The Toronto International Film Festival unveiled its full schedule today.
Normally, when you see lineups, they are long lists. What we have done is broken it up into categories:
Cover Story that breaks down the top films at the festival… and the top-performing and lowest-performing films at TIFF 2025.
TIFF Industry News, which breaks out top distributors.
TIFF Actor Spotlight, highlighting the top talent at the festival.
TIFF Indie Filmmaker Spotlight, showcasing first and second-time filmmakers.
TIFF International News, showing the top international filmmakers at TIFF.
TIFF Discovery, spotlighting emerging global talent
TIFF Midnight Madness, showcasing the top horror films. Last year, Obsession premiered at the festival.
TIFF Docs, highlighting the top docs at TIFF this year.
If you know anyone that we mention, we’d appreciate you forwarding it to them.
If this email is cut off at the bottom, see the full article here.
Below is the full breakdown:
TIFF 2026 has films directed by Werner Herzog, Chris Rock, Siân Heder, Jesse Eisenberg, and Rachel Morrison, alongside films starring Cate Blanchett, Mahershala Ali, Michelle Yeoh, Helen Mirren, Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Cynthia Erivo, Javier Bardem, Christopher Walken, Jon Hamm, and Julianne Moore.
Whoever wins TIFF’s top prize, the People’s Choice Award, has a high chance of being nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In the past 16 years, 14 TIFF winners were Best Picture nominated, with four winning (Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King's Speech).
TIFF 2025 was no exception, with its People’s Choice Award Winner, Focus Features’ Hamnet, nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and winning Best Actress for Jessie Buckley. The film made $109M worldwide, remarkable for an indie film about grief. I remember sitting in the audience after the film finished and thinking this is the best ending for a film I’ve seen in a decade. So all in all, a smash hit critically and commercially.
And of course, TIFF had the unbelievable breakout film, Obsession. Which Focus Features picked up for $15M at the festival. At the time, we wrote how Focus Features was shifting their focus strategically to the horror genre. And it paid off in spades with Obsession making nearly $500M off a reported sub-million-dollar budget. That’s 2x more than any previous release by Focus Features.
Otherwise, at TIFF 2025, very few world-premiering films broke through. With many of the biggest TIFF 2025 films underperforming or bombing at the box office:
Christy
Dir/Co-Writer: David Michôd (The Rover, Animal Kingdom)
Prod co: Anonymous Content, Black Bear
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Katy O’Brien, Ben Foster
Release fate: $2M domestically, pulled out of theaters after 2 weeks.
Good Fortune
Dir: Aziz Ansari
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer, and Ansari
Release fate: $26M theatrical on a $30M production budget, making it a loss for Lionsgate
Couture
Dir: Alice Winocour
Cast: Angelina Jolie
Release fate: $225K domestically ($1.9M worldwide), one of the lowest-earning films in Jolie’s career
Hedda
Dir: Nia DaCosta (The Marvels, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple)
Cast: Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots
Release fate: straight to Prime, no major award nominations (the film is excellent, though!)
The other successful films at TIFF last year, other than Obsession and Hamnet, were A24’s Eternity, which made $35.9M worldwide, and Sony Pictures Classics’ I Swear, which won the BAFTA for Best Actor, beating out DiCaprio and Chalamet.
Will this year’s People’s Choice Award winner snag Oscar glory?
Here are the highest-profile projects rolling into TIFF this year, hopefully destined for awards/high box office returns:
Dir: Siân Heder (CODA)
Prod: David Permut
Cast: Ruth Madeley, Mark Ruffalo and Dylan O’Brien
Distributor: Apple
Synopsis:
1977. Disability rights activist Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) leads a historic 28-day occupation of San Francisco’s Federal Building, uniting protesters in a fight for accessibility laws and equal rights.
TIFF has called it “every bit as moving as Heder’s Best Picture Oscar winner, CODA.” It’s a big statement, but Heder’s ability to cut to the human heart of activism is brilliantly represented in her work.
Dir: Zellner brothers (Sasquatch Sunset)
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Jon Hamm, Léa Seydoux
Premiering at Telluride
Synopsis:
Alien leader Alpha One and her crew disguise themselves as an armed and dangerous 1950s leather-clad biker gang to invade Earth. Their conquest plan derails when they experience the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion.
