TIFF ’25: What to See at This Year’s Fest, Sept. 9
By Jim Slotek, Liz Braun, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Chris Knight, Liam Lacey and Bonnie Laufer
The Toronto International Film Festival is just past the halfway point, and we continue surveying the many, many features, documentaries, and shorts screening during the twinkly annual event, this year celebrating its 50th year and concluding September 14.
Nouvelle Vague
& Sons (Special Presentations)
Tues, Sept. 9, 11:40 am, Scotiabank Theatre 4.
Based on David Gilbert’s critically acclaimed 2013 novel, & Sons stars Bill Nighy as a legendary but aging and reclusive author delivering a eulogy at his oldest friend's funeral. He has spent over 20 years on his own, disassociating himself from the real world. Suddenly realizing his mistakes, he reconvenes for the first time in years his two eldest sons (Johnny Flynn and George MacKay) in an attempt — or so it would seem — to make amends while connecting them to their younger half-brother (Noah Jupe). In the process, he exposes a secret that throws everything into chaos. Beautifully directed by Pablo Trapero with a moving and effective soundtrack (and co-writing from Canada’s Sarah Polley), we get stunning performances from Nighy and the supporting cast which includes the brilliant Imelda Staunton. & Sons truly makes you think how life can be so crazy… and yet so real. BL
A Private Life (Gala Presentations)
Tues, Sept. 9, 5:30 pm, Roy Thomson Hall; Wed, Sept. 10, 12:15 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1; Thur, Sept. 11, 2:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1.
Ambition is admirable in film, but it can foster tonal messiness. Such is the case with director Rebecca Zlotowski's A Private Life which seems to want to be, simultaneously, a psychological thriller, a murder mystery, a family drama and a deep dive into the netherworlds of hypnosis and past lives. Jodie Foster, performing in French, plays Lilian, an American psychoanalyst living in France who loses a patient to apparent suicide. Extraneous factors suggest nefarious forces may have been at play, which launches Lilian and her ex-husband into detective mode, re-igniting their passion along the way. Foster is reliably excellent but it feels as though what could have been a good story about a stoic woman slowly unravelling is buried under excessive plot. KH
Flana (TIFF Docs)
Tues, Sept. 9, 2:25 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 8; Wed, Sept. 10, 6 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.
Iraqi filmmaker Zahraa Ghandour has a media career that goes back to her late teens, working as a television presenter, documentary director, and actor (2017’s The Journey). Her first feature is a documentary on Iraq’s “Flana,” a word meaning anonymous or forgotten women, inspired by memories of the disappearance of her 10-year-old friend, Nour. Much of Flana is set in the house where the director grew up and where her chain-smoking aunt Hayat works as the neighbourhood midwife. Illustrated with ghostly details (child drawings on a wall, shadows behind glass windows) Flana floats between a poetic memory film and a journalistic investigation. From childhood, Ghandour remembers that boy babies were a cause for celebration, while the births of girls were greeted with silence. Her investigation leads to an institution for homeless girls and another young woman, Layla, one of many girls abandoned by their families to the streets and shelters. Though Flana can’t provide statistics on how many young women are abandoned or subject to violence, the prevalence of the crime is illustrated by a visit to a graveyard north of Baghdad, specifically for girls and women disowned by their families. LL
Good News (Special Presentations)
Tues, Sept. 9, 12 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Fri, Sept. 12, 7:45 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3.
South Korean filmmaker Byun Sung-hyun stirs up equal parts Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with Good News — a satire about a politically charged hijacking that ricochets from Tokyo to Pyongyang. Don’t be fooled by the American touchstones; the humour, politics, and attitude are unmistakably Byun’s, fine-tuned to the sensibilities of both North and South Korea. The result is a rambunctious crowd-pleaser full of well-earned laughs. And yet, far more often than needed, the film mistakes shouting and temper tantrums as a substitute for funny. TE
Irkalla: Gilgamesh’s Dream (Centrepiece)
Tue, Sept. 9, 12:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 14; Wed, Sept. 10, 7:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 10.
