TIFF ’25: What to See at This Year’s Fest, Sept. 11

By Jim Slotek, Liz Braun, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Chris Knight, Liam Lacey, Bonnie Laufer and (special guest!) Alice Shih

The Toronto International Film Festival just keeps going and going… and so do we. As we near the close of the 50th annual edition on Sunday, we continue offering best bets based on our screenings.

Junk World

Adulthood (Gala Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 9:30 pm, Roy Thomson Hall; Fri, Sept. 12, 12 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1; Sat, Sept. 13, 9:05 am, Scotiabank 7.

Skeletons in the closet? Almost. Things get off to a jolt in Alex Winter’s latest when siblings Meg and Noah (Kaya Scodelario, Josh Gad) make a gruesome discovery in their parents’ basement after their widowed mom has a stroke. Taking it upon themselves to clean up the mess, they soon find themselves overrun with nosy cops, potential blackmailers, half-assed heavies and creepy cousins. Winter has an unenviable task of juggling a mix of comedic and thrilling elements, and while neither category reaches its full potential, both are developed enough to make this a goofy little time-waster. Whether you want to spend your hard-earned dollars on a TIFF-priced ticket to it is another question. CK

Eternity (Gala Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 6:35 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 4; Sun, Sept. 14, 6 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 13.

The TIFF synopsis for Eternity references Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life and Hirokazu Kore-era’s After Life — both marvellous movies, and I’m sorry to say this doesn’t measure up. Irish co-writer-director David Freyne imagines a hereafter in which the newly departed spend a week in a giant hotel/train station/trade show, deciding where to spend eternity. Options are plentiful: Weimar without the incipient Nazi takeover; 1840s Ireland minus the potato famine; and Man-Free World, which is full but they’re opening a new one soon. Elderly couple Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and Larry (Miles Teller) die within a week of each other (the hereafter also makes you look young), only to find that Joan’s first husband (Callum Turner) has been waiting for her since he died in the Korean War, 67 years ago. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say the screenplay makes a few missteps that break the spell. Intermittently funny and well-intentioned, it’s also philosophically problematic. CK

Fuck My Son! (Midnight Madness)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 4 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 12

Director Todd Rohal has created an unconventional, frequently hilarious, taboo-burning, boundary-pushing, groundbreaking, stomach-churning, eye-covering, gasp-inducing, seat-squirming, expectation-defying, taste-testing, nerve-fraying, button-pushing, sacred-cow-slaughtering, rule-breaking, risk-taking, ridiculous-embracing, chaos-loving, offensively determined, shamelessly committed, genre-bending bit of cinema that gleefully crosses the lines of good taste, purposefully sets out to offend, tramples over the rules of straight-ahead narrative, pokes the bear, pulls the rug, kicks the hornet’s nest, lights the fuse, embraces the absurd, dares the audience to keep watching, and flat-out refuses to play fair, out of cartoonist Johnny Ryan’s underground comic about an elderly woman (played by Robert Longstreet in drag) who kidnaps a mother (Tipper Newton) and her daughter (Kynzie Colmery, with the kind of grit only a trooper could muster), forcing the mother into a grotesque liaison with her hideously deformed son, a creature that makes Jabba the Hutt and The Toxic Avenger look like clean-cut frontmen for a boy band. Complete anarchy. TE

Glenrothan (Gala Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 5:30 pm, Roy Thomson Hall; Fri, Sept. 12, 3:20 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 4.

It is virtually impossible to see the Scottish Highlands from any angle and not be moved. Unfortunately, the treacly story in Brian Cox’s directorial debut do not live up to the visuals. Donal (Alan Cumming) is estranged from his family of distillers, and has been making a living as a bluesman in Chicago(!). He returns, however, after nearly 40 years, on news of the questionable health of his brother Sandy (Cox). Their conflict and resolution don’t seem particularly real. But, speaking as a taster, the real missed opportunity is the neglect of the entire subject of whisky. For a distillery that is supposedly the lifeblood of an entire village, no one is seen raking germinated barley, or tending the malt, etc. No one waxes poetic about the Scottish “water of life” the way they do about wine in, for example, Sideways. Considering the premise, the whole movie seems like one big missed opportunity. JS

Hamnet (Gala Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 2 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre.

Aside from a few movie-liberties (like a suicide-pondering Shakespeare uttering the exact words from that soliloquy), Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) does a commendable job distilling the plot and capturing the spirit of Maggie O’Farrell's fictional novel about William Shakespeare’s wife and three children, who literally are plagued with troubles in Stratford while he makes a name for himself in London. Most of the dramatic weight falls on Jessie Buckley as Agnes, the reputed “forest witch” who falls for and marries the young man (Paul Mescal) whose soul she reads as impressive and deep. Jacobi Jupe has a certain ethereal quality as the boy who inspires the play of almost-the-same name. And cinematographer Lukasz Zal’s 16th century film portraiture anchors the movie with a combination of sheer rural beauty and village earthiness. JS

I Swear (Centrepiece)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 3:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox.

