The Toronto International Film Festival is back to seize your eyeballs for 11 days. Its 51st edition, running Sept. 10 to 20, will present more than 200 feature films, dozens of shorts and 10 TV series.
Presented below in alphabetical order are my must-see picks, two of them proudly Canadian. These choices reflect films I’ve already seen, predictions based on their makers’ past work and industry chatter.
La bola negra (Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi)
This queer Spanish historical drama from “Los Javis,” as the co-directors are known, sprawls with epic ambition. Three timelines swirl around Federico García Lorca’s real unfinished eponymous novel: a 1932 Granada casino where a young man is blackballed on suspicion of being gay; a 1937 Civil War romance between a young Nationalist soldier and the wounded Republican prisoner he’s guarding — who turns out to be Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, the poet’s own real-life last love; and a 2017 thread following a gay historian who inherits a mysterious bequest from the fascist grandfather he thought long dead. Penélope Cruz flat-out steals the picture in a small but vivid role as a sassy cabaret singer. Calvo and Ambrossi bring real passion to reclaiming Spain’s repressed queer history. I saw this film at Cannes, where it won the directing prize. My initial reaction was mixed, but I’ve thought about it ever since and I’m eager to see it again.
Bucking Fastard (Werner Herzog)
Werner Herzog movies automatically command attention, but this one especially so. It’s the only film playing at all of the fall’s four big fests: TIFF, Telluride, New York Film Festival and Venice. And it almost made the cut for Cannes last spring, although Herzog declined the slot he was offered. The fuss is all about the fact-inspired tale of Irish sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke, played by real-life siblings Rooney and Kate Mara, who speak in sync and fall for the same man (Orlando Bloom). Their competition heads to a courtroom, and media convene to chronicle the insanity. If it’s weird enough for Werner, it’s a must-see for me.
The Dreamed Adventure (Valeska Grisebach)
German director Valeska Grisebach’s first film in nearly a decade, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes, plants the idea that protagonist Veska (Yana Radeva), an archeologist overseeing a local historical dig, is merely a passive bystander to shady dealings in Bulgaria’s mountainous borderlands with Turkey, where old grudges never die and dirty money flows like blood. Veska’s unassuming manner make her seem like a reluctant witness to other people’s thuggery, which may include her old friend Said (Syuleyman Letifov), a building contractor seeking a character known as “The Raven.” Veska’s talent for digging up the past reaches well past her excavation site — and when a character remarks that the “era of men” is drawing to a close, you have every reason to believe it.
Fjord (Cristian Mungiu)
Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu resists the urge to make easy moral judgments — just see his Palme d’Or-winning abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and the faith-vs.-freedom dynamic of “Beyond the Hills.” Mungiu takes this esthetic to the limit with his latest film, the most recent Palme winner at Cannes, about a family of conservative Christian immigrants in a liberal Norwegian town. Led by Romanian father Mihai (Sebastian Stan) and Norwegian mother Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), the family struggles to fit in as locals ruthlessly judge their strict religious values and tough-love parenting. When adolescent daughter Elia arrives at gym class with troubling bruises, a teacher’s call to child services sets off custody battles that fracture both family and community. Mungiu lets the tensions speak for themselves, but he wants the audience to judge, an uneasy task.
Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (Josef Kubota Wladyka)
There’s a “Dirty Dancing” poster in her home and the 1987 rom-com is mentioned throughout this one, but Tokyo ballroom dancer Haru (Rinko Kikuchi, dazzling) isn’t inclined to wild romance — at first. She’s happily devoted to Luis (Alejandro Edda), her Mexican husband and dance partner, who shares her fondness for the cha-cha and rumba. All this changes in a heartbeat, as life often does, when Luis dies suddenly mid-routine, and Haru retreats into isolation. Coaxed back to the studio by her sister and cousin, she finds herself drawn to sexy new instructor Fedir (Alberto Guerra), who reawakens both her love of dance and her capacity for desire. We may think we know where this story is going, but filmmaker Josef Kubota Wladyka (“Catch the Fair One”) aims to confound and delight us with a surreal story of empathy and energy.