Blanchett stated that the film “[Has] created a far-out world in order to lampoon something much closer to home: the hilarious, absurd, and peculiar truth of the human condition.” We couldn’t be more excited to see how she extrapolates these traits into this new role. Maybe it’ll be tinged with the poetic emptiness of Scarlett Johansson’s alien in Under the Skin.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Cast: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito
Distributor: Amazon’s Orion
Synopsis
Follows Latif, a devoutly religious hitman, who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children after his wife dies, confronting forces closing in and beliefs threatening to unravel.
Ali is a man of faith, a father, and a hitman. He sells oils and perfumes and kills to protect his community. It’s great to see an action film where the person doing the killing is pained by each death he inflicts. Ali brings a spiritual soulfulness.
Dir: Anton Corbijn (A Most Wanted Man)
Cast: Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich (Fair Play)
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Synopsis:
A mysterious young man from a New York publisher is sent to Switzerland to persuade the renowned writer Patricia Highsmith to write one final installment of the Ripley anthology.
There have been many incarnations of Ripley films throughout the years, so we’re excited to see how Corbijn’s vision unfolds. His taut crime thriller A Most Wanted Man is very Ripley-esque, so we are confident this’ll be strong.
There are a number of films having their North American premieres at TIFF that world premiered at Venice, like:
Netflix’s Ink
Dir: Danny Boyle
Cast: Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell
Searchlight’s Wild Horse Nine
Netflix’s Possible Love
National Geographic’s Everest: The Other Side
Dir: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, Nyad)
Bleecker Street’s Musk (dir: Alex Gibney)
Florian Zeller’s Bunker starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back
Gael García Bernal’s Hombre al agua (Man Overboard)
Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? co-starring Geoffrey Rush
Or Canadian premieres at TIFF that world premiered at Telluride:
Apple’s Tenzing starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe.
Focus Features’ Elsinore
Bleecker Street’s Tender Loving Care
Dir: Mike Leigh
Bucking Fastard
Dir: Werner Herzog
Cast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom
Mubi’s A Long Winter
Dir: Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers)
Cast: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kit Connor
Guy Nattiv’s The Liberation starring Carrie Coon
Two Berlin films playing at TIFF:
Mubi’s Flies directed by Fernando Eimbcke (Olmo)
Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars (winner: FIPRESCI Award)
Sundance favorites playing at TIFF:
Josephine (cast: Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan)
The film won Sundance, and IMO is the best film of the year
Sony Pictures Classics’ The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Sony Pictures Classics’ Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
Neon’s Once Upon a Time in Harlem
And all the Cannes winners will be playing at TIFF too:
Fjord (Palme d’Or)
Minotaur (Grand Prix)
The Dreamed Adventure (Jury Prize)
All of a Sudden (Best Performance by an Actress/my favorite film of the fest)
Coward (Best Actor Award)
La Bola Negra (Best Director)
Greenwich Entertainment’s A Girl Unknown (FIPRESCI Prize)
1-2 Special’s Everytime (Un Certain Regard winner)
1-2 Special’s La Gradiva (Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize)
Plus a few other Cannes favorites
Neon’s Hope - screening link
Pedro Almodóvar's tragicomedy film Bitter Christmas
Neon’s Clarissa starring Ayo Edebiri
A24’s Club Kid
Netflix’s Gentle Monster starring Léa Seydoux
The Beloved starring Javier Bardem (trailer)
Neon’s The Man I Love starring Rami Malek and directed by Ira Sachs
Neon’s The Unknown starring Léa Seydoux
Ashes directed by Diego Luna
Tangles (animated film, voice cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Seth Rogen, and Bowen Yang.)
And, of course, they’re re-playing Obsession. Screening link.
Congrats to all the filmmakers.
TIFF - INDUSTRY NEWS
Both indie and studio distributors came out in force at TIFF. Notably, Amazon, which is expanding its theatrical slate, is pushing many movies. Mubi, which had many films at Cannes and bought a few as well, has no films world-premiering. Although they are likely to make some buys. Warner Bros. is absent as well, which seems to be their new strategy post-Joker 2 crashed and burned at a festival.
Here’s a breakdown of what is world-premiering at TIFF:
Amazon MGM - 3 films, 2 shows
I Play Rocky
Dir: Peter Farrelly (Green Book)
The film tells the story of how Sylvester Stallone made Rocky. And in a true case of life mirroring art, it was a true battle. Stallone was a broke actor who spent a decade getting rejections and decided to bet on himself. I was blown away by how resonant it was. Perhaps because, as a filmmaker, I identified with the struggle.
