TIFF 2026 · Volume 1 of 4
It was my fourth year at TIFF, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of this wonderful festival.
First, thank you to the city of Toronto and the greater Ontario area for once again being such a fantastic, magical place to call home for three weeks. We always arrive a little early and stay a little later, and every year I fall a little more in love with the place. Your love of gelato is unmatched. Your pizza? Well…you’re now four for four, and I’m sorry, but it just isn’t your thing. Thankfully, you more than make up for it with kindness, hospitality, and that wonderfully laid-back Canadian spirit.
I’m also getting better at being kinder to myself during the festival. I’m learning to listen to my body and not push myself into sick oblivion just because there’s an 80-minute Swedish comedy playing at 8:30 in the morning. This year, I slept in more. I took more breaks. I gave myself permission to occasionally say, “Nope, not making that one.”
And I still saw more than forty films. I’m counting that as a win.
There were some terrific titles this year, some huge audience pleasers, a stinker or two, and a handful of experiences I feel incredibly lucky to have been in the theater for. As I’ve said many times, I’m just a movie nerd who counts his blessings every year I get to be in the room for one of these films, let alone forty of them. I don’t take any of it for granted.
So thank you to the entire TIFF staff, the volunteers, the ushers, the vendors, my fellow moviegoers, and everyone who helped make another year at the festival so memorable.
And a very special thank you to everyone who DIDN’T douse themselves in perfume or cologne before sitting in a confined space with hundreds of strangers for three hours.
You are the real TIFF MVPs.
Below are my reviews of the first 11 films, in the order I saw them, starting with four I watched at home before the festival.
Watched at home before the festival
Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been
Director: Barry Avrich
Starring: Darlene Love, Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen, Cher, Dionne Warwick, David Letterman, Nancy Sinatra, Paul Shaffer, Lou Adler, Marc Shaiman, Robert Smigel
Darlene Love looks back on six decades of singing, from lead vocals on hits released under other people’s names to cleaning houses after Phil Spector squeezed her royalties, and the comeback that followed.
Music documentaries walk in with a head start. Most people buying a ticket already know the artist a little, or they’re devoted fans hoping to fill in the gaps. Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been should win over both groups. It should also grab anyone who has ever sung along to an oldies station without checking who was actually singing.
Love’s career spans six decades, and director Barry Avrich has a mountain of material to work with. The film keeps showing just how often her voice turns up where you’d never expect it. She sang lead on hits that went out under other people’s names. She also filled in the backgrounds on records our parents and grandparents wore out.
Love makes a terrific interview subject. She’s candid and reflective, and she doesn’t sand down the hard years. Phil Spector squeezed her royalties so tightly that she ended up cleaning houses to pay the bills.
How she clawed her way back is the real story here. Avrich covers her Broadway comeback and her run as Trish Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon films. He also revisits her yearly performance of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on David Letterman’s show. For a lot of us, that became a holiday tradition.
It’s a cautionary tale, too. The music business will happily use up a talent and move on to the next one. Love had to fight at every turn to hold on to what was hers, and the film makes you feel every one of those battles.
Like a lot of loving tributes, it sometimes looks away from the messier chapters. Love came up with The Blossoms, and it was the group’s harmonies that got them noticed in the first place. The other members barely get a mention. The film also skips right past why her long stretch working with Dionne Warwick came to an end.
I get not wanting to reopen old wounds. Still, the picture feels incomplete without those pieces.
None of that stops this from being one of the best-sounding music docs I’ve heard in years. The archival performances are a joy, Love’s voice is still a force of nature, and the whole thing flies by. Fans of any genre should make time for it.
Watched at home before the festival
Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Starring: Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda, Damián Alcázar, You, Yoh Yoshida
When her husband dies in the middle of a dance competition, Haru can’t bring herself to move, until a new instructor, a former star of a famous TV dance show, comes to town and reignites her passion for dancing and for love.
It’s clear from the opening minutes that Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! isn’t going to be like every other dramedy. It’s strange and wonderfully weird. The film owes as much to offbeat Japanese touchstones as it does to Spanish-language melodrama, with a dash of Strictly Ballroom fantasy thrown in.
Rinko Kikuchi stars as Haru, a woman who lives to dance with her husband, Luis (Alejandro Edda). When he dies suddenly during a competition, she finds she can’t move at all. Months later, her friends are still trying to coax her back onto the dance floor.
