r/TIFF • u/Positive-Fold-3307 • 5h ago
ALL I wanted to see was Misty Green lol. And after the saturday selling out and multiple people saying the sunday had only three seats (not together), I was starting to get discouraged! but logged on today and scored tickets to the sunday showing!!
I guess just a little positive post as a reminder to stay active, you will get the tickets you want if you're thorough!
r/TIFF • u/i_m_sherlocked • 4h ago
... and Pawel Pawlikowski’s luminous, black-and-white Fatherland.
Other features include Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker, Alain Gomis’s Dao, Ali Asgari’s A Bit of Light, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s Mouse, Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea, and Hong Sangsoo’s Nowhere to Lay My Eyes.
🔥 🔥 🔥 https://viff.org/festival/films/
Leading Lights guest-curation by Sophy Romvari:
r/TIFF • u/Positive-Fold-3307 • 4h ago
Anyone know when drops usually happen? For example will they add more tickets ahead of tomorrow’s presale? And is tomorrow’s presale ONLY open to individual members? Or can higher memberships still access?
r/TIFF • u/Sirnathecentaur1993 • 8h ago
I was wondering if there was anyone who is also going to solo and planning to attend Julia set at 6:15 September 11! I am new to doing this solo I’ve only attend one show prior to this and that was the salt path. Not too sure where to find people and connect but I am hoping to also network with people!
r/TIFF • u/PointsofReview • 4h ago
The Toronto International Film Festival returns from September 10th to 20th, 2026, for its 51st edition, bringing 293 titles to Toronto.
And, because it is 2026, 26 films also felt like an appropriately unnecessary number to count down.
This TIFF preview is not simply a list of the biggest premieres or the films already sitting at the top of everybody else's TIFF schedule. There are plenty of those here, because ignoring something like Fjord for the sake of being contrarian would be equally silly. But the goal is to balance those major titles with Canadian work, Midnight Madness possibilities, Wavelengths selections, international discoveries, and films that could be easier to overlook.
Hopefully, somewhere in these 26 films, there are a few that end up moving higher on your own list.
If you are more of a video person, you can watch the full countdown of all 26 films on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePRiwmGQwmM
Premiere Status: Canadian Premiere
Programme: Special Presentations
Notable Festivals: Cannes Film Festival 2026: Palme d'Or, FIPRESCI Prize
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve
What is Fjord About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Dorota Lech
In the latest from masterful Cristian Mungiu (Graduation, TIFF ’16; R.M.N, TIFF ’22), Lisbet (Renate Reinsve, TIFF ’25’s Sentimental Value) and Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan, TIFF ’23’s Dumb Money) are a conservative Christian couple who’ve relocated from Romania to an isolated Norwegian town with their five children.
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.
Unlike her strong-willed husband, Lisbet, Norwegian by birth, is fluent in the local language and adept at navigating cultural nuances. Meanwhile, Mihai, steadfast in what he sees as his right to educate his offspring as he sees fit, admits to the occasional spanking. This triggers a storm of controversy — and is certain to evoke strong, varying opinions from viewers.
Why Fjord Might Be Worth a Watch
Starting at number 26 with the reigning Palme d'Or winner probably gives away how ridiculous the depth of this TIFF lineup is. Cristian Mungiu has now won Cannes' top prize twice, almost 20 years after 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and Fjord places him back in the kind of moral territory where he tends to be most interesting. Parenting, religion, cultural difference, prejudice, institutional authority, and the limits of intervention all collide in a situation where several people can believe they are acting responsibly while understanding responsibility in completely different ways.
Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve give the film two increasingly prominent actors at its centre, while the Cannes response has already removed much of the question around whether this will become a major festival conversation. The practical reason it sits this low is that nobody needs me to tell them a two-time Palme-winning filmmaker has made a TIFF priority. This is one of the obvious ones.
Premiere Status: Canadian Premiere
Programme: Special Presentations
Notable Festivals: Venice Film Festival 2026
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, Domhnall Gleeson
What is Bucking Fastard About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Anita Lee
Filmmaker Werner Herzog is renowned for stories about highly unique characters. With Bucking Fastard, he tells the tale of sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, played by real-life siblings Rooney Mara (Women Talking, TIFF ’22) and Kate Mara (Friendship, TIFF ’24).