Stallone’s story is as great as Rocky’s. I believe its Oscar chances are strong.
Love of Your Life
Dir: Rachel Morrison (The Fire Inside)
Prod: Ryan Gosling
Cast: Margaret Qualley
Synopsis:
Maya, a smart, wry nurse, is swept up in an immersive love, that sets her life on a trajectory she never would have imagined.
Phoolan
Synopsis:
Follows an impoverished 17-year-old girl who becomes a famous outlaw and survives a brutal 48-hour siege when thousands of armed men trap her in a village.
This seems harrowing, and perhaps it’s a Best Foreign Language film play for Amazon.
Now the shows:
Amazon MGM Studios’ Carrie
Showrunner: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Summer H. Howell, Matthew Lillard, Samantha Sloyan
Release: Oct. 26 (on Prime Video)
Synopsis:
A sheltered girl with telekinetic powers is bullied, leading to a horrific, bloody incident due to her domineering mother’s influence.
MGM+’s American Hostage
Showrunner: Shawn Ryan
Cast: Jon Hamm, Giovanni Ribisi, Jonathan Tucker
Release: Fall 2026
Synopsis:
Fred Heckman, a beloved Indianapolis radio reporter, is thrust into the middle of a life-or-death crisis when hostage-taker, Tony Kiritsis, demands to be interviewed on his popular radio news program.
Interesting timing on this. Gus Van Sant just did a film on this subject, Row K’s Dead Man’s Wire, which performed poorly. But Hamm is great in this, as stern yet vulnerable.
A24 - 2 films, 1 show
Misty Green
Dir/Wri: Chris Rock (5th feature)
Cast: Rosalind Eleazar, Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick
Synopsis:
Years after her Hollywood breakthrough, a talented actress whose career has stalled fights for her second act.
The Debut
Dir: Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain)
Cast: Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti
Synopsis:
When an unassuming housewife is unexpectedly cast in a community theater production, she loses herself in the role under the spell of a strong-willed director.
Crystal Lake (Show: Peacock and A24)
Showrunner: Brad Caleb Kane
Cast: Linda Cardellini, Bernadette Quigley
Release: Oct. 15 (on Peacock)
Synopsis:
Prequel series to Friday the 13th, follows a doomed small town where camp counselors come to die.
Netflix - 1 film, 1 show
On Behalf of My Son (film)
Dir: Gabriel Martins
Synopsis:
At 75, Vicentina faces the death of her son, a bus driver who caused a tragedy by plunging off a viaduct. As the investigation suggests possible suicide, she seeks out the victims’ families to offer her apologies.
Below (show)
Showrunner: Jesse McKeown
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Charlie Heaton
Release Oct. 8
Synopsis:
When a mysterious sea creature terrorizes a remote town, a fisherman must fight to protect his family, his community, and his way of life.
Neon - 2 films
The Housewife
Star: Naomi Watts
Synopsis:
A New York Times journalist tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens. But when he befriends the suspect's elegant and charming wife, the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.
Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo
Dir: Takashi Miike
Synopsis:
A gambling-addicted Tokyo cop and an FBI agent search for a missing politician's daughter, while a mysterious killer lurks in the criminal underworld, watching their every move.
Apple - 1 film, 1 show
Being Heumann
Dir: Siân Heder (CODA)
Slow Horses (Season 6)
Showrunner: Gaby Chiappe
Cast: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves
Release: Sept. 16
Universal - 1 show
Crystal Lake (cross-listed above w/ A24)
IFC Films - 1 film
The Stunt Driver
Cast: Ben Foster, Jay Baruchel, Ed Helms
Synopsis:
The film chronicles the daredevil stuntman Ken Carter's quest to execute a bold stunt of launching a rocket car across the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States in the 1970s, facing absurd challenges along the way.
Bleecker Street - 1 film
A Talent for Murder (cross-listed above)
StudioCanal - 1 film
Everybody Wants to F*ck Me
Star: Taron Egerton
Synopsis:
An original razor-sharp dark comedy thriller set in the world of modern dating in London.
Starts goofy and devolves into a straight, zombie-esque horror with throngs of women breaking down Egerton’s door to sleep with him. A great team of companies is behind this film: Studiocanal, Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, Film4, and Parkville Pictures.
