink and blue skies of California, this animated film narrates the love story between a young skater and a surfer who share a mutual passion for the ocean.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Louis Clichy | France and Belgium
For young Christophe, life on a rural French farm comes with a lot of hard work, not a lot of passion, and precarious health. Dizzy spells sabotage his day-to-day activities. In need of balance, he gets fitted with an iron back brace which helps with his posture but draws derision from outsiders. Coming of age is not an easy road for anyone, let alone someone feeling a literal and figurative weight on his back.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Bai Xue | China
The rebellious Zhao Yanhong was not meant for life in a nursing home — so she causes a commotion every chance she gets. Her days of mind-numbing routine and placating caregivers get a welcome shake-up when she meets Gen-Z slacker Wu Youwei, a one-time magic-cubing champion now reduced to performing cheap tricks in night markets. Determined to learn the art of the magic cube, Zhao enlists this humbled whiz kid as her mentor — and the pair discover an unlikely chemistry.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Beth de Araújo | USA
After witnessing a sexual assault, a young girl is haunted by the trauma of the disturbing incident, opening her eyes to the violence that surrounds her.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Louise Bagnall | Luxembourg, Ireland, Canada and Denmark
A joyful adaptation of Jessica Love’s beloved children’s book about a young boy whose dream of becoming a mermaid transforms both his summer and his relationship with his grandmother.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Ken Russell | United Kingdom
Oliver Reed stars as Urbain Grandier, a wildly charismatic libertine priest who defies Cardinal Richelieu’s consolidation of power. Vanessa Redgrave’s Sister Jeanne is a sexually repressed, hunchbacked Abbess obsessed with Grandier with an intensity that ignites accusations of demonic possession among her convent’s nuns. Already a target for reprisals due to his political resistance, Grandier’s promiscuity eventually lands him on the wrong side of a powerful family.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Nick Kozakis | Australia
Looking to prolong their night of partying, four youths are plunged into paranoid pandemonium after crossing a mobster’s volatile son in Nick Kozakis’ bloody ripper of a siege thriller.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Lynne Stopkewich | Canada
In this 4K restoration of the 1996 film, Molly Parker plays Sandra, a young woman who becomes enraptured by the sensory experience of death. As a child, Sandra performs rituals in the woods, giving dead animals a sacred burial and examining their lifeless bodies with a trace-like focus. This lifelong fascination leads Sandra to study as an embalmer at a mortuary school, where her feelings about death develop into necrophilia.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Tony Vahl | Germany and Poland
In the final days of the Second World War, rumours of heavy losses and an advancing Soviet force — brutal and bloodthirsty for revenge — were making waves westward through what remained of the Third Reich. Set in a remote east German village, unluckily located on the side facing the front and in the Red Army’s path, Krux tells the true story of a point in history when right-wing terror was directed against its own people.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Matthew Rankin | Canada
This kaleidoscopic culture jam from visionary filmmaker Matthew Rankin details the rise of Canada’s 18th prime minister through a satirical collage of archival footage, television nostalgia, and national mythmaking.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Alexandre Franchi | Canada
Wild delusions and genuine dangers threaten a patient recovering from cancer surgery in this visceral and darkly comedic thriller by Quebec’s Alexandre Franchi.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi | Spain and France
At the cusp of the Spanish Civil War, a young man confronts his ideology and sexuality as he is conscripted into the fascist army where he becomes fascinated by a prisoner of war. Another young man in pre-dictatorship Spain finds himself blackballed from his father’s prestigious social club due to rumours about his sexuality. Finally, a young gay historian manoeuvres through his complicated family history and a unique inheritance decades after the dictatorship has ended.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Marine Atlan | France and Italy
A pack of rowdy French teenagers embark on a school field trip to Pompeii, where desire, passion, angst, and class tensions in the present unfold against the ruins of the ancient past.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Kim Bartley | Ireland and United Kingdom