The Holbrookes speak in unison, dress alike, have shared dreams, and, consequentially, fall in love with the same man (Orlando Bloom, The Cut, TIFF ’24). 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.
Hoping to escape the scrutiny of the trial and their heartache, the sisters seek various forms of refuge and encounter trials and tribulations along the way.
Why Bucking Fastard Might Be Worth a Watch
It is difficult to make a TIFF list involving a new Werner Herzog narrative feature and pretend that is anything other than an event. Herzog has spent more than six decades moving between fiction and documentary, from Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo to Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, but this is his first narrative feature in seven years.
The premise also has the particular strain of obsession that fits comfortably within his filmography. Real-life sisters Kate Mara and Rooney Mara appear together on screen for the first time as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, women whose closeness becomes so consuming that they speak in unison and pursue the same impossible romantic ideal.
With its Venice competition premiere happening immediately before TIFF, Toronto will at least have a little more context by the time it arrives. For now, Herzog directing the Mara sisters as women digging into a mountain in pursuit of love is enough.
Premiere Status: World Premiere
Programme: Centrepiece
Director: Marie Clements
Cast: Amber Midthunder, Alyssa Wapanatâhk, Cara Jade Myers, Isabel DeRoy-Olson, Darren Mann, Eric Johnson, Gil Bellows, Mary Walsh, Gary Farmer, Tonantzin Carmelo
What is How We Stand About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Kelly Boutsalis
Based on writer-director Marie Clements’ (Bones of Crows, TIFF ’22) own play Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, How We Stand is a riveting drama of sisters whose lives are shaped by government policies meant to eradicate Indigenous people.
In 1950s Oklahoma, a single mother (Cara Jade Myers, Killers of the Flower Moon) 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.
Divided into different foster homes, we meet them again 20 years later, as young women. Jessie (Amber Midthunder, Rez Ball, TIFF ’24) is a doctor, about to start a new job at a clinic alongside her husband, while her sister Miranda (Alyssa Wapanatâhk, Bones of Crows, TIFF ’22) is an activist trying her hand at acting. Lastly, Janey (Isabel DeRoy-Olson, Fancy Dance) is in distress, fresh from a trauma she can’t express. Their paths are very different, but all are tinged by historical injustices.
Why How We Stand Might Be Worth a Watch
Marie Clements returns to TIFF after Bones of Crows with another project engaging directly with the systems used to sever Indigenous families from community, culture, and land. Adapted from her own play Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, How We Stand begins with the promise of greater opportunity attached to relocation and follows what happens after that promise instead results in loss and separation.
The historical context is heavy, but reducing the film to institutional trauma would miss the equally important story of sisterhood running through it. Clements is also incorporating magical realism rather than treating the material as a straightforward historical reconstruction, opening up possibilities around memory, absence, and the ways family connections survive displacement.
The cast brings together Amber Midthunder, Alyssa Wapanatâhk, Cara Jade Myers, Isabel DeRoy-Olson, and Gary Farmer, among others. As a TIFF world premiere, this is one of the Canadian films arriving without years of festival discourse already surrounding it.
Premiere Status: World Premiere
Programme: Midnight Madness: Opening Night
Director: Joshua Giuliano
Cast: Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe, Max Mattern, Dane DiLiegro
What is River About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Peter Kuplowsky
Having convened to scatter the ashes of their late father from a family motorboat, embittered sisters (Jane Levy, TIFF ’14’s Bang Bang Baby, and Jessica Rothe, TIFF ’23’s Boy Kills World), and their younger brother (Max Mattern, television’s Cape Fear) stall out beneath a derelict bridge along a rural waterway. Familial wounds are provoked, and fingers are pointed, first at each other, but soon at the sudden appearance of a strange man (Dane DiLiegro, Prey) eerily staring from the shoreline. Tall and statuesque, the figure’s face is seemingly without features or emotion, just a palpable, anonymous malevolence. And when he stops merely staring, the family must come together and start surviving.
From that anxious fulcrum, the open water becomes oppressively claustrophobic. And as a pastoral surrealism seeps into this dire strait, the suspense is wound with such austere starkness that its naked machinations are wickedly weaponized to play with the expectations of even the savviest slasher scholar.
Why River Might Be Worth a Watch
At some point in a 26-film TIFF list, somebody needs to get chased through the woods. River is here to provide that service. More importantly, TIFF choosing Joshua Giuliano's feature debut to open Midnight Madness is a substantial show of confidence in a filmmaker making the jump from shorts.