BBC - 1 film
Onwards and Sideways
Dir: John Madden (Shakespeare in Love)
Cast: Laura Linney, Rhys Ifans
Synopsis:
Two people with lots in common - a great sense of humour, a love of dance and they both have Parkinson's.
There’s also some fun conversations with:
Chris Rock
Andrew Scott
Lee Min-ho
Rachel Morrison
Sign up for them here.
TIFF - ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Double Naomi Watts. The actress is starring in two first-time feature debuts at TIFF:
Cast: Watts, Odessa A’zion (Marty Supreme), Sarah Paulson
Dir: Cody Fern (actor in American Crime Story)
Synopsis:
A renowned actress faces mounting pressure during show rehearsals when her estranged sister suddenly reappears after three decades. Their unexpected reunion stirs up buried family tensions forcing both women to face their shared history.
Cast: Watts, Tye Sheridan
Dir: Ben Shirinian
Synopsis:
A New York Times journalist tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens. But when he befriends the suspect's elegant and charming wife, the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.
Watts is wonderfully chameleonic. Meaning that her characters can seem effervescent and, with a flick of the wrist, change to overbearing or even demonic. We can’t wait to see how she plays these roles.
Let there be Christopher Walken. The actor/dancer/ex-Bond villain stars in Back in Black.
Synopsis:
In a wellness-obsessed small town where nobody dies anymore, a struggling mortician faces bankruptcy - until his granddaughter devises an unexpected solution to save the family business.
Killing to save the morgue biz? Great premise! We hope to see Walken get a little bloody in this. First look image.
Cynthia Erivo is about to tear down your walls. She stars in Prima Facie. The synopsis itself gives me chills:
Tessa (Erivo), an ambitious defense lawyer expertly represents her clients, including those who are accused of sexual assault. However, she finds out that the law does not provide justice after being raped by a coworker.
Before her starring role in Wicked, Erivo’s performances have an alluring mystical quality that remains somehow grounded:
Hustling hairdresser jumps at a million-dollar payday
“I don’t require a vouch.” Scene
Academy Award Nominee for Best Actress
Watch her get a mystical vision from God
The Outsiders (2020)
Staccato unorthodox police detective
“A human being cannot exist in two realities.” Scene
(Our personal favorite)
We can’t wait to see her break down and force others to break in Prima Facie. Bring tissues
Tidbits:
Double Michelle Yeoh?! No, it’s not a sequel for EEAAO; it’s two films at TIFF. The first, It’s My Time (trailer), premiered in Asia. Yeoh plays a speed Rubik’s Cube-er. A story of galvanizing gamesmanship and ageless defiance. In the second, The Surgeon, which is world-premiering. She plays the titular character who had retired after a great career. But a ruthless gangster played by Martin Freeman leads her back to the operating table. Look, after EEAAO we kind of get Yeoh can play anything. She is fluid and flawless, and we can’t wait to see her in these.
We can’t wait to see James McAvoy embrace his dark side. He stars in Faith, which follows Gina (Erin Doherty, The Crown), a single mother who meets Michael (McAvoy), an enigmatic stranger. As their relationship deepens, Michael's extraordinary true identity is revealed, teaching Gina to embrace life fully again. McAvoy is great at sinking into heavier resonances with ease, like in Atonement.
French cinematic icon Isabelle Huppert is set to star in the titular role in the upcoming comedy feature All About Corinne, directed by Call My Agent! filmmaker Marc Fitoussi. While the actress is known for her fearless intensity in roles like The Piano Teacher (2001) and Elle (2016), Corinne is more understated, a supporting actress with big aspirations.
Noomi Rapace is back at it again. She’s a cold-as-ice FBI agent who is tracking down a suicidal Inuk teen who pierced an oil pipeline with a bullet. The film is In Alaska. The other actor to watch is Leo Matthew Temela, who plays the troubled teen.
Another standout Chase Infiniti performance? She stars in The Julia Set as a gifted mathematician who falls in love with her Teaching Assistant. So kind of like a more responsible Margo’s Got Money Troubles perhaps? The film co-stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
Simon Rex (Red Rocket) plays a high-powered charismatic salesman in God Bless You, Mr Kopu. Synopsis: Struggling to make ends meet, a meek and desperate Tongan man is drawn into a high-risk partnership with a successful and charismatic salesman who uses a nefarious tactic to swindle people out of their cash. Trailer.