Josephine (Beth de Araújo)
Beth de Araújo’s powerful sophomore feature introduces Mason Reeves as the eight-year-old title character, who becomes the sole witness to a brutal rape in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park after getting separated from her father (Channing Tatum) during a jog. The violence is incomprehensible to the child and splits her life into a stark before and after. Tatum delivers a career-best performance as a devoted dad unequipped to help his daughter process what she’s seen. Her mother (Gemma Chan), a ballet dancer, is also adrift. As the adults navigate the moral and legal fallout, Reeves anchors the film with a heartbreaking, remarkably mature performance that announces her as a major new talent.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney! (Matthew Rankin)
Presenting the biggest head-scratcher of TIFF ’26: a National Film Board documentary about Canada’s 18th prime minister, slotted into the Midnight Madness program. Matthew Rankin is the wicked mastermind behind this delightfully daffy delve into an underappreciated era of Canada politics, the 1970s and 1980s. It was a time when being successful at business made you suspect in the public’s eye, despite Mulroney’s best efforts to portray himself as the humble “boy from Baie-Comeau” in small-town Quebec. Rankin hasn’t lost his knack for making Canuck history and culture seem strangely entertaining, as evidenced by previous films “The Twentieth Century” and “Universal Language.”
Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
Protagonists in Andrey Zvyagintsev films are like spiritual zombies. This describes Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), an affluent CEO in Russia in 2022, who finds his once-profitable transport company under siege from corporate pressures, staff defections, layoffs and compulsory military call-ups. Worst of all, Gleb also learns that his wife (Iris Lebedeva) is having an affair. Action must be taken, morals be damned. This slow-burning thriller by Russian exile Zvyagintsev, the Grand Prix winner at Cannes 2026, is one of the year’s best films. Adapted from Claude Chabrol’s 1969 film “The Unfaithful Wife,” Zvyagintsev’s first feature in nearly a decade, following a near-fatal illness, shows he’s lost none of his mastery of form and storytelling. Nor has he softened his focus on moral collapse, here embodied in a man whose personal downslide mirrors the corruption of Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine.
Sunburn (Serville Poblete)
On a broiling summer’s day in Toronto’s St. James Town community, there’s not much to do when the power fails except ponder the existence of God and the meaning of life, while grappling with growing up, finding love and dealing with a pesky zit. Serville Poblete’s colourful and funny hangout movie shares inspiration with artfully drifting films by Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith and F. Gary Gray, among many others, but there’s a real sense of T.O. here in its blend of immigrant communities and diverse characters. Joshua Obra and Dashawn Blackwood play close pals Shay and Vince, who are sure there’s more to life than what they’re getting.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (Bassam Tariq)
“Don’t underestimate Latif.” That’s one hell of an understatement regarding Oscar winner Mahershala Ali’s lethal protagonist in Bassam Tariq’s hitman thriller, which the duo made after plans for after a “Blade” reboot fell through. Recalling Forest Whitaker’s righteous sword-swinger in Jim Jarmusch’s “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” Latif is a devout Muslim and devoted family man with a code of ethics regarding his trade. He doesn’t use guns and he kills only those he deems deserving of death. His principles are put to the test after his wife dies and he becomes a single parent of three children, including a baby girl whose life depends on breast milk that’s difficult to obtain. Word is the film, which topped the Star’s “Chasing the Buzz” pre-TIFF poll, is both a brilliant actioner and an actors’ showcase.
Honourable mentions
I also want to shout out the multiple films about Canadian heroes and colourful characters being celebrated at TIFF ’26. The list includes “The Stunt Driver” (Michael Dowse), the true story of daredevil Ken Carter; “Villeneuve: the Rise of a Legend” (Yan Lanouette Turgeon), a biopic about Formula One racing star Gilles Villeneuve; “Run Terry Run” (Sean Menard), a documentary about Terry Fox’s 1980 Marathon of Hope run; “Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story” (Adrian Buitenhuis), about Hansen’s global wheelchair odyssey; and “Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple” (Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn), a doc about the late Rush drummer.