After years in Ireland’s foster care system, Danny is required by law to leave the home that has been his world. On the day he turns 18, he finds himself alone in a tiny Dublin studio apartment, working an entry-level factory job, and navigating the bewildering freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood. As he struggles to find his footing — and a way back to the younger brother he was forced to leave behind — the reappearance of his former social worker Josh offers both an unexpected lifeline and a painful reminder that trust, once broken, is never easily rebuilt.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Michaël R. Roskam | Belgium and France
Inspired by the true story of a uniquely daring operation in Brussels in November of 1943, Le Faux Soir follows a group of resistance fighters as they proceed step-by-step through a scheme that the Nazis in charge most definitely did not see coming. These crafty conspirators’ goal: to turn the Germans’ propaganda tools against them by printing and distributing a spoof edition of the newspaper Le Soir.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Mariano Llinás | Argentina
With the erudition and insight of a literary scholar and the gumption of an amateur detective, Argentinian auteur (and raconteur) Mariano Llinás explores the life and fiction of the legendary writer Jorge Luis Borges through objects and places.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Xu Zao | China
A lonely caretaker, a dying film studio, and a seductive virtual world collide in Xu Zao’s formally daring animated debut feature: a melancholic, visionary parable about cinema, technology, alienation, and the fragile promise of renewal.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Melissa Saavedra Gil, Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay
Blending archival footage, personal testimony, and a decades-long search for answers, Melissa Saavedra Gil transforms a childhood tragedy into a powerful exploration of memory, truth, and healing. An intimate and deeply resonant debut that illuminates both a personal story and a generation shaped by violence.
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Director: Sebastian Brameshuber | Austria
London transforms this seemingly ordinary succession of commutes into a profound meditation on connection, movement, and the traces people leave on one another, not unlike the marks of history impressed into landscapes.
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Director: Kyu Bock Youm | South Korea
This deeply moving debut from Kyu Bock Youm is a radiantly detailed animation chronicling the peripatetic lives of a rhino and a penguin as they traverse a vast, ever-changing wilderness brimming with natural beauty and human-generated danger.
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Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu | Japan
Visionary auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda helms this tender and slow-burning adaptation of manga creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s acclaimed story, following two young artists whose friendship and bond become the engine of their art.
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Director: Neto Villalobos Brenes | Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, Chile and Mexico
In a chilling dystopian thriller shaped by fear and inequality, Neto Villalobos Brenes follows a grandmother, powerfully portrayed by Paulina García, whose granddaughter's kidnapping forces her into impossible moral choices.
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Director: Rachel Morrison | USA
Maya is a 26-year-old Boston nurse when she falls in love with Charlie. Emotions deepen quickly, the couple marries, but all things fall tragically apart with the onset of the pandemic. Maya abruptly flees her life in the US, severing all her connections — including her best friend, Jason. She becomes a digital nomad in Portugal, where she meets Felix, who revives her capacity for intimacy and prompts a move to England. But can any amount of transformation or new beginnings stave off the ghosts Maya seems determined to run from?
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Director: Emanuele Gerosa | Denmark and Italy
Set in the breathtaking landscapes of Piemonte in Northern Italy, Low Lies the Land immerses us in the lives of three winemaking families facing an uncertain future.
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Director: Alexandra Pechman | USA
Newly transplanted from Arizona, Nora is excited to begin an internship at the tastemaking literary journal, Platen. Her duties include reading slush-pile submissions, making coffee, and tending to the needs of high-profile guests during Platen’s many exclusive fêtes. While snobbery and name-dropping dominate, Nora’s feeling of alienation is tempered by her crush on associate editor Thomas who, though only slightly older, seems to know everything about piloting the scene. Nora gradually comes to comprehend the advice of Platen publisher Mickey: the most important thing for interns to know is when to leave the party.
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Director: Adrian Buitenhuis | Canada
This galvanizing portrait celebrates Rick Hansen, the great Canadian athlete and activist. It chronicles his 26-month Man In Motion World Tour: a 40,000-kilometre wheelchair journey that raised millions to eliminate accessibility barriers and transform public perception of people with disabilities.