Ed Helms in an Indigenous hockey sports comedy/drama! I’m in. He plays the coach in Smudge the Blades. From TIFF’s write-up: The sports-team movie blueprint covers new territory here. These Indigenous kids have distinct personalities — like the traditional one, who smudges his hockey equipment — and their challenges and triumphs feel unique to reserve life. Sounds like great fun and a bit of a new dramatic challenge for Helms.
Zooey Deschanel lands at TIFF with Trash Mountain. In a role engineered to tamp down her bubbliness, she plays a daughter who returns home after her hoarded father has died. It can’t all be sad; Jacki Weaver plays the grandma.
Paulina García (Gloria) plays a grandma whose granddaughter is kidnapped in this dark dystopian film: Love is the monster.
TIFF - INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Seth Rogen’s wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, comes to TIFF with her second feature film, Babies.
The cast is just great Oscar nominees Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct), David Strathairn (Good Night, And Good Luck), plus Ed Helms (The Hangover), Anna Kendrick, and of course, Seth Rogen.
Synopsis:
Struggling with the decision of whether or not to bring a child into the world, Annie (Kendrick) and her husband Aaron (Rogen) become instant co-parents when their newly-divorced friend moves into their home with her 3-year-old.
Miller Rogen’s first film, Netflix’s Like Father (2018) starring Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer, is heartfelt and heavy (trailer). We believe Babies will be equally powerful.
Courteney Cox is stepping back into the director’s chair for Evil Genius, a true-crime thriller led by Stranger Things’ David Harbour and Cox’s ex-sister-in-law Patricia Arquette (Severance).
The film will look at the true case of the “pizza bomber”, following a man who walked into a bank with a bomb locked around his neck.
Cox was first introduced to the story in Netflix’s 2018 documentary series (of the same name, trailer).
While Cox has worked in the horror/crime genre, the film is worlds apart from her last directorial feature, the dark comedy Just Before I Go (2014). The Friends star also directed several episodes of her sitcom Cougar Town (2009-15), but hasn’t worked behind the camera in any major capacity since.
Widely known indie producer Trudie Styler (prod. Snatch, Moon) is back in the directing chair. Her upcoming romantic dramedy Up Against It, which she also produces, has a stacked cast: Antonio Banderas, Richard E. Grant and Forest Whitaker.
This is her first time back in the director’s chair since her debut Freak Show (2017), which also dealt with complex familial dynamics. Follows a set of dysfunctional parents (Banderas) attempting to come together for their child’s well-being.
Maven Screen Media founder Celine Rattray (The Kids Are All Right), a longtime partner with Styler, also produces.
Tim Blake Nelson, who has a face you can’t forget (image), is also a director. His 6th feature is the new prison break thriller, The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, starring Amanda Seyfried.
In the film, her character, a former teacher leaving an abusive marriage, starts work at a maximum security prison and falls in love with someone she would’ve never expected… an inmate.
Nelson shared:
“Getting to work with [Amanda] on Mona Fastvold’s film Ann Lee last summer confirmed for me what an extraordinary person she is aside from her great talent.”
Maybe this’ll share a little DNA with Dead Man Walking. It seems to flow on similar relationship dynamics.
Mini Tidbits:
Rebel Wilson is gearing up to direct her sophomore feature, Girl Group. Wilson will also star as a pop diva who’s been kicked out of her own group, forced to do what she can to make a comeback. Wilson’s directorial debut, the Toronto title The Deb (2024), has remained unreleased for over two years now because of legal disputes with her new film being produced by Live Nation Studios (A Star is Born) and Future Artists Entertainment (Poker Face).
Sue Kim (Dir: Apple’s The Last of the Sea Women) has a doc, Always Lalisa, on K-pop idol–turned–global superstar Lisa (Blackpink). We’ve been blown away by Lisa’s acting in The White Lotus S3, so we can’t wait for this.
This was at Cannes, but Reed Van Dyk is making his directorial debut with Atonement, an Iraq War drama starring Kenneth Branagh and Succession’s Hiam Abbass.
Tim Headington, who produced Hugo (2011), Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) and The Green Knight (2021), is producing All That She Wants, which centers on Emma who, after a nasty breakup, hooks up with the charming, younger Luke, only to realize she used to be his babysitter.