Then a new dance instructor comes to town. Fedir (Alberto Guerra) is a former star of a famous TV dance show, and he reignites Haru’s passion for dancing and for love. The trouble is, she can’t let go of her past long enough to embrace her future, and it’s giving her two left feet.
This is a big change of pace from Josef Kubota Wladyka’s previous film, the gritty thriller Catch the Fair One. It’s also a personal project, dedicated to his mother.
The film often spins off into musical tangents, including one sequence set to a famous song from Dirty Dancing. They’re a lot of fun to watch, but they can stall the story. The dialogue shifts between Japanese, English, and Spanish, which adds to the film’s playful, anything-goes spirit.
As with most films like this, the lighthearted moments come early. The second half turns surprisingly dark, and it challenges how much we’re supposed to like our leading lady.
That’s why it’s a good thing Kikuchi understands the role so well. She plays Haru with a truly unique touch. Her core personality never changes. What shifts is how she adjusts to the new normal the world has forced on her.
It won’t be for everyone. If you’re open to something unusual, though, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! is a one-of-a-kind ride with a lead performance worth dancing for.
Watched at home before the festival
Ancestors
Director: David Turpin
Starring: Éanna Hardwicke, Jack Wolfe, Jessica Reynolds, Rupert Everett
In late-1980s London, as the AIDS crisis closes in, a young Irishman searches for his missing friend, and the hunt slips between memory, dreams and the present.
Gay men facing their own mortality turned out to be one of the big threads running through TIFF this year. Ancestors comes at that subject through the long shadow of the AIDS crisis.
It’s London in the late 1980s. Beau (Éanna Hardwicke) is a young Irishman who has made a life for himself in the city. Now he’s searching for his missing friend Tiny (Jack Wolfe). Writer-director David Turpin blends a noir mystery with a love story and a spiritual fable.
Scenes slip between memory, dreams, and the present, so you’re never quite sure where the search is taking you. That uncertainty is part of the design. Turpin wants you to feel how grief scrambles time, and how the people we lose keep turning up in places they shouldn’t be.
Hardwicke gives Beau a tough outer shell, and the pleasure is watching it crack. Underneath is a tender, frightened young man who isn’t ready to lose anyone else.
Wolfe comes from musical theater, and he co-wrote the film’s songs with Turpin. The music is lovely, but it’s his acting that floored me. Tiny could have been a ghost on the edges of the story, and Wolfe makes him the person everyone orbits.
Jessica Reynolds is a standout as Shell, Beau’s roommate and best friend. (Every gay man has one.) She sticks by him for as long as she can. Eventually he convinces himself he has to push her away, and those scenes hurt. Reynolds plays Shell’s frustration and love at the same time, which makes being shut out of Beau’s life sting even more.
Turpin occasionally leans a little too hard into the dreaminess. With the whole cast playing at full emotional volume, the heaviness can feel oppressive at times, and there isn’t much light let in, not even from Rupert Everett as Maurice, the mother hen of this small group of discarded young men.
Even so, I keep coming back to how this film looks. The lighting, the way the camera moves, and the hazy, dreamlike production design carry a lot of the storytelling. They give the grief somewhere to live.
The emotion creeps up on you slowly. When it finally lands, it lands hard, and I walked out teary but grateful to have seen it. There’s more going on here than one viewing can hold, so I’d gladly go back for a second look. Strongly recommended.
Watched at home before the festival
Salvation
Director: Tom Nicoll
Starring: Liam Harkins, Stephen McMillan, Kathleen McDermott, Kevin O’Loughlin
A newly certified life coach in Scotland has charm to spare and no clients to show for it, and every attempt to get his business off the ground digs him deeper into debt and deeper into trouble.
At a lean 91 minutes, Tom Nicoll’s Salvation makes a sharp observation: misguided ambition doesn’t always come from ego. Sometimes it comes from a desperate need to matter.
Danny (Liam Harkins) is a freshly certified life coach in Scotland who can’t get his business off the ground. He’s good-looking, and he has charm to spare. What he doesn’t have is the hard-to-define spark that makes people want to follow you. He’s determined to find it anyway. Every attempt digs him deeper into debt and deeper into trouble. When he isn’t hustling for clients, he’s washing dishes at a restaurant to stay afloat. That gap between the confident guru Danny sells and the guy scraping plates in the back is where the film finds most of its bite.
