TIFF 2026: “IDDA,” “The World Before”

Premiering in the Platform section at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, these two films tackle women growing up and confronting their changing feelings, whether it’s a contentious friendship in Irene Dionisio’s Italian drama IDDA, or a young girl’s newfound romantic yearnings for her childhood friend in Yoon Dan-bi’s Korean drama The World Before. While […]

TIFF 2026: “Head to Head,” “Salvation”

These two films, blending drama with shades of black comedy, premiering in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival‘s Discovery section tackle current trends, with varying degrees of success: Ghasideh Golmakani’s self-reflexive film about filmmaking and the oppressive restrictions imposed on women in Iran, Head to Head, and Tom Nicoll’s anxiety-inducing study of the dark side […]

TIFF 2026: “Children Untold”

Miwa Nishikawa’s riveting historical drama Children Untold stems from rather unique origins: the story for the writer and director’s feature film is derived from her own, as yet unpublished, novel, inspired in turn by research and archival testimony she began gathering while working on her 2020 movie Under the Open Sky, whose protagonist was modeled […]

TIFF 2026: “Ah Girl,” “Memories of a Forest,” “Nosotros”

The burden of expectations- those of family, culture, and society- permeate these three films screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, tackling the topic in very different stories across different continents. All first features, Katharina Rahl’s Memories of a Forest and Joaquín Ruano’s Nosotros, make their international and world premieres, respectively, in the festival’s […]

TIFF 2025: “Aki”

You won’t hear a word of spoken dialogue in Darlene Naponse’s Aki, an observational documentary depicting life in the indigenous Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory of Northern Ontario. But the movie is far from silent. Naponse— a native of the region— uses her connection with the community to craft a sonically and visually rich story of the […]

TIFF 2025: “Ghost School”

At the start of Seemab Gul’s debut feature film Ghost School (Pakistan’s sole entry in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival), curious 10-year-old Rabia (Nazualiya Arsalan), backpack slung over her shoulders, sets off for school like any other day. But what awaits her there is a far from average sight: a guard standing outside the […]

TIFF Review: “Querido Trópico”

Fractured mother/daughter relationships make ripe stories for some of the most compelling cinema, even when they are versions of the same tale we’ve seen time and time again. That statement certainly applies to Querido Trópico (Beloved Tropic), a Panamanian drama that is the first narrative feature from director Ana Endara (who has four feature-length documentaries […]

TIFF Review: “Seagrass”

The long toots of the ferry horn have a lilting, almost musical sound, one that emphasizes the playful mood of the two little girls running around the boat deck. There’s not a cloud in the sky. The calm blue water seems to stretch into infinity. The girls pester their dad for a dollar for some […]

TIFF 22 Female Filmmaker Roundup

When I attended the Toronto International Film Festival for the first time this year, I really wanted to prioritize watching films by female filmmakers, of which the festival seemed to have a great slate this year. Out of the 31 movies I saw at the festival, 11 of them were by female directors—a decent number, […]

TIFF Review: “Chevalier”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 Special Presentations World Premiere “Chevalier” introduces its subject in spectacularly dynamic fashion: Joseph Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) walks into a concert held by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart like he owns the place, and challenges the famed composer to a duel, their violins their weapons. The resulting face-off, during which Joseph and […]