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Director: Géssica Généus | France, Haiti, Belgium, Canada and Luxembourg
Géssica Généus directs and stars in this vibrant reimagining of the biblical tale of Mary Magdalene, following a free-spirited Haitian sex worker whose serendipitous involvement with a repressed preacher’s son opens each to possibilities.
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Director: Bertil Nilsson | United Kingdom
In his striking, deeply original debut feature, co-written with Griffin, director Bertil Nilsson draws on his own experiences as a neurodivergent gay man navigating the contradictory demands of masculinity. And he has crafted something genuinely rare: a film built not around crisis or coming out, but around the subtler, ongoing work of simply figuring out how to exist as oneself. In this evocative portrait, people — both queer and straight — will recognize the gap between how we see ourselves, how we imagine others see us, and the elaborate, often unconscious adjustments we make between the two.
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Director: Kamal Aljafari | Germany, France and Japan
Bringing together new works by Parastoo Anoushahpour and Kamal Aljafari, the two films in this programme reflect on the meeting point between imagination and memory — both personal and collective — from the perspective of children and the aged.
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Director: Katharina Rabl | Germany and Austria
Katharina Rabl’s stunning debut feature toggles between loyalty and longing for independence, centring a doctoral student who must choose between carrying on her family’s legacy or forging her own path.
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Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev | France, Germany and Latvia
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine begins, pressure mounts on employers to fill draft quotas for the notorious miasorubka (meat grinder) of relentless front-line warfare. With desperate workers fleeing to avoid conscription, Gleb finds an inventive — yet deeply sociopathic — way to secure the 14 "tributes" demanded from his company, echoing the Greek myth of the Minotaur's labyrinth.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Chris Rock | USA
Superstar comic Chris Rock’s latest as writer-director is a hilarious, scathing satire of the institutional bigotry and soul-draining hustle that dominate the movie industry. Featuring a career-making lead performance from Rosalind Eleazar and supporting turns from Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya plus Oscar nominees Adam Driver and Anna Kendrick, Misty Green chronicles the extremes one Black actor goes to to keep both her career and brother alive.
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Director: Shinya Tsukamoto | Japan
In his first film shot primarily in English, Shinya Tsukamoto returns to the subject that has haunted his recent work: the physical, psychological, and moral devastation war leaves behind. Yet this is no repetition. Tsukamoto once again reinvents his cinematic approach, confronting violence from a deeply unsettling perspective.
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Director: Alex Gibney | USA
After nearly four years of work, Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney delivers his most ambitious and epic documentary, seeking to understand the history and motivations of the ultimate tech bro. When this film was first announced, Musk immediately denounced it on Twitter and refused to participate. But that didn’t impede Gibney, who draws upon countless hours of interviews that Musk has given over the years. Even more revealingly, Gibney conducts new interviews with figures who have known Musk up close and personal, including the mogul’s father, Errol Musk.
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Director: Julien Chheng | France
A teenager undertakes a fantastic journey in order to save her mountaintop village where men are forbidden, in Julien Chheng’s charming and magical animated feature.
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Director: Angela Schanelec | Germany and France
With My Wife Cries — a startling, minimalist study in romantic misalignment — German auteur and Festival favourite Angela Schanelec employs her singular style to portray the crushing anguish and vertiginous confusion brought forth by marital crisis.
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Directors: Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn | Canada
Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson team up with four revered drummers — Stewart Copeland, Danny Carey, Chad Smith, and Gavin Harrison — for an exhilarating and poignant tribute to late Rush legend Neil Peart.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Rodrigo Barriuso | Canada
Broadway and cabaret icon Justin Vivian Bond stars as a transgender gay rights activist with worsening Alzheimer disease suffering from the treatment in her nursing home, in Rodrigo Barriuso’s poignant second feature.
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Director: Denis Côté | Canada
Larissa Corriveau delivers a striking performance as an enigmatic death-dealer in this bold, bracing, and Buñuelian feature by Denis Côté.
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Director: Joaquín Ruano | Guatemala and Mexico
After leaving his Indigenous family for work in Guatemala City, a lonely security guard falls for a business owner at the mall he patrols, discovering an unexpected refuge and a new sense of self in a world not yet ready to make space for them.
