TIFF ’26: What to See at This Year’s Fest, Sept. 17

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

The end of the 51st annual TIFF is in sight, but as many international press and attendees head home, the final weekend offers local filmgoers an opportunity to snag last-minute tickets to some of the best titles to screen this year. So have at it — and have fun. Here are some suggestions.

A scene from Bleeding Hearts.

Arrested Memory (Midnight Madness)

Thu, Sept. 17, 11:59 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre; Fri, Sept. 18, 3:30 pm, Scotiabank 3; Sat, Sept. 19, 6:45 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3.

Sometimes a Midnight Madness film is just a film at midnight. Arrested Memory, director SABU’s fifth feature, fits that category. I’m not well versed enough in SABU’s films to know if there’s a pattern of tilting violent premises toward something oddly warm, but rein in expectations of Takashi Miike-ish extremes. Arrested Memory is practically moderate in its violence, mostly gunplay and martial arts combat. Though SABU is hardly one to cop a style, there are flashes of the comic timing that fed the best parts of Sean Baker’s Anora, the 2024 TIFF sensation. The story centres on a brilliant detective diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s who, in his confusion, takes off with ransom money intended to free the kidnapped son of a prominent businessman. It’s amusing enough, but unfortunately the film shares something with its main character’s affliction: it’s forgettable. TE

Bleeding Hearts (TIFF Docs)

Thu, Sept. 17, 3:20 pm, Scotiabank 1; Fri, Sept. 18, 2 pm, Scotiabank 14; Sun, Sept. 20, 7:35 pm, Scotiabank 7.

“Chaparelle makes country look good — and the group sounds even better,” ran a Texas Monthly review of last year’s debut album by the photogenic Austin-based couple Zella Day and Jesse Woods. In 2023, Day — prodigy indie pop star — approached Woods, a poetic Texas folkie, about a musical collaboration, which led to romance and formation of their musically eclectic band along with producer-multi-instrumentalist, Beau Bedford. Bleeding Hearts is essentially a promotional doc which, secondarily, pays homage to the black-and- white cinema verité backstage tradition, as the introverted Woods squabbles and makes up with the irrepressible Day (think Emmylou Harris meets Katy Perry) on a grueling debut tour. LL

Happily Ever After (Special Presentations)

Thu, Sept. 17, 7:30 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre; Fri, Sept. 18, 12:15 pm, Scotiabank 3; Sat, Sept. 19, 12:30 pm, Scotiabank 4; Sun, Sept. 20, 12:50 pm, Scotiabank 6.

Follow-up to her Golden Horse award–winning debut American Girl (2021), Feng-I Fiona Roan’s sophomore film continues to explore the real meaning of happiness versus family expectations via sibling relationships. Elder sister is a successful lesbian author with conservative parents whom she couldn’t come out to. Younger sister is the perfect daughter with a steady and wealthy boyfriend proposing marriage, but she doesn’t feel she’s ready for commitment. Both are stressed and not finding enough sisterhood support, which brings on additional emotional conflicts. This character-driven script propels the narrative effectively with a solid cast under Roan’s outstanding direction. AS

London (Wavelengths)

Thurs, Sept. 17, 6:40 pm, Scotiabank 9.

Abbas Kiarostami’s acclaimed, conceptual 2002 film Ten consisted of a series of conversations between a woman driver and various passengers in Tehran. Ten could be the model for Sebastian Brameshuber’s London, in which Austrian pensioner Bobby (Bobby Sommer, the museum guard in Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours) defrays gas costs and serves as informal confessor to passengers travelling between Vienna and Salzburg. Passengers include a young soldier, who is both the first and last rider. Others include a deli counter worker, an academic researching Nazi infrastructure, and various immigrants in transit. London lulls us with its casual talk and the monotony of the highway, but has a cold splash after-effect, as it reveals hints of Bobby’s history, his passengers’ thwarted desires, and the spectre of Europe’s authoritarian future. LL

Musk (TIFF Docs)

Thu, Sept. 17, 11:50 am, Scotiabank 13.

Alex Gibney’s epic, hours-long documentary on Elon Musk offers the most in-depth look yet at the ultimate tech bro who aims to conquer and colonize space, smash governmental dependence, and populate the planet with his own genes. From a comics-loving boy living in a violent South Africa with an alpha male father to whatever it is, exactly, he is now, Gibney gradually reveals his subject’s influences, showing that the possible future Musk visualizes resembles the big-gun comics he immersed himself in as a child. Musk might fancy entering politics to save the world. We have Gibney to thank for alerting us to the possible dangers of that outcome. AS

Muyi (Centrepiece)

Thu, Sept. 17, 2:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3; Sat, Sept. 19, 3:30 pm, Scotiabank 4.