This sits firmly in the cringe comedy camp, with a lot more cringe than comedy. It’s never a slog, though. Harkins is excellent as a guy who believes his own sales pitch right up until the moment he can’t.
Kathleen McDermott plays his mother, which threw me, since Harkins looks older than she does. The supporting player who stuck with me most is Stephen McMillan as Scott. His family is leaning hard on him to make something of his life. So he signs on as Danny’s client, hoping for a push in the right direction.
Danny is not the guy to give it to him. For a while, not much happens between them. Then Danny cooks up a scheme that might teach both men more than any coaching session could.
Nicoll wrote and directed, and his debut is smart, short, and not especially sweet. He’s poking at a whole culture of men coaching other men into battles with themselves.
The idea underneath is a great one. Nobody can sell you instinct, and no program can train you into being the right kind of person. That’s fascinating territory, and I wish Nicoll had pushed further into it. He sketches the surface, and then the mechanics of the plot take over before the ideas get room to breathe.
Still, this is a promising first feature with some real teeth. Harkins, in particular, deserves to be on a lot of casting directors’ radars after this. I’m curious to see what Nicoll does once he decides to sink those teeth all the way in.
Seen Sept. 10 · Scotiabank Theatre
Coward
Director: Lukas Dhont
Starring: Emmanuel Macchia, Valentin Campagne, Jonas Wertz, Jef Jacobs, Mathieu Carpentier
On the Belgian front in 1916, a young soldier meets a flamboyant comrade who makes no effort to hide who he is, and staging a theatrical revue together gives them an outlet to explore their desires.
I couldn’t have asked for a stronger start to the festival proper. Lukas Dhont’s Coward arrived in Toronto with a pile of Cannes honors, including a shared Best Actor prize for its two leads. It’s also Belgium’s Oscar submission, and after seeing it, none of that surprises me.
The year is 1916. Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia, in his first acting role) is serving on the Belgian front during World War I. There he meets Francis (Valentin Campagne), a flamboyant soldier who makes no effort to hide who he is. To fight back against the misery around them, the two men become involved in staging a theatrical revue that gives them an outlet to explore their desires.
We’ve all seen war movies told from just about every angle. What sets this one apart is its balance. Dhont gives equal weight to the fighting and to everything these men can’t say out loud between battles.
The romance between Pierre and Francis builds slowly, and Dhont gives it all the time it needs. Watching their bond take shape against the daily horror of the trenches is beautiful. It says a lot about what people will do to survive something unbearable.
Macchia and Campagne are extraordinary. They take the script and give it bold, physical life, and the attraction between them feels completely real. You can practically feel the heat coming off the screen. Neither actor plays it safe, and that fearlessness is exactly what these roles need.
The production is right there with them. Coward looks as good as any big-budget war epic, and it’s every bit as raw. Dhont refuses to look away from how fragile a young body is, or how much damage one bullet can do. Those moments hit even harder because we’ve spent so much time with these men laughing and rehearsing.
It’s a love story, a war picture, and a backstage drama all at once, and none of those threads gets shortchanged. Putting on a show means being seen, and at the front, being seen is its own kind of risk.
Between the acting and the setting, you’re pulled so completely into 1916 that you forget you’re sitting in a theater. Emotionally, it’s one of the strongest films I’ve seen at the festival.
Seen Sept. 10 · Scotiabank Theatre
Seventeen
Director: Justin Ducharme
Starring: Aalayna, Nizhonniya Austin, Taio Gélinas, Shannon Baker, Renae Morriseau, Kaniehtiio Horn
Over a single day in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, three Indigenous, queer sex workers race against a lost passport, a grieving family and an apartment deposit, leaning on each other instead of the systems meant to help them.
Every festival, there’s one film I know nothing about that happens to slot perfectly into a gap in my schedule. This year it was Seventeen, and I’m so glad I wandered in.
First-time feature director Justin Ducharme sets his story in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It’s a world away from the celebrity hangouts and big studio shoots the city is known for. Addiction and homelessness are part of daily life there, and plenty of people slip through the cracks. Some sell their bodies or drugs just to make it to tomorrow. Ducharme lived in that neighborhood, and it shows in how specific the film feels.