A feel-bad-until-we-feel-good story, I Swear dramatizes the true story of John Davidson (Robert Aramayo), a promising young soccer goalie whose life unravels when Tourette’s syndrome surfaces. Director Kirk Jones begins with John as a boy well-loved in his community, only to turn the screw with the sudden arrival of tics, crude language, spitting at the dinner table, and insults flung without filter. His family, teachers, and friends dismiss it as attention-seeking, and he is punished at every turn. His embittered mother quietly blames him for his father’s departure, and the isolation deepens. Hope comes when the adult John meets Dottie, a former mental health nurse and mother of a friend, who sees John beyond his symptoms. The problem isn’t with the subject matter — it’s rich and volatile — but in the film’s reluctance to dig past its surface. Jones opts for a neat arc of resilience when the story cries out for something more unsettling, less safe. The film is amusing at times, as Tourette’s can be, and occasionally jolts with bursts of violence, but too often it feels like a familiar template dressed in unusual circumstances. What keeps it from slipping away entirely is Aramayo, who plays John with a solidity and conviction that refuse to soften or sentimentalize. His performance is not only believable, it’s unforgettable. TE

John Candy: I Like Me (Gala Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 9 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1.

There’s a reason previous attempts at biographies of the late, great comedian John Candy have failed to attract sources close to him. Universally loved by friends, acquaintances, and strangers, there has been a protective circle that finally opens bigtime in this doc by Colin Hanks and producer Ryan Reynolds. For every laugh (and there are plenty) there’s a tear, as scores of his Second City and movie pals share genial stories, while bemoaning the insecurities that drove him to lead a public life as the partying “Johnny Toronto” who would go so far as to buy a football team to be loved. Lots of screen time is devoted to his family history, and current keepers of the flame like his son Christopher and daughter Jennifer (Read our interview with them here). How Candy managed to juggle a family, a TV, and stage career and appear or star in more than 30 movies by age 43 remains a mystery. JS

Junk World (Midnight Madness)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 11:59, Royal Alex Theatre; Fri, Sept. 12, 9:15 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 14; Sun, Sept 14, 3:35 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.

It may be impossible to summarize the plot of Junk World, a post-apocalyptic, stop motion science fiction film set in a world of humans, genius robots, artificial biological creatures called Mulligans, and portals where rival factions travel across time reliving the same scenario and trying to rewrite the present to their advantage. But when words fail, pictures do the talking and Junk World is a rare immersive visual experience. Animator Takahide Hori — who spent almost a decade on his first animated film, Junk Head (2021) — has created a distinctive world built of tactile nightmarish details, evocative of decay, industrial wasteland and garbage-dumb incongruities, with creatures that resemble painter Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval inventions, animated mushrooms, and inner organs on legs. While grim, Junk World is not nihilistic. There’s dry humour here, and an allegory about friendship as the ultimate good as you melt into the dark dream world. LL

The Last One for the Road (Centrepiece)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 3:15 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Fri, Sept 12, 3:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 10.

The pair of gregarious, fifty-something Italian conmen in Francesco Sossai’s The Last One for the Road might well subscribe to Homer Simpson’s dictum: “To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” On the surface, this is a familiar comic premise about disreputable eccentrics. Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) take pity on a nerdy architecture student Giulio (Fillipo Scotti), who they spot leaving his graduation party early, and take him on a road trip that brings him out of his self-conscious shell. But the film, handsomely shot on film stock, carries a melancholy undercurrent of grief for lost chances, while doing double-duty as an architectural tour of Italy’s northern Veneto Plain, both its rich legacy and the ravages of progress. As the men booze, reminisce, engage in petty hustles and alarming drunken night driving, the script is laced with clever flashbacks in which young Giulio imagines himself as one of the participants in their past scams. LL

Mama (Centrepiece)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 12 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Fri, Sept. 12, 2 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 5.