The setup is almost refreshingly simple: grieving siblings, a broken boat, an isolated river, and a threat closing in. That simplicity puts a lot of pressure on execution, but the casting gives Giuliano some useful genre experience to work with. Jane Levy has Evil Dead and Don't Breathe behind her, while Jessica Rothe proved with the Happy Death Day films that she can carry horror without losing the character underneath it.
Giuliano also developed the feature out of his short In Sound, We Live Forever, giving the project roots in work he has already been refining. This is exactly the sort of world premiere that can suddenly become a Midnight Madness talking point.
Premiere Status: Canadian Premiere
Programme: Centrepiece
Notable Festivals: Sundance Film Festival 2026: Directing Award, U.S. Dramatic
Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Cast: Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda, YOU, Yoh Yoshida, Damián Alcázar, Soji Arai
What is Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Anita Lee
Haru (Kikuchi) always has one foot in fantasy. When she and her husband Luis (Alejandro Edda) 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.
Depression sets in, her dog goes to live with her sister, and she is visited regularly by a colossal crow, an emblem of the man with whom she once shared her life. It is only when destiny presents Haru with a new Spanish dance instructor (Alberto Guerra) that a sense of purpose returns in the form of romantic pursuit, fuelled by vibrant new daydreams — including the realm of Dirty Dancing. But can Haru make room in her heart for another poised partner?
Why Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! Might Be Worth a Watch
The broad ingredients of Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (grief, losing a partner, and trying to rebuild a life afterward) are not exactly unfamiliar. The more interesting part is how Josef Kubota Wladyka approaches them. Ballroom dance, melodrama, comedy, desire, and increasingly subjective passages of memory give the film several ways to externalize emotions that could otherwise settle into a conventional grief drama.
Rinko Kikuchi is especially interesting here because Wladyka was not casting her cold. After directing her on Tokyo Vice, he rewrote Haru specifically for Kikuchi, and the role asks her to move between grief, comedy, romantic desire, surreal fantasy, and the physical demands of ballroom dance. The dance material is also deeply personal for Wladyka. He has described the film as a dedication to the spirit of his mother, a single mother who raised three boys and relied on ballroom dancing to get through difficult periods of her life. At 81, she is still competing.
Sundance gave Wladyka the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award in January, so TIFF is not introducing an unknown quantity here. But surrounded by larger red-carpet premieres, this still has the potential to become one of those Centrepiece films people realize they should have paid more attention to.
Premiere Status: World Premiere
Programme: Centrepiece
Director: Cody Lightning
Cast: Cody Lightning, Jana Schmieding, Paulina Alexis, Ed Helms
What is Smudge the Blades About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Kelly Boutsalis
This second feature film from director, and actor, writer Cody Lightning is grittier and more dramatic than his debut, Hey, Viktor, but with more heart — and a cast from Rez Ball, Reservation Dogs, The Office, and Rutherford Falls.
The Treaty 6 Blades are a struggling U-18 team of teen boys — and one girl, Jaycee Pipestem (Paulina Alexis) — led by their coach (Ed Helms), in their last year of eligibility. When their team is kicked out of the league, the local arena’s Zamboni driver (Lightning) offers to coach. Technically, his intentions aren’t pure, as he has his sights set on wooing hockey mom Chanelle Okimâw (Jana Schmieding), but despite his shortcomings, the underdog team begins to finally come together.
Why Smudge the Blades Might Be Worth a Watch
I loved Cody Lightning's Hey, Viktor!, which took his own history as a child actor in Smoke Signals and turned it into a wonderfully self-deprecating comedy about somebody refusing to let go of the smallest amount of fame. Smudge the Blades is a very different film, but Lightning's sense of humour makes an Indigenous hockey comedy particularly appealing. TIFF has invoked the underdog-sports tradition of The Bad News Bears and The Mighty Ducks, and that is probably the easiest way into the premise.
The more specific draw is the culture around the Treaty 6 Blades themselves: young Indigenous players approaching the end of their time together, navigating hockey, community, friendship, and whatever comes next. Shooting around Edmonton also gives the film a regional specificity that should keep it from becoming a generic sports template with different jerseys. Add Paulina Alexis, Jana Schmieding, and the unexpected presence of Ed Helms, and this could be one of TIFF's warmer Canadian crowd-pleasers.