Set in Baghdad in 2019 amid demonstrations and intermittent militia warfare, Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji’s film follows two orphan boys living in a river barge, stealing and selling scrap metal for a living, and getting their scant education on a bus from by a mentally unstable teacher. Nine-year-old diabetic Chum Chum is obsessed with a VHS tape of an animated version of the Gilgamesh epic and believes that if he descends into the Tigris River, it will lead him to the Irkalla, the land of the dead, where his parents are. His protector, 13-year-old street hustler Moody, wants to obtain passports to The Netherlands for himself, Chum Chum, and Chum Chum’s teenage sister, Sarah, headed for a life of sex work. Among Moody’s hustles is running errands for a sinister militia leader known as The Sheik, who isn’t afraid of sacrificing children for his ideological cause. Though this portrait of childhood despair makes Charles Dickens look restrained by comparison, it reflects a cruel reality in a conflict-ravaged country where the number of orphans is estimated as high as five million. LL
It Was Just An Accident (Special Presentations)
Tues, Sept. 9, 8:45 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre; Wed, Sept. 10, 3:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1; Sat, Sept. 13, 9:15 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 14.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi deservedly won the Palme d’Or last spring at Cannes for this film about moral and ethnical choices, set in modern-day Iran. A family driving home at night has an accident near a warehouse. Father Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) asks for help. The sound of Eghbal’s shuffling gait attracts the attention of worker Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) whose his life has fallen apart because of his time in the notorious prison where he was blindfolded and tortured by a sadist nicknamed PegLeg. Vahid believes Eghbal is his torturer and wants revenge. But Eghbal’s pleas plant doubt in his mind. So Vahid turns to other survivors for verification. At first, each resist, wanting to put the horrible past behind them. What to do? Master filmmaker Panahi, who endured his own time in Iranian prison, has a knack for making thoughtful movies dealing with difficult subjects that nevertheless feel light, engaging, even humorous, and for writing characters we feel we know and who stick with us. KG
Lucky Lu (Centrepiece)
Tues, Sept. 9, 6:25 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 13; Sat, Sept. 13, 5 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 2.
Immigrant stories have been having a moment lately, with Boris Lojkine’s award-winning Souleymane’s Story arriving last year, and now with Lucky Lu, Korean Canadian writer-director Lloyd Lee Choi’s poignant feature debut. Both films document days in the life of marginalized newcomers chasing a better life in a foreign land through bottom-rung gig work. And both protagonists face gigantic obstacles; in Lucky Lu’s case, an ever-more alarming cascade of misfortune just as his wife and daughter are finally joining him in New York after years apart. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Chang Chen brings palpable pathos to this story of Lu, a man just trying, desperately, to keep his head above water. “I thought this place could solve everything,” Lu tells his young daughter Yaya, beautifully played by Carabelle Manna Wei, in one of the film’s most moving segments. “But it only created more problems.” KH
Mile End Kicks (Special Presentations)
Tues, Sept. 9, 11:55 am, Scotiabank Theatre 13; Sat, Sept. 13, 9 am, Scotiabank Theatre 1.
Canadian writer-director Chandler Levack’s much-anticipated follow-up to I Like Movies might be the first period piece set in the 2010s. In the summer of 2011, music critic Grace Pine (a revelatory performance by Barbie Ferreira) moves from Toronto to Montreal to write a book, learn French, climb the mountain, have proper sex and fall in love. Her miserable failure at most of these endeavours is what makes the movie so heart-achingly wonderful, in particular the scenes — and there are many — in which the camera frames her expressive face delivering a what-the-fuck? look that captures what the audience is no doubt thinking in the same moment. (Also, some of the best awkward-sex I’ve ever seen in a movie.) Stanley Simons and Devon Bostick excel as two members of the same up-and-coming band, wildly different in their personalities but both exerting a gravitational pull upon Grace. Clearly this three-body problem won’t have a tidy solution. But you’ll love watching it in motion. CK
Nomad Shadow (Centrepiece)
Tues, Sept. 9, 12:25 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 9.
A Japanese American filmmaker might not appear as the obvious person to make a drama set in West Sahara, the sparsely populated territory known as Africa’s last colony, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and Morocco — which occupies 70 percent of its territory — to the north. But Eimi Imanishi, who was partly raised in Barcelona, and was married to a West Saharan man, combines a cool anthropologist’s eye and lyrical affection for the culture. Her debut feature follows young woman Mariam (the compelling Nadhira Mohamed, a Spanish-based Sahrawi actress and activist) who has returned home after being deported from Spain. As Mariam seeks a livelihood, she faces rejection from the family and social circle she left years before, and an unhappy reunion with the young Black man with whom she first travelled with Spain. From her European-fashionable thinness and tomboyish manner, Mariam no longer fits in a culture that combines pious decorum with open drug running and secret late-night raves in the desert. The film’s cryptic title is unrelated to the 2007 U.S.-Turkish intelligence-sharing operation against Iraq’s Kurds of the same name. But the film’s more apt title, You Can’t Go Home Again, was already taken. LL
Nouvelle Vague (Special Presentations)
Tue, Sept. 9, 6:30 pm, Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre; Wed, Sept. 10, 9 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1; Sun, Sept. 14, 10 am, TIFF Lightbox 4.