Kristina Ceyton, who produced The Babadook and The Nightingale, is producing the sci-fi movie Future Tense. The synopsis is gold: Rich tourists use time travel to escape the past. An interracial couple's relationship is tested when one partner decides to change history.
I’m intrigued by Children Untold, which follows a 12-year-old orphaned girl in post-WWII Tokyo who disguises herself as a boy to survive the underworld, while her former teacher retraces her path. The filmmaker is Miwa Nishikawa and is adapting her own book. Very impressive. TIFF Platform section.
TIFF - INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho created one of the most heart-wrenching zombie films of all time when he put a father and his young daughter at the heart of this claustrophobic survival tale.
Sang-Ho’s new film is Paradise Lost.
Synopsis:
A psychological thriller that unfolds when Ryu Sun-woo, a son presumed dead in a school camping bus disappearance nine years ago, miraculously returns alive to his grieving mother, Ryu So-young.
The trailer is similarly evocative, and Sang-ho has a special talent for making the supernatural personal. This seems less gory than his previous fare but still emotionally lacerating all the same. Trailer.
Diary of a Mad Old Man has shades of Kurosawa’s Ikiru.
The film follows a seventy-year-old widower who recovers from a stroke in the care of his dysfunctional family. While his body is failing him, his libido still rages on -- unwittingly sparked by the attentions of his daughter-in-law.
There’s a redemptive quality to this, about feeling your oldness by embracing youth. It feels optimistic and pessimistic at the same time, and we love it. Directed by Wayne Wang.
Don’t miss anything from RT Features (prod co: The Witch, The Lighthouse, Paper Tiger). Their newest is Glaxo. It is set in a provincial town with a Glaxo factory; four friends’ lives unravel after a retired cop and his alluring wife move in. Their arrival triggers passion and vengeance during Argentina’s transformative decades from the ‘50s to ‘80s.
They also have Furies. That film is set during Lebanon’s corruption-fueled economic crisis – when banks denied millions of citizens access to their life savings – two women plan a bold overnight heist to get their own money back.
Mini Tidbits:
The sleekest of murder mysteries is Hur Jin-ho’s The Assassin(s). The trailer gives a great taste of the action. It’s edge-of-your-seat South Korean cinema, and we’re all in for it.
Erik Glijnis (prod: Neon’s The Secret Agent) is co-producing Four Seasons in Java. Plot: Released from prison, a woman returns to her village and tries to face the four seasons of her past. It’s fantastical and grounded.
The two producers behind Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, Anaëlle Béglet and Jeanne-Marie Poulain, are producing Toy Gun Bandit.
Ewa Puszczynska, the prolific Polish producer behind The Zone of Interest and Cold War, is producing Wild Wild East. Part suspenseful western, part gritty wartime noir.
TIFF DISCOVERY
The upcoming Toronto Film Festival has announced its Discovery program lineup consisting of 24 new projects from rising filmmakers.
Here are a few that stood out to us:
Discovery’s Opening Film:
Stuffed
Dir: Theo Rhys (short film Stuffed, 2021)
Cast: Jodie Comer, Harry Melling (Pillion)
Synopsis:
A taxidermist named Araminta seeks to preserve a human specimen when Bernie volunteers himself. Their unusual arrangement evolves into an unexpected love story.
Purgatory
Dir: Lindsay Lanzillotta (prod: The Invitation)
Cast: J.K. Simmons, Abby Elliott (The Bear)
Synopsis:
A 13-year-old girl in 1980s Ontario tries to hold her family together after her mother leaves home to self-actualize.
Drifter
Dir: Sung Kang (dir: Shaky Shivers)
Cast: Sung Kang (Fast & Furious franchise), Gregory Cruz (Hell or High Water)
Synopsis:
A lonely custodian discovers purpose and community when he enters the world of competitive drag racing.
Full lineup here. Including Ancestors co-starring Christina Hendricks. And SPC’s Sundance hit Bedford Park. And don’t snooze on We Are Born Good.
TIFF MIDNIGHT MADNESS
Will lightning strike twice?
TIFF has ten films selected for its Midnight Madness program.
Of course, last year’s lineup included Obsession, which was picked up by Focus Features and has now made $490M at the box office worldwide.
So, will any of these films come close? Here are our top candidates:
Dir: Joshua Giuliano
Prod: Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity, Insidious)
Synopsis:
Three siblings who, after being stranded in a boat on a country river, are stalked by a faceless killer.