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Director: Gabriel Martins | Brazil
Anchored by a deeply affecting performance from Rejane Faria, Gabriel Martins’ moving drama follows a grieving mother seeking forgiveness from the families of a tragic bus accident. What unfolds is a profound meditation on guilt and whether forgiveness is possible.
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Directors: William Greaves and David Greaves | USA
Conceived in 1972 by legendary filmmaker William Greaves and completed 50 years later by his son David, Once Upon a Time in Harlem is an essential work of living archive, documenting a lively gathering of luminaries from the Harlem Renaissance during a cocktail party at Duke Ellington’s home.
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Director: John Madden | United Kingdom
The latest from Oscar-nominated director John Madden stars Oscar nominee Laura Linney and Rhys Ifans as strangers whose lives become entwined when both are diagnosed with Parkinson disease.
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Director: Avi Nesher | Israel
The latest from Avi Nesher is a gracefully woven drama about the ways that love intensifies and second chances are possible in the face of adversity and mayhem.
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Directors: Marcelo Gomes and Carol Minêm | Brazil
The first-ever series from renowned Brazilian filmmaker Marcelo Gomes tells the true story of a group of young flight attendants who smuggle treatment drugs from America into the hands of patients with AIDS in 1980s Brazil.
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Director: Yeon Sang-ho | South Korea
A bus full of children mysteriously vanishes. When an altered version of a grieving mother’s son returns years later, she must grapple with the technologically revised reality she has created in this sharp thriller from Yeon Sang-ho.
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Director: Artavazd Pelechian
One of the year’s greatest cinematic gifts, this programme brings together five newly restored films by the pioneering Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian, each a harrowing ode to humanity, and its natural cycles of existence.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Richie Mehta | India
In the heartland of India, a young Phoolan Devi becomes one of the most famous outlaws in Indian history and the target of 2,000 heavily armed men sent to kill her over a gruelling 48-hour siege.
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Director: Lee Chang-dong | South Korea
Lee Chang-dong’s eagerly anticipated new film brings stories of relationships, generational and class divides, in this gripping tale of two couples playing games with themselves and one another.
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Director: Joss Crowley | United Kingdom
Tough, stylish, and effortlessly cool, the Pretenders founder Chrissie Hynde is the real thing. Grounded in extensive interviews with Hynde and archival materials, Pretenders chronicles the evolution of one of rock’s most singular icons.
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Director: Susanna White | Australia and United Kingdom
Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo stars in this adaptation of Suzie Miller’s globally acclaimed play that examines what happens when an ambitious barrister who primarily defends those accused of sex crimes unexpectedly becomes the accuser in a sexual assault case.
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Director: Lindsay Lanzillotta | Canada and USA
This coming-of-age dramedy, set in the 1980s, follows Beatrice as she tries to reunite her recently separated parents, and stars J.K. Simmons, Abby Elliott, John Reynolds, and Jack Innanen.
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Director: Rebeca Huntt | United Kingdom and USA
Soccer star Megan Rapinoe explores what it means to win and lose in this intimate portrait by Rebeca Huntt.
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Director: Lacey Schwartz Delgado | USA Lacey Schwartz Delgado explores the bonds and tensions between American Black and Jewish communities in a series of dialogues with prominent figures.
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Director: Pegah Ahangarani | Czech Republic and Spain Acclaimed actor-turned-documentarian Pegah Ahangarani draws on a trove of archival material to skillfully weave her personal narrative with Iranian politics over the past four decades.
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Director: John Abraham | India
A daring clarion call and one of the most significant works of Indian political cinema, John Abraham’s extraordinary final film Amma Ariyan follows a young man in 1970s Kerala as he journeys — with a progressive swell of companions — to inform a mother of her son’s death, amid widespread unrest.
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Director: Sine Plambech | Denmark, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Iceland
Director Sine Plambech documents the kidnapping of a mother and her long quest to be reunited with her husband, illuminating a mass crisis experienced by migrants in the Mediterranean.