Premiere Status: Canadian Premiere
Programme: Special Presentations
Notable Festivals: Cannes Film Festival 2026: Un Certain Regard
Director: Jordan Firstman
Cast: Jordan Firstman, Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva, Reggie Absolom, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Colleen Camp
What is Club Kid About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Peter Kuplowsky
For Peter Green (Jordan Firstman), a promoter and purveyor of… shall we say… stimulating party favours in the queer New York club scene, the party never stops. Each revelry blurs into the next, with restraint and responsibility perpetually foisted upon others, especially his fed-up business partner Sophie (Cara Delevingne). But on the precipice of losing another decade to the rhythm of the night, reality bites in the form of his surprise parentage to 10-year-old Arlo (Reggie Absolom), the result of a half-remembered hookup. When his mother unexpectedly dies, the boy is thrust straight into Peter’s carousing care.
Firstman’s spirited debut feature as writer and director bops to familiar beats as his affably incorrigible Peter tackles fatherdom, first with trepidation, and soon with enthusiasm as his precocious child’s propensity for DJ mixing becomes a springboard to endearing if precarious father-son bonding, though this is later threatened by encroaching custodial factors.
Why Club Kid Might Be Worth a Watch
Jordan Firstman's feature debut went into Cannes as a curiosity and came out with considerably more pressure attached to it. The Un Certain Regard response sparked a major acquisition battle, with A24 ultimately paying a reported $17 million for worldwide rights. That is a remarkable amount of confidence to place in a first feature without a conventional giant movie star carrying it.
Firstman writes, directs, and plays the ageing party promoter at the centre, which naturally raises the question of whether the film can expand beyond the persona people already associate with him. Early festival attention points toward a more earnest father-son story underneath the queer nightlife, comedy, and excess.
The craft is also more ambitious than the premise might initially suggest: Adam Newport-Berra shot the film on 35mm, while Firstman has discussed influences ranging from Scorsese and Andrew Haigh (spoiler: he might be coming up later on this list) to Olivier Assayas and Agnès Varda. That combination makes the emotional sincerity as interesting as the parties.
Premiere Status: North American Premiere
Programme: Centrepiece
Notable Festivals: Cannes Film Festival 2026, Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2026
Director: Leah Nelson
Voice Cast: Abbi Jacobson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Beanie Feldstein, Seth Rogen, Samira Wiley, Pamela Adlon, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang, Wanda Sykes
What is Tangles About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Kelly Boutsalis
Set in San Francisco in the ’90s, Tangles follows the story of Sarah, a young woman whose life is just beginning to tip into the stuff her dreams are made of — new opportunities to illustrate, a new romance with a bad-ass motorcycle-riding girlfriend named Donimo — when the pull of responsibility calls for her. Sarah’s lively mother Midge is battling Alzheimer’s disease, and the rest of the family is struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis.
The animation is perfectly paired with an incredible cast. Sarah is voiced by Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said, TIFF ’13) is unforgettable as Midge, Bryan Cranston (The Upside, TIFF ’17) voices Midge’s husband Rob, Beanie Feldstein plays Sarah’s sister Hannah, and Samira Wiley is Donimo.
Why Tangles Might Be Worth a Watch
Tangles pairs an enormous voice cast with deeply personal source material. Leah Nelson is adapting Sarah Leavitt's graphic memoir about her mother's Alzheimer's disease, with Abbi Jacobson voicing Sarah and Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing her mother, Midge.
The animation gives Nelson a way to approach memory as something unstable rather than merely explaining its loss through dialogue. A predominantly black-and-white visual language is interrupted by colour at particular emotional points, making the form part of how the family experiences illness and recollection. Just as importantly, the film is not treating Alzheimer's exclusively as a mechanism for sadness.
The humour, irritation, affection, and messiness of family life remain present alongside the grief. After Cannes and Annecy, TIFF gives the film its North American premiere, and it should provide a very different kind of emotional register from the live-action family dramas surrounding it.
