All TIFF-ed Up: A List of The Best Things at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival

Greetings from my comfy chair back in Dundee, where I am exhausted. I had planned to get this piece done over the weekend, but jetlag beat me like I owed it money. Every year, I return from Toronto and I tell myself I’m going to be an adult about things and get over the jetlag as quickly as possible. If my parents can do it, why can’t I? And every year, I crash and burn. Give me a few more days to be petulant about it and then it’ll be business as usual. But for now, let’s talk about the 51^st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival!

This year, TIFF was dominated by its new addition of the market. Toronto has decided to level up its game and become a major player in the world of sales, in the vein of Cannes or Venice. What this meant for critics like me who were on the ground and not involved with this stuff was more queues. On the first day of the fest—the day before I arrived—lines to pick up passes were longer than they’ve ever been, more than an hour for some. I heard a lot of critics talk about how the festival felt more impersonal this year because of the focus on the market and its teething problems. I can't say I felt that too much myself, although it was certainly there. This is a major undertaking for TIFF, entering this side of the film business in the midst of both massive changes in the industry and a trade war with America. One report from ScreenDaily, which included quotes from buyers, said the market was definitely a work in progress, on that was never "truly humming" with crowds and was overwhelmed with technical issues.

For me, though, my focus was on seeing things, writing about them, and making sure to eat some vegetables now and then. Seriously, when you’re rushing between screenings and hunts for Wi-Fi, you end up eating whatever is available, and usually, that’s cinema food. Popcorn for dinner loses its novelty quickly!

I must admit that this wasn’t the strongest TIFF I’ve been to, but it was by no means a washout. A lot of big-name stuff skipped the festival, but they’re also jumping over the entire season. Stuff like Digger and The Social Reckoning won’t play any of the fests, presumably because their studios don’t think they need the pre-release buzz (or they’re that desperate to cut costs.) Toronto sadly didn’t get titles like Primetime or Paper Tiger, both of which I am excited to see. And, of course, I couldn’t see everything I wanted to thanks to timing, schedule conflicts, and an inability to get a ticket (sorry to Tender Loving Care, Ink, Look Back, Possible Love, Club Kid, and Fjord.) Overall, I saw 19 movies, the first two episodes of two TV shows, and a few episodes of Futurama on the plane.

But I had a few standouts I wanted to mention, so here we go.

BEST FILMS:

Wild Horse Nine sees Martin McDonagh return to the torrid topic of America, but this one is on far surer ground than the divisive Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. John Malkovich plays a CIA hitman who has assassinated literally every democratically elected leader on the planet, but is now close to forced retirement due to memory issues. Sam Rockwell is his only friend in the world and a fellow agent who tags along for the ride. McDonagh specializes in pitch-black humour that typically comes to the bleakest of conclusions. His protagonists are spiky, frequently unlikeable, and isolated from the world, and they find themselves staring into oblivion. Wild Horse Nine is no different. It’s also one of his most overtly political works. McDonagh is certainly not a fence-sitter. His plays are ruthless in their perspectives but not always directly so. Consider how The Banshees of Inisherin quietly takes on the Irish Civil War and matters of independence without explicitly calling attention to them. But this one has at its heart the rot of American imperialism. It will tear your soul apart, even if it does nothing to impact the corrupt policies that have ravaged the world. If John Malkovich doesn’t win Best Actor, I will be very surprised.

Stuffed: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before—a bored amateur taxidermist decides she wants to stuff a human specimen, but she needs to find a willing subject who will agree to die for her art, but when she finds the unremarkable man who volunteers, sparks fly. And it’s a musical. I know, you’ve seen dozens of films like that, but Stuffed is special. Jodie Comer and Harry Melling are gung-ho committed to this concept, which feels like The League of Gentlemen crossed with Sweeney Todd and a dash of Hot Topic flair. While the music is a bit too samey and direct in its lyricism, the rest of the film is a macabre delight of awkward slapstick, kitchen sink miserablism, skinned animals, and ‘70s flares. Just let Harry Melling be in every movie. He’s a delight. Here’s my TIFF review.

