The 2026 Toronto International Film Festival has come to a close, the glitzy parties moving on to their next buzzy festival stop and the infamous Scotiabank escalator having once again broken down. With the fest in the rear-view, it’s time to look back at the 30 or so films I watched in preparation for and on the ground in Toronto.
While I saw plenty of movies I enjoyed and would recommend, ranging from The Stunt Driver to Wild Horse Nine, films like Vintage Violence and Everybody Wants To F*ck Me left me less enthused about the prospect of marching back to the theater to see even more movies. Others, though, like the titles listed below, have stayed with me long after the credits. A few titles I caught before the festival—like Bitter Christmas, Hombre Al Agua, and Edward Said: Between Worlds—still hold as a few of my festival favorites, but here are the rest of the well-deserving titles on my best-of list.
By chance, I started my festival with this beautiful ode to relationships, and quite a few films from the festival fell short of impressing or moving me as much as Mike Leigh’s swan song. Tender Loving Care is so deceptively gentle, it could be described as the kind of movie where “nothing happens,” but that’s far from the truth. There are so many moments where the various characters step up for one another—whether that’s opening up your home to your best mate after a bad break up, taking your mom out for a night out of the house for some laughs, or stepping in for a relative in need. True to its title, the movie is a tender one, but don’t mistake its quiet sincerity for stagnation. There’s so much life to be found over the glasses of shared wine and afternoon tea, and Leigh fills his story in with moments of tough love, unwavering support, and a little kindness, which feels in such short supply both onscreen and off these days. Also, Kate O’Flynn is incredible as the heartbroken friend and daughter who’s called upon to help when her father falls ill.
The Julia Set
Niki Byrne’s coming-of-age drama The Julia Set is much stronger and smarter than the average movie aimed at younger audiences. One Battle After Another‘s Chase Infiniti is Julia, a freshman who begins to make a name for herself in her math department, earning the interest of one of her older TAs, Pascal (The Summer I Turned Pretty alum Christopher Briney). In A Star Is Born situation, she continues to rise while her new boyfriend flounders. The pressure to succeed gets to him, and he tries to blame her for his failures. With co-stars like Carmen Ejogo, Nina Hoss, Jason Isaacs, and Gillian Anderson, The Julia Set is an unnerving look at who gets the opportunities to succeed and who has to fight for every chance to prove themselves. It’s an examination of privilege, wealth, class, and race on campus at a time when the government is trying to suppress discussing those real-world differences. Thanks to Infiniti’s excellent performance and Byrne’s heartfelt script, the film also celebrates the students who have had to make their own way in class and beyond.
Jesse Eisenberg’s witty satire of a local community theater production feels like it was engineered at a musical lab at the Eugene O’Neill Center, but the appeal of The Debut extends beyond the theater set. The spotlight is on Julianne Moore as Mona, a housewife who feels invisible to her family until she finds community at a local production of a (fictional) old musical, Nosy Neighbors. But the newcomer to the stage requires a lot of work, and it’s up to her impresario and director Jerry (Paul Giamatti) to help her reach her full potential—if she doesn’t lose the plot first. The matchup of Moore and Giamatti is an absolute thrill to watch as they push each other’s character further and further into absurdity. With Bernadette Peters’ blessing and a song, The Debut is the kind of light and funny grown-up comedy that harkens back to another era, the kind of sophisticated fare that would have played for at least a year or more at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.
Everytime
Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Sandra Wollner’s devastating meditation on grief and memory begins at the end of a teenage girl’s life after tragedy strikes. Her mother and sister are left grieving her loss when the girl’s boyfriend reenters their lives and breaks open the fragile wounds they’ve tried to heal separately. The movie doesn’t just stop at the heartbreak of loss, but continues walking in its characters’ grief, tipping into surrealism and the fantastical in ways that feel both grounded yet dreamy. This film’s beguiling presence and swoony imagery, often following its characters into nature to soften the blow death has dealt this family, have haunted me since I saw it. Despite its bleak premise, I already want to revisit it, just to think about Everytime longer; although I know in my heart of hearts, I won’t logically understand it any better, I just want to sit in the emotional portrait Wollner’s created to process the unthinkable.
Stuffed
Horror fans with a love of Sweeney Todd rejoice: There’s a taxidermy musical that’s scurried from the gutters of off-Broadway theater and taken residence in a cartoonishly sour-looking industrial town that would look at home in the world of A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Theo Rhys’ unhinged horror romance Stuffed follows Araminta (Jodi Comer), a taxidermist with a wild dream of stuffing a willing human subject. She finds such a man in Bernie (Harry Melling), a lonely cog in a factory. In preparation for this ghoulish experiment, the unlikely couple find love, then question whether or not to move ahead with their morbid plans. Despite the gross body horror and taxidermied creatures, Stuffed is weirdly sweet, in a Romeo And Juliet meets Frankenstein kind of way. Comer is both Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett as Araminta, a wild card if there was ever one, while Melling doubles down on his Pillion pleasing skills, playing a character who’s giving himself up if it means he will be remembered. My screening had the most walkouts of any TIFF movies I saw this year, but I was entirely charmed by Comer and Melling’s performances and singing in Rhys’ unforgettable debut.
Elsinore
I was so close to making it through TIFF without crying during a movie, but Andrew Scott had me (and many of my seatmates) silently wiping away tears over his virtuoso performance in Elsinore. Scott plays actor Ian Charleson, the Chariots Of Fire star who can’t shake off his award-winning glory for more work, until Daniel Day-Lewis storms off a production of Hamlet in England’s National Theater. Charleson, fighting against AIDS complications, takes the part despite the risks, to put on one last performance. Surrounded by exceptional co-stars like Olivia Colman as a determined AIDS specialist and Billie Piper as Charleson’s best friend, Scott gives a showstopping performance as he wrestles with the play’s themes of death and the toll performing takes on body. Scott’s ability to embody both the physical and emotional pain of reaching for one last dream before the grave is so remarkable I looked past Simon Stone’s questionable directing choices, like using handheld cameras at sensitive times and employing montages that detract from the strength of Scott’s performance.
I Play Rocky
I’m just as surprised as you are to see a Peter Farrelly film anywhere near a best-of list after the abomination that is Green Book. Thankfully, he’s turned a corner with this scrappy crowdpleaser about one of the best underdog stories in Hollywood history. I Play Rocky recounts the success story of Sylvester Stallone (Anthony Ippolito), a struggling actor who once starred in cheap pornos and Roger Corman movies before slipping his script for Rocky under the door at a production office. The producing team loves his story, but can’t make Stallone drop his demand to play Rocky, so they make the concessions needed to risk it all on a complete unknown. The rest, as they say, is Hollywood history. At times, I Play Rocky borders dangerously on Bohemian Rhapsody-levels of biopic cheese, but Ippolito channels both Stallone’s indistinguishable speech and his unmatched bravado that it’s thrillingly entertaining. Hollywood loves movies mythologizing its magic, and I Play Rocky plays like a valentine to the down-and-out dreamers who want nothing more than to make movies.