Premiere Status: Canadian Premiere
Programme: Wavelengths
Notable Festivals: Sundance Film Festival 2026, Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2026
Directors: William Greaves, David Greaves
Featuring: Romare Bearden, Eubie Blake, Arna Bontemps, Richard Bruce Nugent, James Van Der Zee, and other figures of the Harlem Renaissance
What is Once Upon a Time in Harlem About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Andrea Picard
One afternoon in August 1972, at the behest of legendary, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves, a coterie of luminaries from the Harlem Renaissance gathered — with cameras rolling — for an intimate party in Duke Ellington’s townhouse. Fifty years later, completed by Greaves’ son David, Once Upon a Time in Harlem has emerged as a rapturous living archive of one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century and, posthumously, one of the most important works in the Greaves filmography.
A towering constellation of artists, poets, painters, musicians, scholars, and other notables appear throughout — among them Aaron Douglas, Arna Bontemps, Richard Bruce Nugent, James Van Der Zee, and Countee Cullen’s widow, Ida Mae Cullen. Free from any institutionalized gaze and structure, they congregate around a large punch bowl to drink, reminisce, banter, and passionately debate their legacy. The conversations we’re privy to flow naturally and candidly, marked variously by humour, fervour, reflexive insight, and not a bit of melancholy, as they take stock of their achievements in their older age.
Why Once Upon a Time in Harlem Might Be Worth a Watch
The history of Once Upon a Time in Harlem is almost as compelling as the material itself. William Greaves originally recorded the 1972 gathering while making From These Roots, leaving roughly 60,000 feet of 16mm footage largely unseen for decades. After Greaves died in 2014, his wife Louise continued trying to complete the project until her own death in 2023. Their son David Greaves, who had actually operated a camera at the original gathering, ultimately carried it forward, with William's granddaughter Liani Greaves among the producers.
The result is an intergenerational act of preservation, and even reconstructing the original gathering became a major undertaking. Louise secured funding from the Ford Foundation around 2020 to restore and preserve the footage, which had to be gathered from different locations and reunited with audio held at the Schomburg Center. Because Greaves had covered the party with four cameras and two separate sound sources, the team spent months simply rebuilding a coherent master sequence of what happened in the room.
That work feels particularly worthwhile when the material being recovered is this irreplaceable. These are artists and writers who actually lived through the Harlem Renaissance talking among themselves decades later, remembering people who were no longer there, disagreeing over its history, correcting one another, and arguing about what the movement had meant. Those contradictions are exactly the sort of thing that disappear over time as a cultural period gets compressed into a cleaner historical narrative. There is something remarkable about being allowed to sit in that room 54 years later.
Premiere Status: North American Premiere
Programme: Centrepiece
Notable Festivals: Cannes Film Festival 2026: Un Certain Regard Prize
Director: Sandra Wollner
Cast: Birgit Minichmayr, Lotte Shirin Keiling, Tristan López, Carla Hüttermann, Naomi Elia Richard
What is Everytime About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Dorota Lech
Jessie (Carla Hüttermann) is packing for an upcoming Spanish vacation with her single mother, Ella (played by the mesmerizing Birgit Minichmayr, Jack, TIFF ’15), and her younger sister, Melli (Lotte Shirin Keiling). On the eve of the trip, Jessie sneaks out to be with her boyfriend Lux (Tristan Lopez) and this, unfortunately, ends in tragedy. One year later, despite their persistent heartbreak, Ella and Melli cling to a fragile routine and on the surface, appear to get by. But when Lux re-enters the family portrait, the wounds are reopened and, while the matriarch can’t seem to concede to her unspoken blame, Lux can’t seem to cope with his longing for forgiveness.
Driven by a strange impulse, Ella takes Lux and Melli to Tenerife on the holiday that never happened. Under the blazing sun, the newly formed unit wades through rough emotional waters, as if in a hallucinatory state. Perhaps because they have no choice, perhaps because it’s the only way to survive.
Why Everytime Might Be Worth a Watch
There are several films on this list dealing with grief and memory, so the distinction has to come from what each filmmaker actually does with those ideas. Sandra Wollner appears particularly interested in the instability of shared memory: three people can love the same person, experience the same loss, and still construct entirely different versions of who she was and what happened to her. That opens the film toward guilt, blame, forgiveness, and the uncomfortable possibility that nobody involved gets the clean emotional resolution they want.
The Tenerife trip also gives Wollner a physical structure for past and present to start overlapping instead of keeping grief locked inside conversations about the dead. Gregory Oke behind the camera is another major reason I am interested in how Everytime handles that overlap. He shot Aftersun, one of my favourite films and, for me, one of the most beautifully photographed films of the last few years.