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!: I have a real love for ballroom dancing films—Strictly Ballroom, The Tango Lesson, Shall We Dance, and so on. So, I was all in on the delightfully titled Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! Rinko Kikuchi plays a recently bereaved woman who tries to get her life back on track by returning to the world of dance she shared with her husband, and falling into a casual fling with her hot instructor. This one feels like it’s going to be very in the mould of Strictly Ballroom, with a woman discovering herself through a romance on the dancefloor, but it zags where you expect it to zig. Ha-Chan goes into flights of fantasy featuring musical numbers and one especially cheeky movie recreation, and her relationship with her instructor is complicated by his open marriage and a little white lie she tells about her own life. The film is unexpectedly nuanced in depicting modern romance free of boundaries and stepping outside of the confines of man-woman for self-satisfaction. And the soundtrack is nothing but bangers. A real crowd-pleaser without playing it safe. Here’s my review.

The Debut: One of my all-time favourite episodes of The Simpsons is “A Streetcar Named Marge”, where Marge finds a sliver of fulfilment through a weird community theatre production headed by a too-big-for-his-boots director. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Jesse Eisenberg’s latest comedy is “A Streetcar Named Marge” if Marge ended up turning into Daniel Day-Lewis. Julianne Moore—a shoo-in for Best Actress—plays a meek and dissatisfied housewife who is unexpectedly cast in a C-tier musical that’s essentially Co-Op: The Musical from Documentary Now! Through director Paul Giamatti, she is encouraged to explore her character beyond the page, and soon she becomes an overly-committed method performer who micromanages everyone else’s work. It’s extremely funny, with Moore in fine comedic form and her descent into self-serious madness both hilarious and weirdly tender. It’s a stupid thing to do, but why wouldn’t you go this hard when it brings you the first sliver of accomplishment you’ve had in decades? Shout out to Eisenberg for crafting the perfect just-sorta-good musical that would play in community theatres for decades.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother: Hey, are you still salty at Marvel for completely shitting the bed on Mahershala Ali as Blade, even though you knew deep down in your heart that he was way too good for it? Boy, do I have a movie for you?! Ali is excellent as a contract killer and devout Muslim who is hired to murder a gun-toting hard-right mega-pastor (played by John Cho at his most repulsive.) But that’s not really what the film is about. This is an introspective film on faith and the inherent pitfalls of trying to live a pious life. Yes, there are a few impressive fight scenes, including one in a strip club turned mega-church, but more drama is mined from Ali’s hunt for breast milk for his baby than from his punching. I worry that Amazon may market this as a John Wick knock-off when it’s far quieter and more concerned with weighty topics than that. But yes, Ali is also one hell of an action star and Kevin Feige messed up hard.

A Long Winter: Andrew Haigh hasn’t made a bad movie, and while I saw many people describe A Long Winter as a minor effort from the director, I couldn’t disagree more. I loved this one. Adapted from a story by Colm Toibin, this quiet drama follows a young man over the course of the season as he tries to cope with the disappearance of his mother. The snow-laden wilds of Canada stand in for Colorado of the early ‘50s, looking almost monochromatic through Haigh’s camera. Over the winter, our protagonist is confronted with issues of gender, family, and power, all handled with deftness and a welcome lack of shouting. Haigh is especially adept at stories of isolation and ways to overcome or exacerbate that, and A Long Winter keenly understands that loneliness intersects with social qualities in unique ways.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS: I am a biopic sceptic because I think the genre is dishearteningly committed to being as middlebrow and inoffensive towards its subjects (and their money-grabbing estates) as possible. Still, even with tempered expectations, I was surprised by how much Elsinore pissed me off. The late great Scottish actor Ian Charleson is a very big deal in my neck of the woods (I live about 30 minutes from the Chariots of Fire beach), and the story of him playing Hamlet in the final weeks of his life before his death from AIDS were certainly ripe with cinematic possibilities. I cannot fault Andrew Scott’s performance, or his excellent accent work, but the rest of the film seemed to be working overtime to undermine his craft. It was as though director Simon Stone and screenwriter Stephen Beresford didn’t trust Scott or Charleson, so they sliced up his story with too many montages, clunky dialogue, and a distinct lack of radicalness in this story of a queer community in the midst of Thatcherist control. How do you make Derek fucking Jarman dull?! Here’s my review.

