The Air Canada strike is over, virtual screenings are long behind us and, even if there is more than a strong whiff of controversy over its programming block, the Toronto International Film Festival seems to be back in full form for its landmark 50th annual edition.
But with 292 titles to choose from (216 features, 10 television series, 66 shorts), ticket-buyers need all the help they can get to know where to focus their attention, and which films to keep on their radar post-TIFF. To that end, The Globe has been busy combing this year’s slate to bring you our most anticipated TIFF 2025 titles.
TIFF Picks from Barry Hertz
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
A scene from the film “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.”HO/The Canadian Press
His follow-up to BlackBerry, director Matt Johnson’s newest film is a time-travel buddy comedy based on his cult web series (which then spawned a two-season Viceland run) and it’s going to make a whole lotta heads roll. The Toronto Police Service, the Toronto Transit Commission, the city’s tourism board, the estates of celebrities both domestic and international are going to be asking themselves (or their legal teams) some tough questions after watching the film, so ingeniously and brazenly have Johnson and his co-star/co-writer Jay McCarrol smuggled their movie into their seemingly impenetrable operations. After enjoying a riotous world premiere at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Tex., this spring, Nirvanna – which is premiering at 11:59 p.m. on TIFF’s opening night – is destined to be the most memorable screening the city has hosted in years.
Mile End Kicks
Actor Barbie Ferreira in Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks, in which she plays a music critic who moves to Montreal in 2011 to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s album “Jagged Little Pill.”HO/The Canadian Press
After charming TIFF audiences with her feature directorial debut, I Like Movies, in 2022, Canadian director (and sometime Globe and Mail arts writer) Chandler Levack is back with this deeply personal rom-com about music, Montreal and the messiest kind of twentysomething sex. Following a young arts journalist as she escapes her life in Toronto for the buzzy energy of La Belle Province circa 2011, the film boasts a killer soundtrack and a cast of young actors just about ready to pop (led by Euphoria star Barbie Ferreira and The Iron Claw’s Stanley Simons). Mile End Kicks just might repair Anglo-Franco relations for a new generation.
The Smashing Machine
Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine, where he plays real-life mixed-martial arts fighter Mark Kerr who struggles to find success in and out of the ring.Ken Hirama/The Associated Press
There are only two corners of the Earth Dwayne Johnson has not yet conquered: the White House and the Oscars stage. While it might be a few more years until we can salute President Rock, the Academy Awards could be in Johnson’s sights in just a few months thanks to what looks like a career-altering performance in The Smashing Machine. Under heavy prosthetics and buckets of fake blood, Johnson plays real-life mixed-martial arts fighter Mark Kerr, who struggles to find success both in and out of the ring. The film might seem like just another attempt to ape the gritty arc of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, but The Smashing Machine is directed by Benny Safdie, one half of the filmmaking brothers who gave the world the wonderfully jittery movies Uncut Gems and Good Time. Sold.
TIFF Picks from Johanna Schneller
Cover-Up
Cover-Up is a documentary about the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh who made a career of exposing scandals including the My Lai massacre, Watergate, Abu Ghraib.TIFF/Supplied
If, like me, you’re frightened by what’s happening to journalism – the clamour of the opinion-verse, the shuttering of fact-based news organizations – and if, like me, you’re terrified of corrupt political leaders whose agendas depend on a weak and mistrusted press, then, like me, you will line up to see Cover-Up, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s documentary about the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who made a career of exposing scandals: the My Lai massacre, Watergate, Abu Ghraib. But knowing Poitras’s (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed) and Obenhaus’s work, this won’t be a hagiography. Hersh is infamously mistrustful and cranky. It took him 20 years to agree to this film. Its arrival now, alas, couldn’t be timelier.
Dinner with Friends
Sasha Leigh Henry’s feature directorial debut Dinner with Friends tells a story almost exclusively through dinner parties.TIFF/Supplied
It’s been 42 years since a bunch of old college buddies reunited (and made a splash at TIFF) in The Big Chill. And it’s been ages since anyone has made a mid-budget dramedy that hit the zeitgeist so squarely about the pleasures, tensions, loyalties and disappointments of adult friends. So I’m really looking forward to Dinner with Friends, the feature directorial debut of Sasha Leigh Henry, a writer/director/producer who’s been making things happen in Canadian film and television for the past decade. With eight millennial characters played by rising actors including Tattiawna Jones (Murderbot) and Rakhee Morzaria (Run the Burbs), Henry tells her story almost exclusively through dinner parties – where, as we know, all the real dramas happen.
Nika & Madison
In Eva Thomas’s Nika & Madison, a university student winds up in the back of a cop cruiser, her ex-best-friend Nika rescues her, and the two are forced together on the run.TIFF/Supplied
One of the great pleasures of TIFF-going is sitting in an audience that’s discovering a fresh, urgent talent together. I’m hoping Nika & Madison is one of those experiences. Co-written and directed by Eva Thomas, expanding on her short film Redlights (TIFF 2023), it tells a story that too many people are ignorant about, which too many others know far too well: the abuse Indigenous people endure from the police, who are supposed to protect them. After a night in her hometown bar, university student Madison (Star Slade) winds up in the back of a cop cruiser; her ex-best-friend Nika (Ellyn Jade) rescues her, and the two are forced together on the run. Bonus: Thomas’s co-writer is Michael McGowan, who’s made some of my favourite Canadian films.