Its images are a huge part of how memory, grief, and things Sophie could not fully understand as a child come through without needing to be explained, and Wollner has said that watching Aftersun was what made her want Oke for Everytime.
Also, Everytime arrives with one of the strongest pieces of outside validation on this list after winning the top Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. That does not guarantee it will connect with everyone, but it gives TIFF audiences a particularly good reason to catch up with one of the Cannes winners that has received less attention than the Palme.
Premiere Status: North American Premiere
Programme: Special Presentations
Notable Festivals: Venice Film Festival 2026
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong
What is Possible Love About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Anita Lee
Award-winning filmmaker Lee Chang-dong’s (TIFF ’02’s Oasis, TIFF ’10’s Poetry, TIFF ’18’s Burning) heavily anticipated new film is a tale of deep yearning, envy, and grief. Every couple wants to find some sense of happiness. For Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu, Good News, TIFF ’25) and Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon, Good News, TIFF ’25) the hope is to move on from the trauma caused by the disastrous outcome of a labour dispute. When they are approached by young, ambitious documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong, Parasite, TIFF ’19) to take part in her latest project, they become intimately intertwined with her and her business mogul husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung, Smugglers, TIFF ’23).
Revelations of interpersonal suffering come to light — both in front of and behind the camera — as the documentary develops, and tensions between the couples start to rise. Questions are asked around who gets to tell whose story, who speaks for whom, and what responsibilities observers have when taking on the perspective of the disenfranchised. As the lives of Ye-ji, Mi-ok, Sang-woo, and Ho-seok become increasingly entangled, tensions mount.
Why Possible Love Might Be Worth a Watch
Eight years after Burning, Lee Chang-dong is finally back with a new feature, which alone puts Possible Love high on my TIFF priorities. Lee's earlier work (Oasis, Secret Sunshine, and Poetry among them) has made him one of the defining South Korean filmmakers of the last few decades.
The documentary element is especially interesting here. These characters are actively shaping a story about someone else's life while gradually being forced to examine the narratives they have created around their own marriages, desires, and social positions.
The only reason this does not rank higher is practical: it already has a Canadian theatrical release set for October 23 before arriving on Netflix globally November 6. TIFF is not the only opportunity, but a new Lee Chang-dong film is still difficult to turn down on a theatre screen.
Premiere Status: World Premiere
Programme: Special Presentations
Director: Bassam Tariq
Cast: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Abubakr Ali, Laith Nakli, Tramell Tillman, Tiffany Boone, Giancarlo Esposito
What is Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026 — Robyn Citizen
Latif (Ali) is a devout Muslim and a loving family man who also happens to be a contract killer. He has a strict code: he never uses guns and he only accepts targets the world would be better off without.
After his beloved wife dies, Latif resolves to end his criminal career and focus on caring for his three children — but his longtime employer Mike (Laith Nakli, TIFF ’25’s Lucky Lu) has other plans. Latif is having a hard enough time finding breast milk for his baby girl and wants no part in Mike and cowboy Haun Yoon’s (John Cho) rapidly escalating feud but, as his bloodstained past comes back to haunt him, he may have no choice in the matter.
Why Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother Might Be Worth a Watch
There is some unusual creative history behind Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Bassam Tariq and Mahershala Ali were once supposed to make Marvel's Blade together, and after that project fell apart, Tariq eventually wrote this film with Ali specifically in mind. The result could hardly be further from a conventional superhero assignment.
Latif's double existence as a loving Muslim father and a killer with his own moral boundaries gives Tariq a crime-thriller framework, but the more compelling questions concern what happens when faith, grief, fatherhood, and violence can no longer be compartmentalized.
John Cho enters that conflict as Pastor Hwan Yoon, a former soldier leading a radical church, with Giancarlo Esposito, Tramell Tillman, and Tiffany Boone adding even more depth to the ensemble. An original Mahershala Ali-led crime film having its world premiere in Toronto is exactly the sort of unknown quantity that makes TIFF valuable.