Teenaged Muyi lives in a remote village on a mythical mountain in China that’s exclusive to women. Resources are limited, and they make a living selling artifacts to tourists. Muyi meets a traveling theatre troupe touring “The Handsome General,” which intrigues her, and she convinces the villagers to allow them into the village for a show. Little do they know the performance unleashes a secret followed by a series of mystical mishaps that upend their world. Julien Chheng’s animated feature is an impressively told coming-of-age story with stunning visual aesthetics that pay tribute to Chinese landscape painting. AS

Phoolan (Special Presentations)

Thu, Sept. 17, 12:15 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Sat, Sept. 19, 2:30 pm, Scotiabank 5.

Toronto-born writer-director Richie Mehta’s latest draws from recent Indian history, a single chapter in the life of the late Phoolan Devi, a.k.a. “the Bandit Queen.” The film focuses around a 48-hour siege of a village where the 17-year-old Phoolan and her gang, with their Robin Hood-like philosophy, are hunted by a huge, well-armed police and military force. Adapted from Phoolan’s 1996 autobiography, Mehta moves the story back and forth in time to give us context of how this smart, courageous lower-caste girl — forced into marriage at 11 and repeatedly raped and abused including by powerful people and the police — became an outlaw while still in her teens. Sneha Kumari is outstanding in her first role, playing Phoolan with measured intensity. KG

A scene from SoumSoum.

SoumSoum: The Night of the Stars (Centrepiece)

Thu, Sept. 17, 3:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Fri, Sept. 18, 9:15 pm TIFF Lightbox 2.

This entry from director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun focuses on coming-of-age teenager Kellou (Maïmouna Miawama) and her connection to her female lineage. Kellou lives easily with her father and her stepmother in a small village in Chad. But this sweetness can’t last. Kellou has spiritual gifts: visions of past and future events, which she knows to keep to herself. In a village run by men in a deeply superstitious culture, she’s already marked because her mother died in childbirth. Then she meets Aya (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane) who the local councilmen blame for recent natural disasters, and the village shuns her. But Kallou is drawn to her. Aya was a midwife and is herself a mystic, and the two connect. The movie is slow and quiet, offering the feeling of village life from Kellou’s perspective. As her troubles mount, Kellou proves to have a will of steel; her courage leads her to a moment of mystical beauty that promises to shape her life. KG

The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias (TIFF Docs)

Thu, Sept. 17, 2:30 pm, Scotiabank 10; Sat, Sept. 19, 8 pm, Scotiabank 13.

Following his documentary guides to cinema (2006) and ideology (2012), everyone’s favourite Slovenian Marxist-psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Žižek is back with his third film, directed by Sophie Fiennes. Rather than an exploration of the “utopias” of the title, Žižek’s film unfolds as a therapy session for facing the end of the world, as depicted in cinema. This is time enjoyably spent. We nod along to our guide’s observations that vampires are aristocrats and zombies the proletarians, or a description of Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now as the voice of ethical evil (a.k.a. capitalism). There are also truisms (authority and rebellion define each other), and debate-club propositions (good communists should be pessimists) along with the cautionary takeaway that sanity requires “keeping madness at a respectful distance.” LL

The Violinist (Centrepiece)

Thu, Sept. 17, 6:45 pm, Scotiabank 3; Fri, Sept. 18, 11:30 am, Scotiabank 10; Sun, Sept. 20, 4:25 pm, Scotiabank 7.

Singapore’s Ervin Han collaborated with Spain’s Raul Garcia for this ambitious, winningly old-fashioned hand-drawn animated melodrama, which won the top prize at last year’s Annecy International Animation Festival. Framed by a Spanish music journalist’s 1982 interview with a renowned Singapore violinist Lee Fei, whose story begins in 1932 when she and the orphan boy, Kai, became child sweethearts and musical soulmates. Along with classical works by Tchaikovsky, Paganini, Mendelssohn, the film includes an original score, with Kai’s unfinished sonata serving as the couple’s leit motif. From inside glamorous concert halls to the ravages of the Japanese invasion, war, The Violinist impressively demonstrates the epic potential of animation. LL