The 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which wraps up Sunday, celebrated a half-century of cinema love and delivered a parade of outstanding performances.
From Jessie Buckley’s grieving mother in “Hamnet” to Jacob Elordi’s electrifying Creature in “Frankenstein,” from Renate Reinsve’s estranged daughter in “Sentimental Value” to Sydney Sweeney’s and Dwayne Johnson’s explosive brawlers in their respective breakouts, “Christy” and “The Smashing Machine,” this year overflowed with astonishing acting.
These standout turns and others anchor the 10 films I most admired at TIFF 2025, ranked in order of preference and which I’ve considered for their Oscar potential (including the new best casting prize). Watch for these movies on big screens and streaming services in the weeks and months to come.
Hamnet
A film of whispers and symbols, magic and anguish, drawn by Chloé Zhao from Shakespearean legend, Maggie O’Farrell’s celebrated novel and astute observations of life. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal head a strong cast as Agnes and William, who are as volcanic in love as they are in grief. Jacobi Jupe is terrific as Hamnet, the young son whose tragic loss unleashes torrents but also art. Max Richter’s score is one of the year’s best, empathetic and engaging. Altogether magnificent.
Possible Oscars: best picture, director, casting, actress (Buckley), supporting actor (Mescal), adapted screenplay, original score, tech awards.
Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro finally gets to tell the Mary Shelley monster story of his boyhood dreams. It’s a thing of grotesque beauty, body horror of such operatic spectacle and emotional impact, it makes you want to applaud with two severed hands. Jacob Elordi is the studly Creature; Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein is a cross between Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff and Joseph Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz. It’s a fine time at the movies for lovers of vivid nightmares.
Possible Oscars: best picture, director, casting, actor (Isaac), supporting actor (Elordi), supporting actress (Mia Goth), adapted screenplay, original score, tech awards.
Sentimental Value
My favourite film from Cannes 2025 also connected with audiences at TIFF. Renate Reinsve and Elle Fanning sparkle like twin diamonds in Joachim Trier’s intricately wrought family drama, where every glance cuts to the quick. Stellan Skarsgård mesmerizes as a narcissistic director seeking to cast his estranged daughter (Reinsve) in a film mirroring their domestic turmoil. She recoils, unwilling to reopen old wounds, leaving the role instead to an American interloper (Fanning), who bears an uncanny resemblance to her younger self. It’s an intoxicating duel of art and memory, rooted in piercing emotions.
Possible Oscars: best picture, international feature, director, casting, actress (Reinsve), actor (Skarsgård), supporting actress (Fanning), original screenplay.
Rental Family
Found in translation. Brendan Fraser is a conflicted faker-for-hire in Tokyo in Hikari’s magical tale about locating your heart in an increasingly artificial world. He can speak the language, more or less, but understanding a culture where it’s OK to rent an actor to play an absent family member is a considerably tougher task, especially when he meets a fatherless girl (Shannon Gorman) who needs more than a pretend dad. Hikari’s fluid filmmaking is alert to nuance, humour and wisdom in unexpected places, and she makes Tokyo looks absolutely luminous.
Possible Oscars: best picture, director, casting, actor (Fraser), supporting actor (Akira Emoto), original screenplay, tech awards.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
I’m all shook up over “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann’s archival documentary followup, which sets a new standard for concert movies. Using previously unseen performances culled from a cache of 59 hours of footage and narrated by the King himself, it gives us back the vital Elvis of happy legend instead of the tragic one. Elvis has never sounded better on film, especially on classics like “Suspicious Minds,” which got the Princess of Wales premiere audience up on its feet and dancing.
Possible Oscars: best documentary feature, tech awards.
Christy
Forget the rom-coms, the ensemble TV roles and the dumb blue jeans ad. This is Sydney Sweeney’s moment to grab the brass ring in a leading role, and she does so by way of the boxing ring, with astonishing passion and ferocity. She’s Christy Martin, a trail-blazing women’s boxer known as “Coal Miner’s Daughter” due to her West Virginian roots and family occupation.
Having first put on the gloves for a lark in the ’80s, she knocked down expectations about a sport traditionally seen as a man’s domain. She did so while also fighting prejudice about her sexual orientation and the toxicity of her husband and coach, Jim Martin (Ben Foster), a man 25 years her senior who also abused and belittled her. The film by David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) is a tough watch — the scenes of domestic violence are more brutal than any of the boxing matches — but Sweeney’s acting fire burns ever brighter.
Possible Oscars: best picture, director, actress (Sweeney), supporting actor (Foster).
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
The third Benoit Blanc whodunit is the best yet. Daniel Craig’s grinning gumshoe is funkier and more focused, as writer-director Rian Johnson goes back to the church of genre for a dark, twisting and satisfying tale that’s also quite funny. Set in a gothic Catholic parish and graveyard, the story follows Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a young boxer turned priest trying to navigate faith and conflict under controlling Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). When a shocking murder occurs at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude parish during Good Friday services, secrets surface throughout the church community. Johnson juggles the suspense with skill and wit, while O’Connor and Glenn Close both offer thoughtful, engaging performances that deepen the mystery and its emotional stakes.
Possible Oscars: best picture, director, casting, actor (O’Connor), supporting actress (Close), original screenplay.
No Other Choice
“I’ve got it all!” exults paper industry manager Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun of “Squid Game”) as he hugs his family and celebrates their affluence. Ah, but this a film by Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”), the South Korean master of dark plot turns, and you know Man-soo’s joy, along with his job and dignity, are not going to last. Park’s latest is a razor’s-edge black comedy/thriller about survival in a collapsing job market. He skewers heartless capitalism and mindless AI use with grim laughs, stylized violence and clever camera work. The director’s sharp eye turns boardrooms and back alleys alike into stages of absurd spectacle, where desperation breeds both terror and hilarity. Son Ye-jin brings emotional ballast as Man-soo’s conflicted wife, grounding the satire in humanity and reminding us of the real lives caught in capitalism’s crushing gears.
Possible Oscars: best international feature, casting.
The President’s Cake
It’s going to be hard to top Baneen Ahmad Nayyef’s turn as the best performance by a child actor this year. She’s the heart-tugging star of this tale set in 1990s Iraq, inspired by writer-director Hasan Hadi’s own childhood. Lamia (Nayyef) is a nine-year-old who lives with her pet rooster and her impoverished, ailing grandmother, Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), in the marshes of Iraq. When Lamia is selected at school to bake a mandatory cake for Saddam Hussein’s upcoming birthday or face harsh punishment, she and Bibi must travel to Baghdad to get scarce and expensive ingredients, a dangerous, difficult task. Luminous lensing helps lift this portrait of desperate lives under a brutal, corrupt regime.
Possible Oscars: best international feature, original screenplay.
The Smashing Machine
Gritty realist Benny Safdie directs flamboyant showman Dwayne Johnson, making for an unlikely but exuberant combo in this bruising saga of mixed martial arts brawling, set in 1997-2000 before the big money flowed. Johnson vanishes behind prosthetics, wig, blood and perspiration playing UFC icon Mark Kerr, who resembles a human version of Wreck-It Ralph. He’s both ferocious and tender, fighting for the “orgasmic” thrill of pulverizing opponents but struggling to maintain a loving relationship with his devoted girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt). Supporting performances from real UFC legends and a Kerr cameo add to the palpable naturalism of this sweat fest, which aims for the heart rather than the head.
Possible Oscars: best director, actor (Johnson), supporting actress (Blunt).