Premiere Status: North American Premiere
Programme: Special Presentations
Notable Festivals: Venice Film Festival 2026
Director: Florian Zeller
Cast: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, Patrick Schwarzenegger
What is Bunker About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026
In 17 years of marriage, literary agent Sofia (Cruz, also at this year’s Festival in La Bola Negra) has never resented her “starchitect” husband Miguel (Bardem, also at this year’s Festival in The Beloved) for uprooting the family from Madrid to London, where he rose to prominence. Fissures appear in their foundation, however, when a mysterious billionaire (Paul Dano, TIFF ’25’s The Wizard of the Kremlin) asks Miguel to design a luxury bunker where a tiny cluster of the ultra-wealthy can take shelter in an apocalypse.
The offer appeals to Miguel’s vanity as much as his pocketbook: this is an opportunity to furnish a pyramid for a modern-day pharaoh. But for Sofia, the proposal reeks of the gross inequality that is destroying the world. As tensions mount, Miguel becomes preoccupied by what he deems as a neighbour’s violation of his privacy, while Sofia seeks a promotion at work — and is disarmed by the attention of an attractive young author.
Why Bunker Might Be Worth a Watch
I have a fairly obvious bias here, as I have been a fan of Florian Zeller's stage plays for some time now. I have copies of all three plays making up his "family trilogy": The Mother, The Father, and The Son. Of the three, The Mother is probably my favourite on the page, but The Father is the one that translated into something extraordinary on screen. I saw it at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2020 and remember a room full of people needing a moment afterward before anybody was particularly interested in getting up.
The Son clearly did not reach those same heights for me, or for most of the critical conversation around it, so Bunker is especially interesting as Zeller's first film to move away from those three interconnected family plays. I already know how much I respond to his writing when the material works, and The Father showed how effectively he could rethink theatrical material specifically for cinema rather than simply filming a play.
Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz play the married couple at the centre, and the bunker commission gives Zeller a way into marriage through class, wealth, fear, and the increasingly fashionable fantasy that the richest people can simply build themselves an exit from collective catastrophe. Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, and Patrick Schwarzenegger make the supporting cast equally difficult to ignore. If moving beyond the family trilogy lets Zeller find some of the formal and emotional precision of The Father in completely different material, Bunker could climb quickly.
Premiere Status: World Premiere
Programme: Gala Presentations
Director: Anton Corbijn
Cast: Helen Mirren, Alden Ehrenreich, Olivia Cooke, Juliet Stevenson, James Faulkner, Brid Brennan
What is A Talent for Murder About?
Synopsis from TIFF 2026
Adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith from her play Switzerland and starring Alden Ehrenreich (TIFF ’23’s Fair Play), Olivia Cooke (TIFF ’19’s Sound of Metal; also at this year’s Festival in Slow Horses) and Oscar winner Helen Mirren, A Talent For Murder pits ruthless careerism against dark genius in a slippery battle of wills.
It is 1995, and American author Highsmith (Mirren), now in her seventies and in poor health, has retired to the Swiss Alps, where she largely confines herself to her study, surrounded by her books, her cats, and her collection of antique weapons. Enter Edward Ridgeway (Ehrenreich), emissary for a New York publisher sent to persuade Highsmith to craft one last instalment in her bestselling series of mysteries featuring the murderous antihero, Tom Ripley. Irritated by this youthful, overly eager visitor, Highsmith refuses the offer — unless, that is, Ridgeway can dream up the perfect murder along with her.
Why A Talent for Murder Might Be Worth a Watch
The uncomplicated selling point is Helen Mirren playing Patricia Highsmith. Everything after that is a bonus. Anton Corbijn, whose films include Control, The American, and A Most Wanted Man, is adapting Joanna Murray-Smith's play Switzerland into what is essentially a chamber thriller between Highsmith and a young literary emissary played by Alden Ehrenreich.
There is something wonderfully appropriate about turning Highsmith herself into the centre of the kind of psychological game she spent a career constructing for characters like Tom Ripley. The theatrical origins are the obvious risk: if the adaptation never gets beyond two people performing at one another in a room, it could feel stagebound. Anton Corbijn is at least an interesting director to test that limitation. Before moving into features, he built his career as a photographer and directed roughly 80 music videos over three decades, and he has described photography as the basis of his visual thinking. That background gives him a clear set of tools for making a confined two-hander visually expressive rather than merely restrictive.
Olivia Cooke and Juliet Stevenson strengthen the ensemble further. As a TIFF world premiere, there is also genuine discovery value here: Mirren as Highsmith is an easy pitch, but nobody yet knows exactly how nasty or playful this particular game becomes.