Sales Rep: Blue Finch
Synopsis:
When a night of partying leads four friends to KICK ON, at the extravagant drug-fueled lair of a mobster’s reckless son, they find themselves fighting for their lives amidst a brutal spiral of paranoia, violence, and ultimate betrayal.
Cast: Cole Sprouse
DP: Sean Price Williams (A24’s Good Time)
Synopsis:
A livestreamer (Cole Sprouse) 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 (Kiko Mizuhara).
More at TIFF’s Midnight Madness:
This one is first premiering at Venice, but don’t snooze on Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral.
Also, not a world premiere, but Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper will play.
Experimental films get infrequent love, but this one is worth seeing: Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney. Directed by Matthew Rankin (who made the wonderfully absurd film Universal Language).
Excel Entertainment (Gully Boy) boards Malayalam Vampire Thriller Half. The film follows two half-blooded vampires on a violent hunt.
So this is in TIFF’s Centerpiece section, but Thai horror Inherit looks scary as hell. Check out the poster. Or don’t.
Also, in TIFF Centerpiece, but L’AUTRE is a horror comedy set in a hospital during recovery from cancer surgery. Where the imaginary starts to become very real (clip).
TIFF WAVELENGTHS
The Toronto Film Festival has announced the 11 feature films making up The Wavelengths program, projects that celebrate boundary-pushing filmmaking.
Here are the ones to watch:
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Le journal d’une femme de chambre)
Dir: Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn)
Cast: Ana Dumitrascu (Jude’s Dracula)
Premiere: Cannes Directors’ Fortnight
Synopsis:
A young Romanian woman living in France works for a French family and joins a theatre company who are adapting Octave Mirbeau’s “Diary of a Chambermaid.”
The Remotes
Dir: John Torres (Todo Todo Teros)
Synopsis:
On an island where humans are controlled as avatars by a mysterious voice in a driving app, two estranged sisters with supernatural abilities team up with an overworked detective and rebel motorcyclist only to become haunted by a startling revelation: the voice they’re pursuing could be their own dead mothers.
Nobody’s Violence (Violence du corps de l’autre)
Dir/Wri: Denis Côte (Curling)
Cast: Gabrielle Lazure (The Beautiful Prisoner)
Synopsis:
Follows a traveling girl working for a mysterious organization that offers euthanasia services to desperate individuals in a dystopian world/
Full list of Wavelength titles here.
TIFF DOCS
Cheyenne feels like a Nat Geo pick-up.
Synopsis:
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.
Or, depending on whether it leans more silent and cinematic, we may be getting something that shares DNA with the artful and poetic Gaucho Gaucho (2024).
This one could be a fun doc for Nat Geo as much as it could for A24 or Neon, depending on how stylized it is: The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs.
Synopsis:
Indigenous Peruvian Amazon artist Sara Flores gains international recognition in her 70s, navigating between defending her community from illegal logging and the luxury art world.
We love the contrast here. And we can only imagine from this first look photo that Flores is wonderfully eccentric.
Mini Tidbits:
The next 20 Feet from Stardom? Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been shows another underappreciated musician one that Bruce Springsteen, Cher, and Dionne Warwick all praise in this high-spirited and warm-hearted portrait.
Jason Blumenfeld (prod: Saturday Night, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) and Jason Reitman serve as producers on Gail. This music documentary on an Our Lady Peace superfan follows her on the band’s 30th anniversary Canadian tour.
Dan Cogan (EP: Netflix’s Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, Prod: Nat Geo’s Sally) serves as a producer on Rapinoe. The doc follows Megan Rapinoe as she prepares for her last major tournament at the 2023 World Cup while engaging with her political stances.
This doc feels like a hidden gem: Still Night, Burning House. Synopsis: In Carol Nguyen's feature debut, a family journeys to Vietnam, where together they face long-unspoken questions about an uncle's mysterious death.
Drop what you’re doing and watch Turtle Island Rap. This doc has the soul of Patti Cakes, but minus the abuse. In fact, this doc showcases a mom and her daughter bonding over making rap music (trailer). Synopsis: The bumpy road to success experienced by three aspiring Indigenous hip-hop artists.
See the full list of 2026 TIFF films here, including the closing night film.
Written and edited by Gabriel Miller.