The movie follows three Indigenous, queer sex workers over the course of a day. Tamara (Nizhonniya Austin) has a matter of hours to find her lost passport before she’s sent back to the U.S. December (Aalayna) is trying to support her grieving family after her father’s death. Aiden (Taio Gélinas) needs to scrape together a deposit on an apartment, and fast.
None of them trusts the systems that are supposed to help, so they lean on each other instead. Ducharme drew on his own experience doing sex work after moving to Vancouver. He treats these friendships with real warmth and doesn’t want to subject his audience to a misery parade. He wants you to see three people who deserve love and support like anyone else.
For me, Aalayna is the standout. Their performance feels completely natural, and it has the kind of raw power a small indie like this depends on. You believe every choice December makes, even the ones you wish they wouldn’t.
The film does have rough edges. Working with less seasoned actors can cut against the realism Ducharme is going for. Every so often, a line comes out sounding recited instead of lived, and it pulls you out of the moment.
Those bumps are minor, though. For the most part, Seventeen is a confident debut with a lead performance in Aalayna worth remembering. It tells the truth about life on these streets without ever looking down on the people living it.
Seen Sept. 10 · TIFF Lightbox
Ken Russell’s The Devils
Director: Ken Russell
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Gemma Jones
In Ken Russell’s restored 1971 film, a powerful priest in 17th-century France becomes a target when the nuns of a nearby convent are swept up in claims of demonic possession, and church and state leaders seize the chance to crush him.
Before anything else, credit where it’s due. The Devils has a long, battered history of cuts and censorship, and it’s wonderful to see it restored to look and sound this good. This version comes much closer to what the late Ken Russell intended, and a director’s vision deserves that kind of respect.
The story comes from real events in 17th-century France. Father Grandier (Oliver Reed) is a priest whose power and appetites have earned him plenty of enemies. When the nuns of a nearby convent are swept up in claims of demonic possession, he becomes the target. Church and state leaders see a chance to crush him, and they grab it with both hands. What follows is a public spectacle of torture, hysteria, and political opportunism.
This was my first time seeing it, and I found it…overwhelming. Maybe that’s the point. We’re reminded that this all “really happened,” and the true story may have been even worse. But Russell cranks up the gore, nudity, sacrilege, and explicit acts so far that my stomach was churning.
Classic or not, I don’t feel any pull to revisit it after this first watch.
There’s still a lot to admire. Derek Jarman’s production design is stunning, with stark white walls that make every bit of chaos pop. The costumes are just as striking. Reed gives a fire-and-brimstone performance that owns every scene he’s in.
Then there’s Vanessa Redgrave as Sister Jeanne, the hunchbacked nun whose obsession with Grandier sets everything in motion. There’s something about her performance I found strangely thrilling. The character is so horrifying, though, that she ends up blending into the film’s larger parade of grotesque images.
It carries an NC-17 rating for good reason. The restoration is impressive on both the picture and the sound.
What it can’t do is scrub your brain once it’s over. Russell completists and fans of notorious cinema will want to see it this way. The film’s reputation is well earned, for better and for worse. If you’re a curious first-timer like me, go in knowing exactly what you’re signing up for.
Seen Sept. 10 · Royal Alexandra Theatre
Stuffed
Director: Theo Rhys
Starring: Jodie Comer & Harry Melling
A mortician and taxidermist who dreams of preserving a human body meets a lonely factory worker so afraid of being forgotten that he volunteers for the job, and their arrangement turns into a love story.
Loud and Clear score: 8/10
A taxidermist who wants to preserve a person meets a man willing to be preserved, and they sing about it. Theo Rhys makes the strangest premise at TIFF into a real musical with a real score, and Jodie Comer is extraordinary in it.
Seen Sept. 10 · Royal Alexandra Theatre
The Housewife
Director: Ben Shirinian
Starring: Naomi Watts, Tye Sheridan, Michael Imperioli, Luke Evans, Lena Olin, Debi Mazar
In 1964 Queens, an Austrian immigrant who has just become an American citizen sees her careful, comfortable life threatened when a young New York Times reporter gets a tip about her husband.
One word kept coming up from the stage at the world premiere of The Housewife. Nearly everyone who spoke described Naomi Watts as “formidable,” and for once, the compliment fits.