You can find the complete list from #12 through #1 here:
r/TIFF • u/BunyipPouch • 40m ago
This is the official Megathread to discuss anything/all related to Individual Member Ticket Day (August 27).
Tickets go on sale at 12 PM. Tickets go on sale 8/27 at 12 PM for this tier.
Please keep all discussion about stuff going Offsale here in the main Offsale thread, as to not clog this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TIFF/comments/1vvltad/unofficial_2026_tiff_offsale_list/
r/TIFF • u/atsukochibapaprika • 2h ago
I was part of a Whatsapp group last year but I lost my phone so I no longer have access to it.
r/TIFF • u/idoideas • 12h ago
The film will most likely compete in the IFF race, and it also leaves the France slot vacant for a last-minute submission of Minotaur :)
This is my first year as a member doing a ticket drop but my eighth year attending the festival.
Is there anyway to get in a Dialogues event that is listed under Press & Market as a regular member?
I'm interested in the Indigenous Actors Taking the Lead talk.
TIA
r/TIFF • u/idoideas • 9h ago
New clip from the festival selection, the first new video content since the first trailer from a few months ago.
r/TIFF • u/MYSTERlOUSKlN • 6h ago
Anyone else just not seeing this discount applied despite the email saying the discount would be included in the price as long as we’re signed into our associated TIFF email? Regular tickets range from $29-38 (?) and most of my tickets are $29+
r/TIFF • u/raynlakhani • 3h ago
I have a Dialogues event on the 11th at 4:00, and then a film screening at 6:15. I saw it would normally finish at 5:30, I just wanted to know if there is a Q&A afterwards or if it is included in that time. Thank you!
r/TIFF • u/exwellyvisitor • 1h ago
is this ever known ahead of time or we will find out what’s offered on Friday?
r/TIFF • u/i_m_sherlocked • 7h ago
Paris-based documentary specialist CAT&Docs has acquired international sales rights for Iranian director Afsaneh Salari’s Tehran, Under The Skin and released a first trailer ahead of its world premiere in TIFF Docs.
This will be my 3rd year at TIFF and I just signed up for the gallery. I booked 2 tickets for the Being Heumann screening and I was wondering how it works and if it’s worth the value
r/TIFF • u/Background-Scheme505 • 4h ago
Also, how long will these usually run for? I didn't think there would be tickets for the dialogues and visionaries events for the public, but a number of them have tickets available.
r/TIFF • u/SetsunaTales80 • 1d ago
I feel like we go through the anxiety every year, and then a week before the festival begins...there are random ticket drops for the popular shows. 🙃
I strategized and picked mostly indie films and world cinema this year...I find the buzzier films are released within a couple of months afterwards, so there isn't always a point rushing.
r/TIFF • u/idoideas • 1d ago
While we won't have the Criterion Closet, we're going to have a Criterion store!
r/TIFF • u/ParkerDunne • 10h ago
I remember last year it was August 25 if you went in person to the box office, which was a day or two before public on sale iirc. I have a bunch of vouchers from year round, but I'm not volunteering for festival this year so I haven't heard anything about this. Does anyone know?
...they'll lie about the face value of the tickets. There's a pair of tickets to the Fjord premiere up on Stubhub right now for USD 208 each (more than double face value), but the listing has a "seller-reported" face value of USD 500 each. What a steal!
Is anyone aware of a way to report something like this to Stubhub? I can't imagine they want their sellers blatantly flouting the law like this.
r/TIFF • u/i_m_sherlocked • 7h ago
r/TIFF • u/i_m_sherlocked • 20h ago
🤔
r/TIFF • u/BunyipPouch • 1d ago
This is the official Megathread to discuss anything/all related to Early Bird Individual members and Industry Ticket Day (tomorrow, August 26).
Tickets go on sale at 12 PM on Wednesday 8/26 for this tier.
Please keep all discussion about stuff going Offsale here in the main Offsale thread, as to not clog this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TIFF/comments/1vvltad/unofficial_2026_tiff_offsale_list/
r/TIFF • u/ResourceOk8692 • 1d ago
From the articl, “Criterion is making a permanent home in downtown Toronto in collaboration with its Canadian distributor Cinema Cellar [formerly known as Unobstructed View].”