The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the world’s best film festivals and if the lineup they released is any indication, this year could be one for the books. I’ll be heading out to the festival tomorrow to cover for the first time since 2023 and I am very excited to be returning. There’s a strong mix of Oscar contenders, world cinema treasures and undiscovered gems. You can check out a full list of movies I’m aiming to watch but here are the 10 movies I’m most excited to see at the festival.
Dead Man’s Wire
Featuring captivating performances from Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino, Gus Van Sant’s latest recreates the strange, fascinating true story of the 1977 kidnapping that made aspiring Indianapolis entrepreneur Tony Kiritsis into an eccentric outlaw folk hero.
Hamnet
Academy Award–winning director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, TIFF ’20 People’s Choice Award) helms this lush and tender drama about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his family, as seen through the eyes of his thoughtful wife Agnes (a luminous Jessie Buckley).
Hedda
Transplanted to mid-century England, Candyman director Nia DaCosta’s bold reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s play features a magnetic lead performance from Tessa Thompson (Passing) in a fresh, feminist game of power.
Frankenstein
Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s visually sumptuous adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece finds Oscar Isaac as the brilliant scientist whose unearthly creation, eerily and ingeniously conjured by Jacob Elordi, blurs the boundaries between life, death, and madness.
No Other Choice
Adapted from a novel by Donald E. Westlake (The Ax), this incisive, darkly comic satire from Park Chan-wook (TIFF ’22’s Decision to Leave) follows a newly unemployed man who, desperate to land a coveted position, hatches a ruthless plan to dispatch his competition.
The Ugly
Acclaimed director Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) trades spectacle for intimacy with a haunting tale of memory and moral ambiguity, about a son’s search for truth and a past that refuses to stay buried.
Between Dreams and Hope
A trans man and his partner travel to a remote Iranian village to face his estranged father and obtain documents that would permit them to live authentically, in visionary director Farnoosh Samadi’s bold queer love story.
Dinner With Friends
Dinner with Friends brings viewers inside a fractured group of eight longtime friends who intermittently come together for dinner parties to share in the joys and pains of being adults today.
The Fence
Claire Denis focuses on a British-owned construction site in Africa where the supervisor (Matt Dillon) must deal with the death of one of his workers and a local villager (Isaach De Bankolé) who arrives demanding answers.
It Was Just an Accident
Winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, the latest from Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi — his first following his most recent prison sentence — follows a group of citizens pondering revenge against a man they believe was their torturer.