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Director: Joshua Giuliano | USA
Joshua Giuliano makes an audacious debut with a suspenseful slasher that sets three embittered siblings adrift along a rural waterway, and in the sights of a masked killer.
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Director: Duncan Jones | United Kingdom
Directed by Duncan Jones, this outlandish animated adaptation of the influential British comic book follows a clone soldier bred for an interstellar forever-war and his fallen comrades whose personalities live on within his gun, helmet, and backpack.
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Director: Sean Menard | Canada
This intimate and inspiring portrait from filmmaker Sean Menard draws upon never-before-seen footage to reveal the arduous process and profound commitment behind Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope to raise awareness and money for cancer research.
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Director: Tom Nicoll | United Kingdom
A hunger for purpose and a flair for delusion in a small Scottish town: Tom Nicoll’s debut is a sharp, empathetic portrait of young men adrift.
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Director: Justin Ducharme | Canada
Three young queer Indigenous people’s lives intersect and overlap over the course of 17 hours in downtown Vancouver.
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Director: Ione Hernández | Spain
Outside of Madrid, two sisters unite their families on a summer weekend, celebrating milestones and the solstice-heralding San Juan Festival. However, joy quickly turns to horror when a serious allegation of sexual abuse surfaces from one of their children.
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Directors: Will Smith and Adam Randall | United Kingdom and USA
The sixth season of this smash hit series finds the motley crew of disgraced MI5 agents in Slough House, working under the cantankerous Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman, TIFF ’17’s Darkest Hour), thrown once again into the fray.
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Director: Cody Lightning | Canada
A fresh take on the underdog sports film, centring on an Indigenous hockey team in Northern Alberta, from actor and director Cody Lightning and starring Ed Helms, Jana Schmieding, and Paulina Alexis.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Nguyen Phan Quang Binh | Vietnam
The largest production in Vietnamese history, this sweeping epic from Nguyễn Phan Quang Binh transports us to the Đinh dynasty, when a band of fearless warriors set out on a secret mission to safeguard a sacred mystery.
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Director: Carol Nguyen | Canada
A once-close family comes together to say goodbye to an uncle who struggled with mental health issues, in award-winning short filmmaker Carol Nguyen’s tender and emotional feature-length documentary debut.
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Director: Ian Bawa | Canada
A bodybuilder struggles to keep it together as he cares for his elderly father in this perceptive and deeply felt drama by Winnipeg’s Ian Bawa.
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Director: Theo Rhys | United Kingdom
Love, death, and taxidermy collide in this gloriously twisted musical, one of the year’s funniest, most original, and unexpectedly heartfelt romances.
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Director: Serville Poblete | Canada
Over one hot summer day in Toronto, a group of young people try to survive the heatwave and a blackout by making jokes, roaming the city, and forming tangible connections that feel like they can disappear at any moment.
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Director: Leah Nelson | Canada and USA
A young woman deals with her vibrant mother’s Alzheimer diagnosis in this deeply moving animation adapted from a graphic memoir, with a voice cast including Abbi Jacobson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Seth Rogen, and Bowen Yang.
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Director: Afsaneh Salari | France, Iran and Sweden
In an age of body anxiety, filmmaker Afsaneh Salari embeds herself in the offices of Iranian plastic surgeons to interview their clients with humour and empathy.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Kon Ichikawa | Japan
In the stylish, satirical, and ahead-of-its-time Ten Dark Women (Kuroi jûnin no onna, 1961), by legendary Japanese director Kon Ichikawa, 10 women discover they are sharing the same pathologically unfaithful man, and temporarily abandon jealousy to meticulously orchestrate a collective revenge.
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Director: Mike Leigh | United Kingdom
Seven-time Academy Award nominee Mike Leigh returns with an uplifting story of family and how to deal with grief, featuring remarkably emotional performances from Kate O’Flynn and Alice Bailey Johnson.