Richard Linklater’s black-and-white historical drama about the making of Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark 1960 film, is pretty much everything Godard was not: Charming, filled with special effects (to recreate the Paris of 65 years ago), and smooth as a flute of bubbly, ready for popular consumption on Netflix this fall. Nouvelle Vague’s three central performances — Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, and especially, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo — are as good as you could want. Film buffs can have their fun playing spot the auteur, including Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer, with guest appearances by Godard’s filmmaking heroes, Jean-Pierre Melville, Roberto Rossellini, and Robert Bresson. Rather than a reconstruction, Nouvelle Vague is essentially a caper comedy, finding the fun in Godard’s infamous eccentricities, which drove his producer, Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) to distraction. Enjoy it for what it is: An affectionate, meticulously constructed look back on a moment in cinema history that takes nothing away from the original masterpiece and may even lead a few souls to it. LL
Steve (Platform)
Tues, Sept. 9, 12:45pm, TIFF Lightbox 4; Sat, Sept 13, 3:30pm, TIFF Lightbox 3.
Cillian Murphy gives a powerful and heartbreaking performance in Steve. Based on Max Porter’s bestselling 2023 novella Shy, Murphy plays an underappreciated and utterly devoted head of a reform school for teenage boys. As if running an underfunded school wasn’t stressful enough, things come to a boil when a documentary crew arrives to get a behind-the-scenes look at what is really going on. The casting of the troubled teens is brilliant, but the standout Jay Lycargo as Shy. He is a revelation. The film is a lesson in fragility, care, patience and connection. Steve is the teacher everyone needs and wants. Trying to hold it all together for his students, he can barely handle his own personal issues. Supported by Tracy Ullman and Emily Watson, Steve is a film you won't soon forget. Coming to Netflix in October. BL
There Are No Words (TIFF Docs)
Tues, Sept. 8, 7 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 11; Thurs, Sept. 11, 9:35 pm, Scotiabank 4.
The raw honesty of Toronto filmmaker Min Sook Lee’s deeply affecting documentary leave you breathless, but it will also leave you in awe of her courage. When she was 12, Lee’s mother committed suicide. She was present when it happened, but the memories are blurred and there are nagging mysteries, especially now that she’s a mother. Lee has a distant, uncomfortable relationship with her father, a former intelligence officer in South Korea, where her parents met. They married there, immigrating to Canada when they had children. Her father is open even about his darkest flaws. But Lee doesn’t really trust his memories and therefore doesn’t trust herself. She spends time with him, asking tough questions, goes back to the family’s town in South Korea to talk to her uncle and neighbours, speaks to fellow Korean immigrants in Toronto, and visits her childhood best friend in Toronto. The story of her mother is complex and heartbreaking. This is personal documentary-making at its finest. KG
Three Goodbyes
Three Goodbyes (Special Presentations)
Tues, Sept 9, 2:50 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 10; Sat, Sept. 13, 9:45 am, Scotiabank Theatre 8.
Marta (Alba Rohrwacher) has lost her appetite and is having bad stomach pains, possibly caused by grief. Her long-term partner Antonio (Elio Germano) ended their relationship abruptly and moved out for reasons that are unclear to us, and to Marta. Marta’s overbearing sister (Silvia D’Amico) insists Marta see a doctor (Sarita Choudhury). Her sister's instincts prove correct; Marta is diagnosed with cancer. Three Goodbyes, by Spanish director Isabel Coixet and based on the semi-autobiographical novel by the late Italian author Michela Murgia, aims for a quiet, wistful tone in a film that is a meditation on loss, love, and finding meaning in life. She gets the tone right, but the story itself is a bit clunky, and undermines some of the emotional connection we should have to what’s happening to Marta. Still, a thoughtful performance by the luminescent Rohrwacher makes it compelling. KG
Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) (Special Presentations)
Tues, Sept. 9, 2:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1; Sun, Sept. 14, 9:30 am, Scotiabank Theatre 6.
Zacharias Kunuk’s 2001 film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner — selected in a 2015 TIFF poll of filmmakers and critics as the greatest Canadian film of all time — dramatized a traditional Inuit story of a cursed family lineage that had parallels to the Greek Oedipal myth. His latest, Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), based on a composite of traditional stories, suggest Homer’s tales of stolen brides and false suitors and the interplay of the human and supernatural forces. Among those featured in Wrong Husband: a giant hook-nosed troll that lives in the sea and snatches children; a woman shaman surrounded by wisps of fog; and a white-haired male shaman who hurls clouds of black dust.
On the human level, there’s Kaujak and Sapa, childhood sweethearts raised by neighbours who are promised to each other in marriage. But on the verge of their wedding, Kaujak’s father is murdered and a stranger steps in to marry her widowed mother, and various young men aggressively compete to marry Sapa’s promised bride. Apart from the story, the film is a visual pleasure, both the mysterious sun. LL