TIFF Picks from Kate Taylor
Hamnet
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew in director Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet.Agata Grzybowska/FOCUS FEATURES/Supplied
Shakespeare’s plays are so persistent yet his life is so shadowy, speculative biography is irresistible. To a long list that includes everything from the wild theories of the Oxonians and Baconians (who dispute his authorship and propose other candidates) to the pleasing entertainment of 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, add Hamnet, a literary origin story with a feminist twist. The novel by Maggie O’Farrell and now the film by Chloé Zhao focus on the playwright’s wife, Anne Hathaway, known as Agnes, and the loss of the Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Sounds like Hamlet? Yes, Zhao promises a story both psychological and emotional. Costume drama is very different territory from her Oscar-winning 2020 hit Nomadland, that bittersweet exploration of an American camper-van community, but the talent she showed for observing the social constrictions of a unique situation bodes well for the history piece. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal star.
Lovely Day
Lovely Day promises a compelling view of multicultural undercurrents in Quebec society, with the obvious comic potential of the wedding day story.TIFF/Supplied
Quebec director Philippe Falardeau, always a reliable TIFF presence, is back working in French (with some Arabic and English, too) after his 2016 boxing movie Chuck. There he dodged boxing movie clichés; this time with Lovely Day, he will be waltzing around wedding movie tropes. The film is adapted with Alain Farah from his autobiographical novel Mille secrets mille dangers and tells the story of a stressed out groom (Neil Elias) in a fractured timeline where the day repeats itself. Like Monsieur Lazhar, Falardeau’s gentle 2012 Oscar nominee, Lovely Day promises a compelling view of multicultural undercurrents in Quebec society – alongside the obvious comic potential of the big-day story.
A Useful Ghost
Thai TV writer Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature combines and defies multiple genres, including romance, horror and comedy.TIFF/Supplied
There’s a special talent to writing film blurbs and TIFF programmer June Kim commands attention for A Useful Ghost. A twisty story of a woman poisoned by dust inhalation whose ghost now inhabits a vacuum in an appliance factory, the debut feature from Thai TV writer Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke combines and defies multiple genres, including romance, horror and comedy. Kim makes it sound utterly seductive and many at the Cannes festival agreed, awarding it the Grand Prize of Critics’ Week.
TIFF Picks from Rebecca Tucker
Modern Whore
Toronto-based director Nicole Bazuin promises an intersectional look at what it means to be a sex worker, knocking down misconceptions and humanizing its subjects.TIFF/Supplied
Andrea Werhun is no stranger to TIFF: She was a consultant on best picture winner Anora, which screened at the festival in 2024, and acted in Paying for It, also at TIFF last year. Now, she steps into the spotlight with this documentary, which follows her experiences as an escort and exotic dancer. Toronto-based director Nicole Bazuin promises an unflinching, intersectional look at what it means to be a sex worker, knocking down misconceptions and fully humanizing its subjects; TIFF’s website write-up promises that the doc “may also be the most audacious and engaging movie ever made about the oldest profession.”
Canceled: The Paula Deen Story
Documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story re-examines the celebrity chef’s downfall in 2013.TIFF/Supplied
In 2013, when celebrity chef Paula Deen lost her Food Network show over her admission of having used a racial slur in the past, the term “cancel culture” was not yet part of common vernacular. But Deen’s downfall over her admission – which came in a court deposition after Deen was sued by an employee for racial discrimination and sexual harassment – was an early example of just how quickly the public can turn on a beloved figure after a perceived moral wrongdoing, and how swiftly that change in public opinion can lead to their, well, cancellation. This documentary from Billy Corben (Cocaine Cowboys) promises to re-examine Deen’s downfall specifically, and the impulse to cancel public figures in general.
Maddie’s Secret
John Early’s directorial debut focuses on a food influencer struggling to conceal her eating disorder.TIFF/Supplied
John Early is what you’d call an “alternative comedian,” so it’s no surprise that his directorial debut has a bit of an oddball bent. The film focuses on Maddie Ralph (played by Early), a food influencer struggling to conceal her eating disorder. Early’s satire of influencer culture co-stars some of his best alt-comic besties, including Kate Berlant, Vanessa Bayer and Conner O’Malley.
TIFF Picks from Brad Wheeler
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is the director’s follow-up to his 2022 fever-dream biopic Elvis.TIFF/Supplied
Baz Luhrmann just can’t leave Elvis’s building. The director follows up his 2022 fever-dream biopic Elvis with a documentary that features long-lost footage from the jumpsuit-wearing, sideburn-flaring, Polk Salad Annie-singing King of Rock ’n’ Roll’s Las Vegas residency in 1970. TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey bills the film as the “most poignant account of Presley to date.” Who knew Luhrmann could love his subject tender?
Nuremberg
Rami Malek and Russell Crowe star in James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg, set during the postwar trials.TIFF/Supplied
In a drama directed by James Vanderbilt and set during the postwar Nuremberg Trials, Rami Malek plays a U.S. army psychiatrist who interviews the rotund Nazi Hermann Goring, portrayed by Russell Crowe. This film’s Goring is eerily charismatic while under interrogation, suggesting an Anthony Hopkins/Jodie Foster dynamic, à la The Silence of the Lambs.
Space Cadet
Kid Koala has adapted his graphic novel about an astronaut girl and her guardian robot for the screen, with a soundtrack that features original songs by Karen O and others.TIFF/Supplied
People are talking about Space Cadet, an animated film that is dialogue-free. The Canadian scratch DJ and all-around far-out creator Kid Koala has adapted his graphic novel about an astronaut girl and her guardian robot for the screen, with a soundtrack that features original songs by Karen O and others. Kid Koala likes to keep it weird, with the assumption that audiences will catch on later. Here’s betting that audiences will be on board with this 86-minute adventure right away.