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Director: Jennifer Peedom | USA and Australia
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe, and Genden Phuntsok, this wondrous biopic recounts the story of Nepalese-Indian Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay who, alongside Edmund Hillary, became first to top Everest in 1953.
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Director: Edmund Yeo | Taiwan and Malaysia
Vivian Sung stars as the ravishing Du Li An in a breathtaking cinematic adaptation of Li Zi Shu’s The Age of Goodbyes, a story about memory, loss, love, doppelgängers, and hidden truths.
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Director: Hur Jin-ho | South Korea
Based on the attempted assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee, the latest from Hur Jin-ho is a large-canvas procedural about police and journalists determined to uncover a seemingly impenetrable conspiracy.
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Director: Rodrigo Sorogoyen | Spain
Starring Oscar winner Javier Bardem and Victoria Luengo, the latest from Rodrigo Sorogoyen chronicles an unnerving collaboration between a charismatic, manipulative director and the actor daughter he hasn’t seen in 13 years.
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Director: David Bezmozgis | Canada and Ukraine
In adapting his own literary prize-winner, Toronto’s David Bezmozgis delivers a deft political thriller about the limits of love and loyalty.
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Director: Yuula Benivolski | Canada
The debut feature by Toronto artist and filmmaker Yuula Benivolski, The Black Box is Orange is a multimodal, autobiographical essay film that deploys both personal memory and incomplete archives to reflect on a childhood in a militarized border town.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Hanaël El Yousfi | France
A young Muslim woman raised in Marseille reunites with a young Jewish woman after a period of estrangement, reconnecting as friends over summer break. When a sudden tragedy disrupts their carefree holiday, the pair face the similarities and differences that strengthen and threaten their relationship together.
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Director: Jesse Eisenberg | USA
Jesse Eisenberg directs Academy Award winner Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti in a dark comedy about a bored suburban housewife who finds purpose acting in community theatre.
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Director: Radu Jude | France and Romania
Offering his most provocative work yet, the latest from Romanian provocateur Radu Jude is a surprisingly tender socioeconomic satire.
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Director: Rubaiyat Hossain | France, Bangladesh, Germany, Norway and Portugal
Following the strange visions afflicting a woman on the cusp of marriage, the latest from Rubaiyat Hossain examines the pressures applied to brides in a milieu where weddings demand an asphyxiating feminine ideal.
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Director: Anna Biller | United Kingdom
The Love Witch’s Anna Biller stunningly adapts the famous Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan for 14th-century England in this gory tribute to classic Technicolor shockers.
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Director: Sophie Deraspe | Canada
Quebec’s Sophie Deraspe returns to the Festival with a philosophical and intimate look at the many profound issues surrounding both death and medically assisted dying in an extraordinary documentary.
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Director: Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado | Spain and Greece
In the 16th century, on the newly conquered Canary Islands, colonial misgivings intersect with personal desperation. Fátima, an enslaved and pregnant woman, must struggle to survive both the landscape, and the other inhabitants.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Ben Shirinian | USA
Grounded in artful performances from Oscar nominee Naomi Watts and Tye Sheridan, this salient historical drama depicts the complexities of seeking justice in the long shadow of Nazism.
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Directors: Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert | Poland and Germany
Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn bring to life the story of Anna and Fyodor Dostoevsky, showcasing the troubled author and the woman who pushed him to write one of his greatest works.
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Director: Niki Byrne | USA
Chase Infiniti stars as a gifted university student who becomes romantically involved with a teaching assistant as they both prepare for the Putnam Exam, the most challenging math competition in North America. Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs co-star.
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Director: Guy Nattiv | USA
Carrie Coon soars in the riveting story inspired by filmmaker Guy Nattiv’s grandmother, whose humdrum day-to-day life is upended by a mysterious and entrancing young woman offering the promise of escape to something better.
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Director: Tim Blake Nelson | USA
Starring Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried and Scoot McNairy, the latest from Tim Blake Nelson is a psychologically rich prison story about crime, punishment, and love.
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Director: Frank Berry | Ireland
A quietly powerful true story of an amateur historian’s quest to uncover a long-buried injustice. By exposing what rightly became a national scandal, Catherine Corless changed Ireland forever.