Bunker was also a letdown. Florian Zeller’s cinematic debut The Father, based on his own play, really won me over. I never saw The Son but it sank without a trace. Bunker was not adapted from his own work but it still felt like a play that he couldn’t translate to a new medium. Real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz play a well-to-do Spanish husband and wife who live in London so that Bardem can be a star architect. Cracks are forming in the marriage when a mega-billionaire requests that Bardem build him an apocalypse bunker for himself and his rich friends should the world fall apart and the 99% decide to get their revenge. Paul Dano as said billionaire does one hell of a Zuckerberg impression, but the rest of the film is so weak on its themes of wealth disparities and the privilege of privacy that you walk away from it wondering if Zeller just ran out of steam midway through script drafting. It’s 2026. I need your “Eat the Rich” movies to be far better than this.

COOLEST NON-TIFF TORONTO MOMENTS: Every year, I have dinner with Sarah Marrs and Lainey Lui from Lainey Gossip, and we chat about the biz, the Oscars, crazy stalker fans, and all the fun stuff we cover on our respective platforms. We ate at Terroni, which is the most delicious Italian restaurant I’ve ever been to. Speaking of good food, I finally ate at PAI, the legendary Thai restaurant, with a friend, and wow, that curry was to die for. I also have to shout out Touhenboku for the amazing black garlic ramen, and the institution that is Ravi Soups for the pulled pork and mango slaw wraps.

Outside of food and hanging out with friends, I once again visited the legendary Art Gallery of Ontario, which had two fascinating exhibits: one on the tour photography of Melissa auf der Maur from Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, and an incredibly unsettling selection of short films by Diego Marcon. I got a new ice hockey jersey, this one from the Toronto Sceptres. I also bought some cool books, including some classic Canadian urban fantasy by Tanya Huff at the annual book sale the church next to the Roy Thompson Hall puts on every year. They also sold delicious cookies.

Oh, and I was on CBC News for like 6 seconds, talking about Macklemore and Ed Sheeran. That was surreal.

GROSSEST MOMENT: The Indian vampire revenge Western HALF, which is a blast, featured a number of unexpectedly gnarly deaths, but the one that made me wince the hardest was murder by hot oil to the face. Takashi Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo was a bit of a letdown, but seeing corpses turned into meatballs? That’ll stick with me for a while.

BIGGEST TEARJERKER MOMENT: Julian is an animated film about a young Dominican-American boy who spends the Summer with his Abuela in Brooklyn and has dreams of becoming a mermaid. It’s a pretty obvious allegory for being queer/trans, and its gorgeous vibrant animated style combined with the message of being yourself just had me bawling. I’m pretty sure I muttered, “Fuck you, JK Rowling” at least once under my breath during it.

BEST STAR SPOT: James McAvoy was right behind me in the customs queue at Pearson Airport. He was wearing an especially tight t-shirt.

MEANEST MOMENT: When some guy behind me at the press screening for Stuffed said that Harry Melling looked like Charlie Kirk. Rude.

MY PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD THOUGHTS: I didn’t go to a ton of public screenings, and TIFF crowds’ enthusiasm is pretty high across the board, but you can get a good sense of where voters’ picks lie from those crowd reactions. They went nuts for Wild Horse Nine, giving Malkovich a standing ovation, and they laughed uproariously at every joke in The Debut. I heard the La Bola Negra premiere was riotous with joy. I Play Rocky was also a crowd-pleaser, apparently. TIFF does prefer it when world premieres win the award but it’s not unheard of for others to take the top spot. Last year, it was Hamnet, which played at Telluride first. If any TIFF world premiere was likely to take it, I imagine it would be I Play Rocky over Being Heumann. Remember when Green Book won it? I’m not a betting woman—gambling sucks!—but my top three predictions were The Debut, Bola Negra, and I Play Rocky, with Wild Horse Nine acting as a spoiler.

And the actual results? La Bola Negra took the number one spot, ahead of I Play Rocky and Being Heumann. Two very traditional biopics with TIFF world premieres were beaten by a sprawling queer meta-drama about fighting fascism and reasserting LGBTQ+ people’s place in the history books. I liked the film a lot although I wasn’t as rapturous as some people were, but I like this choice. How cool that this played so well with audiences. This also means that we have a new Best Picture contender to take on The Odyssey. That could be a really interesting race.

I’ll delve more into awards races regarding TIFF favourites with future Oscar Seasoning posts. I definitely have a lot to say about this year, which feels way more up in the air than this time last year. Those races are always far more intriguing to me than months of locked categories. Anything that staves off Michael, right?