Watts (also at the fest with Closing Night) plays an Austrian immigrant living in Queens in 1964. She’s just earned her American citizenship, and she’s built a careful, comfortable life. Then a young New York Times reporter, played by Tye Sheridan, gets a tip about her husband. If it’s true, his story could bring down everything she’s worked so hard to hold together.
It’s a film about how the past refuses to stay buried, no matter how nicely you’ve decorated the house built on top of it.
That tip is only the beginning of what Alyssa Hill’s screenplay has up its sleeve. Sheridan’s reporter gets closer to the wife than he probably should. The closer he gets, the murkier his investigation becomes. I’ll leave the rest for you to discover.
The script drifts into melodrama now and then, especially once the secrets start stacking up. The performances keep it barreling forward anyway. This is the kind of film where every line gets delivered in exactly the right tone, with exactly the right amount of conviction.
Michael Imperioli, Luke Evans, and Debi Mazar fill out the supporting cast. And I’m giving bonus points for a Lena Olin appearance. She still doesn’t seem to age, and she makes every minute of screen time count.
Mostly, though, this is Watts’s show. Her character has spent years controlling how the world sees her, and Watts lets you watch the effort it takes. When that control starts to slip, you can’t take your eyes off her.
The 1960s setting is handsomely done, too. It gives the story a buttoned-up surface that makes the cracks underneath all the more unsettling.
You’ll walk out satisfied. You’ll probably also walk out wondering, yet again, why Watts doesn’t get talked about more. She’s one of the most overlooked actresses working today, and she can play just about anything you put in front of her.
Seen Sept. 10 · Royal Alexandra Theatre
RIVER
Director: Joshua Giuliano
Starring: Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe, Max Mattern, Dane DiLiegro
Three estranged siblings take their late father’s boat downriver to scatter his ashes, and when the motor dies miles from help they spend the night hunted by a masked stranger who wants nothing from them but their lives.
Loud and Clear score: 9/10
Joshua Giuliano strips the slasher down to three ingredients and nails all of them: siblings worth worrying about, a location worth filming, and a killer with no motive and no off switch. Midnight Madness opened on a white-knuckle banger. There’s a reason this came into the festival with two indie distributors but left with a major studio buying it from them for millions. You’ll see why soon!
Seen Sept. 11 · TIFF Lightbox
A Long Winter
Director: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Fred Hechinger, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Caitríona Balfe, Kit Connor, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
In early-1950s Colorado, the secrets buried in a fractured family keep a sensitive young man and his stoic father from healing, in Andrew Haigh’s adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s novella.
Andrew Haigh made his name with intimate queer stories like Weekend and All of Us Strangers. A Long Winter shifts his focus in a subtle but meaningful way. Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s aching novella, it’s a more ambiguous portrait of a fractured family, and the secrets that keep it from healing.
Haigh moves the story from the mountains of Spain to Colorado in the early 1950s. That change hands him a different brand of masculinity to take apart. Once again, he’s found a near-perfect cast to help him do it, with Kit Connor and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai rounding out the ensemble.
Fred Hechinger plays Mike, a curious, open, sensitive young man. If anyone still had doubts about Hechinger’s rising star, this performance should settle them.
Mike is everything his father can’t let himself be. That’s Lester, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach (also at the fest with The Man I Love), a stoic man who keeps his feelings buried as deep as the snow outside.
When Mike’s mother (a terrific Caitríona Balfe) disappears, his need to find her grows more and more desperate.
Vulnerability runs all through the film. Sometimes it’s as plain as Moss-Bachrach’s casual full-frontal nudity. Other times it’s written across Hechinger’s face as the search wears him down. Moss-Bachrach works in the opposite direction. Lester keeps everything locked up, and you can feel what it costs him to stay that way.
The real star, though, is André Turpin’s cinematography. Alberta, Canada, stands in for the Rockies, and the landscapes are breathtaking. There’s hardly a frame out of place, and that precision makes the whole film richer.
Those wide, empty spaces also do a lot of emotional work. The family has nowhere to hide from one another, and nowhere to escape the thing none of them will say.
It’s another deeply moving film from Haigh, whose filmography still doesn’t have a misstep in it. If you’ve followed his work this far, you’re in very good hands. If you haven’t, this is as good a place as any to start.
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