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Director: Ira Sachs | USA
Ira Sachs’ vision of New York artists living under the spectre of AIDS in the ’80s focuses on the joy and salvation of creativity.
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Director: Noah Segan | USA
Anchored by John Turturro’s charismatic performance, this low-key crime drama from Noah Segan harkens back to the character-driven films of 1970s New Hollywood.
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Director: Sophie Fiennes | Ireland, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Netherlands and Norway
Twenty years after The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, the renowned intellectual Slavoj Žižek reunites with director Sophie Fiennes for a fresh meditation on movies and ideas that crackles with energy.
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Director: John Torres | Philippines
This ambitious, beguiling narrative debut from acclaimed Filipino filmmaker and experimentalist John Torres follows a grieving detective who finds himself increasingly ensnared while investigating a case involving a sinister navigation app causing physical and psychological debris.
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Director: Peter Ho-Sun Chan | China
Peter Ho-Sun Chan directs Zhou Xun, Wen Qi, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Wang Xiao in a drama about early-onset Alzheimer disease. Combining expert storytelling with commercial appeal, The Road Not Taken reflects on what remains when our understanding of the world begins to disappear.
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Director: Daniel Oriahi | Nigeria
A wealthy patriarch’s fragile household unravels when the youngest of his four wives fails to conceive. Blending sharp Nollywood wit with tenderness, this deeply satisfying drama explores topics of infertility, gendered inheritance, and shifting family power.
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Director: Paolo Strippoli | Italy, France and Belgium
Director Paolo Strippoli turns the screws on a desperate mother as she confesses a series of Faustian bargains to her estranged daughter in this riveting morality chiller.
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Director: Michael Dowse | Canada
Jay Baruchel and director Michael Dowse re-team for a raucous yet heartfelt comedy about a Canadian stuntman who dared to dream big and fly (very) high.
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Director: Roshan Sethi | Ireland
Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh is back in action as a kidnapped surgeon forced to perform one last operation in this fun, pulse-pounding thriller.
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Director: Mila Aung-Thwin | Canada
Punishing tests of human endurance become a means of escaping past demons for the unforgettable subject of Mila Aung-Thwin’s superb new film.
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Director: Arthur Harari | France
A highlight of this year’s Cannes Competition, the third feature by acclaimed French filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter Arthur Harari is a moody, existential body-swap puzzler starring an extraordinary Léa Seydoux and a near-unrecognizable Niels Schneider.
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Directors: Ervin Han and Raúl García | Singapore, Spain and Italy
Winner of this year’s Annecy Cristal award, this intimate animation about two violinists in Singapore circa the Second World War highlights the healing power of music while pulling heartstrings.
(Courtesy of TIFF)
Director: Yoon Dan-bi | South Korea
Yoon Dan-bi’s coming-of-age story follows two childhood best friends who reunite for a summer on a remote Korean island. This beautifully constructed slice of life captures the emotional intensity of adolescence through assured filmmaking and compelling performances.
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Director: Hosam Abu Dan | Palestine
Palestinian director Hosam Abu Dan makes his narrative feature debut with a nuanced and deeply human portrait of a father and his teenage daughter navigating everyday life in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
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Director: Rémi St-Michel | Canada
A prank gone wrong launches a Quebec teen into a life of crime in Rémi St-Michel’s energetic and unpredictable second feature.
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Director: Kris Rey | USA
After the death of their hoarder father in rural Missouri, two siblings reunite to sort through the baggage — both literal and emotional — in Kris Rey’s poignant and funny exploration of love and grief.
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Director: Bahman Ghobadi | Turkey
Iranian Kurdish auteur Bahman Ghobadi blends psychological horror and ecological allegory as he depicts the eerie haunting of a writer reckoning with past misdeeds under the ominous gaze of a pair of trees and a malignant wooden chair.
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Director: Alexandra Lazarowich | Canada
The bumpy road to success experienced by three aspiring Indigenous hip-hop artists is the focus of Alexandra Lazarowich’s verité-style feature documentary debut.