Israeli director Or Sinai was inspired by her parents’ caregiver to create this character study of a Polish woman caught between two worlds and two countries. In Israel, Mila (Evgenia Dodina) is the live-in maid in a seaside mansion owned by a wealthy couple, enjoying an affair with the gardener, while sending money back home to support her family. When Mila hurts her hand at work, she is sent home for a paid vacation but discovers a significantly changed family dynamic with the money she sent home not used as she hoped. The dream house her husband was supposed to be finishing is still just a shell and it transpires that he, too, has a new lover, a neighbour woman mortified by Mila’s return. Mila’s daughter has dropped out of university with plans to get married, quashing Mila’s dreams and leading to an angry confrontation. While Mama sheds some light on the double-life of migrant workers, the film’s specific appeal is in the complex performance of Belarus-born Israeli actress Dodina, a character too willful and wrong-headed to pity, but too caught in her own pain to be judged. LL

Obsession (Midnight Madness)

Thursday, Sept. 11, 6 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1.

Curry Barker’s Obsession takes its time finding a spark, but when it does, the whole film bursts into flames. The story follows a hapless romantic (Michael Johnston) who overlooks the green lights from his best friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette), the true love of his life. Instead, he sidesteps any chance of failure by gambling on a novelty toy that promises to grant one wish, ushering in perhaps the darkest riff on the Monkey’s Paw tale yet. Johnston delivers a fully committed performance, but Navarrette is the one to watch, shattering the obsessed-female trope with a ferocity that could crush your still-beating broken heart. TE

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name (Centrepiece)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 8:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3; Fri, Sept. 12, 12:25 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 9.

A palimpsest is a manuscript or record that has been changed, though traces of the original remain. And in this fascinating real-life story, Mary Stephen (French filmmaker Eric Rohmer’s longtime editor) discovers that her mysterious father, who’d looked completely Asian, had adopted “Stephen” as his surname as a young man. Trying to understand why, she searched and found herself in a rabbit hole of conflicting versions of her parents’ ancestries. She combines her findings with the family’s home movies into an intriguing cinematic journey of revelation and self-discovery against the background of colonialism. AS

Wayward (Primetime)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 9:45 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1.

Incoming is Netflix’s limited series Wayward, from Mae Martin, the creator and star of the hit show Feel Good, who here moves effortlessly from comedy into psychological thriller. Set in the seemingly idyllic town of Tall Pines, the series delves into the dubious “troubled teen” industry. Martin, also co-showrunner and executive producer, plays Alex, a police officer who moves to the town and becomes suspicious of a local academy for troubled teens led by the mysterious Evelyn, played to chilling perfection by Toni Collette. Sarah Gadon plays Laura, Alex’s mysterious and pregnant partner. The show is a genre-bending blend of humour and horror, exploring themes of adolescence, small-town secrets, and the compromises people make to fit into society. With an outstanding cast and a gripping premise, Wayward is an engrossing and eerie watch. BL

Whistle

Whistle (TIFF Docs)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 9:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 13.

This highly delightful, protest-proof documentary could be the most non-judgmental and fulfilling film you’ll see at the festival. The premise is simple enough: a whistling contest in California where the winner walks away crowned World’s Best Whistler. It sounds like the sort of thing Christopher Guest might lampoon, but no need. Even if you think whistling is to music what speed-walking is to sport (apologies to speed-walkers), director Christopher Nelius approaches the subject with neither ridicule nor irony. His film treats its contestants — an eclectic rather than eccentric mix of would-be champions — with respect, revealing them as not only devoted top their craft, but genuinely talented. Odds are, you’ll leave the theatre whistling a happy tune. TE

The Wizard of the Kremlin (Special Presentations)

Thurs, Sept. 11, 9:30 pm, Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre; Fri, Sept. 12, 9:30 am, Scotiabank Theatre 2; Sun, Sept. 14, 8:30 am, Scotiabank Theatre 13,

Olivier Assayas’s adaptation of political analyst Giuliano da Empoli’s arch and gloomy 2022 novel about Russia’s transformation in the post-Soviet Union era is the sort of sprawling, intermittently entertaining affair that might have worked better as a television miniseries. The journey to the current dictatorship is framed as a long interview between an American academic (Jeffrey Wright) and retired Russian media manipulator Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a character based on the career of real-life theatre director, advertising executive, and political fixer Vladislav Surkov. Baranov is portrayed as an artiste manqué, who helped invent the image of Putin — a dead-eyed technocrat with zero people skills — into Russia’s angry daddy figure. A nihilistic dandy, Baranov’s one humanizing trait is his devotion to the beautiful, fickle Ksenia (Alicia Vikander), a woman with a penchant for oligarchs, jewelry, and yachts and a gift for calling Baranov on his bullshit. That finally leads him to belatedly acknowledge the consequences of his intellectual vanity and moral cowardice. The Kremlin wizard’s barely redemptive story arc aside, the real catch-your-breath moment is the first appearance of Jude Law in basic make-up as Putin, instantly nailing the Russian leader’s robotic body language and predatory stare. LL