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Director: Barbara Kopple | USA
Barbara Kopple looks at three crucial labour battles as they unfold in New York City involving workers from UPS, Amazon, and deliveristas for DoorDash and GrubHub.
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Director: Trudie Styler | United Kingdom
Post-marital acrimony and parental devotion make strange bedfellows in Trudie Styler’s wicked comedy, starring Oscar nominee Antonio Banderas and Eva Birthistle as co-parenting divorcees faced with an indecent proposal.
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Director: Yan Lanouette Turgeon | Canada
Chronicling the exhilarating career of Gilles Villeneuve, one of Canada’s foremost athletes, this biopic from director Yan Lanouette Turgeon stars Rémi Goulet as the kid from Quebec who changed Formula One.
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Director: Eugene Kotlyarenko | USA and Japan
In Eugene Kotlyarenko’s mixed-media caper, a livestreamer discovers a cache of vintage denim only to run afoul of the Yakuza when he is lured to Japan to sell the jeans by one of his subscribers.
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Director: Sébastien Laudenbach | France
A vibrant reframing of Bizet’s famous opera through the lens of a pack of Sevillian street children who are determined to subvert Carmen’s tragic fate. With an intimate approach to music and bold brushstrokes that dance, this animated feature sings brightly.
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Director: Deantè Gray | USA
A starry-eyed bellhop enlists his friends to help him exploit an unsavoury opportunity that could secure them fame and fortune in Deantè Gray’s soulful, suspenseful 1960s-set musical chamber thriller.
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Director: Anthony Chen | Singapore
Anthony Chen, a Festival favourite and the helmer behind Ilo Ilo, reunites with muses Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler in an emotionally charged drama about a constructed family to close his “Growing Up” trilogy.
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Director: Leung Chuen Yeung | Hong Kong
Golden Horse winner Suet Ying Chung and Wai Lun Yeung lead Leung Chuen Yeung’s assured debut, in which a struggling actress and an ex-con restaurant owner turn a petty dispute into an unlikely bond. Witty, moving, and accessible.
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Director: Mina Shum | Canada
The latest comedy from writer-director Mina Shum the story of a young woman from Hong Kong whose marriage to an affluent businessman is beginning to resemble a gilded cage.
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Director: Amalie Næsby Fick | Denmark
From Danish director Amalie Næsby Fick and a cast led by Sidse Babett Knudsen comes a compelling cautionary tale about the ethical and moral boundaries a parent may cross in order to protect a child.
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Director: Juan Andrés Arango | Canada, Colombia and Norway
In Juan Andrés Arango’s bracing and poetic third feature, an Emberá woman displaced by violence undertakes a dangerous journey to find a better life for herself and her daughter.
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Director: Martin McDonagh | USA and Chile
Two CIA agents are sent on a mission to Easter Island, where one faces an existential crisis over his past actions, in Martin McDonagh’s latest dark comedy.
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Director: Jan Holoubek | Poland
Set in occupied Poland in the middle of the Second World War, Jan Holoubek’s tour-de-force is part suspenseful western, part gritty wartime noir.
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Director: May el-Toukhy | Denmark
A woman with secrets to hide desperately tries to avoid mob justice in postwar Copenhagen in May el-Toukhy’s bracing third feature.
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Directors: Various | Canada
Starring Canadians Hudson Williams, Noah Reid, and Carrie-Anne Moss, this adaptation of Kat Sandler’s award-winning play unfurls the truth behind a mysterious disappearance in a small coastal town.
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Director: Bassam Tariq | USA
Oscar winner Mahershala Ali stars as a devout Muslim, loving family man, and contract killer in this audaciously inventive Texas-set action thriller from writer-director Bassam Tariq.
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Directors: Christine Boateng and Hajara Musah Chambas | Ghana
In their poignant debut feature, co-directors Christine Boateng and Hajara Musah Chambas depict the journey of three Ghanaian women eking out a living as kayayei or porters in the trenches of the world’s largest secondhand clothing market.
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