{"id":766346,"date":"2026-09-10T16:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T16:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/766346\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T16:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T16:56:09","slug":"from-chris-rock-to-helen-mirren-10-films-to-look-out-for-at-the-toronto-film-festival-2026-toronto-film-festival-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/766346\/","title":{"rendered":"From Chris Rock to Helen Mirren: 10 films to look out for at the Toronto film festival 2026 | Toronto film festival 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defining Toronto\u2019s<\/a> place within the fall festival season has become a little harder in recent years. As fewer studios and film-makers want to brave the risks that come attached to premiering on such a stage (last year\u2019s best picture winner One Battle After Another skipped festivals entirely and went straight to cinema), those that do tend to prefer Venice<\/a>, Telluride<\/a> and, especially this year, New York.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s biggest Toronto breakout was Obsession<\/a>, a micro-budget, up-for-sale horror that played as part of the midnight madness strand, and while that film is now being pushed<\/a> as an awards contender, it\u2019s not what crowds and pundits typically expect from the starry, prestige-first festival. Is it best viewed now as a rough-and-ready genre hub or maybe a sales market, where perhaps we can still expect some Oscar contenders to be unveiled. It can make figuring out what to see and what to avoid a little harder \u2013 but here are some films<\/a> to keep an eye on over the next week or so.<\/p>\n

The Life and Deaths of Wilson SheddAmanda Seyfried in The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd. Photograph: Toronto film festival<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s Venice-premiering drama The Testament of Ann Lee<\/a> might not have secured Amanda Seyfried<\/a> the Oscar nomination the campaign had intended for her but it was yet another fascinating stop on the actor\u2019s recent reinvention tour. Highs have also included being the very best thing in the smash hit thriller The Housemaid<\/a> and deservedly winning all the awards for The Dropout<\/a>, while the lows have been the misbegotten dirge drama shows The Crowded Room and Long Bright River. She continues to avoid the easy options with her role in Tim Blake Nelson\u2019s unusual and unsettling prison drama The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, playing a teacher who develops feelings for a prisoner, played by Scoot McNairy. It\u2019s set to be a complicated watch about the limits of empathy and forgiveness and could be one of the most talked-about films of the festival.<\/p>\n

Misty Green<\/p>\n

Toronto is a festival known more for its tendency to showcase A-listers rather than break newcomers. But last year it saw the world premiere of a little horror film called Obsession, which made instant stars<\/a> of director Curry Barker<\/a> and lead actor Inde Navarrette, who many are now tipping for Oscar consideration. The lead of Chris Rock<\/a>\u2019s Hollywood-set drama Misty Green is by no means new to the industry, but British actor Rosalind Eleazar<\/a> is known more by some for stage work, and to most for being in various TV shows such as Slow Horses and a Harlan Coben Netflix thriller. That\u2019s likely to change after a buzzy Saturday night premiere, even surrounded by better-known faces such as Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya (visibly on screen for the first time in four years!), Anna Kendrick and Rock himself. She might be playing a struggling actor on screen but in what\u2019s looking like a strangely underpowered best actress race, this could be the role that nudges Eleazar into the big time.<\/p>\n

A Talent for Murder<\/p>\n

There are echoes of Ira Levin\u2019s delicious 1978 play turned 1982 movie Deathtrap in the set-up and trailer for the playful thriller A Talent for Murder, which one could say is taking the Knives Out spot without a new Rian Johnson mystery to premiere (all three have previously been unveiled at Toronto). It shares similar ingredients to the Caine\/Reeves caper \u2013 based on a play<\/a>, two-person dynamic, remote house, potentially devious writer, some left-turn twists \u2013 and one can only hope it provides at least some of the same satisfaction. Helen Mirren<\/a> plays a fictionalised Patricia Highsmith, whose remote solitude is interrupted by Alden Ehrenreich\u2019s young agent, who has been sent to insist she write one final Tom Ripley book. The two then embark on a game to plot a murder with intentions in the dark. It offers a perfectly juicy role for Mirren while, after Fair Play<\/a>, Weapons<\/a> and a deserved Tony win<\/a>, I remain thrilled by the ongoing Ehrenreich-aissance.<\/p>\n

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother<\/p>\n

After winning<\/a> two<\/a> best supporting acting Oscars, one would have assumed that Mahershala Ali<\/a> would be an inescapable presence in Hollywood. But for reasons he\u2019s hinted at were out of his control (he recently<\/a> told GQ<\/a> that \u201csome of how quiet I\u2019ve been is not really of my own choosing\u201d) there have been only a handful of roles, none of them leads. His much-anticipated, and teased on-screen, turn as Blade ended up collapsing and instead he teamed up with that film\u2019s once-attached director, Mogul Mowgli<\/a>\u2019s Bassam Tariq, for something smaller instead, the religious revenge thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. He stars as an assassin who is forced to play sole parent to three children after his wife dies while also getting caught in a web of cults, porn and breast milk. In the overcrowded<\/a> subgenre of hitman movies, this aims to bring something new and unusual to the table and remind us \u2013 and Hollywood \u2013 how compelling Ali can be.<\/p>\n

I Play Rocky<\/p>\n

Ever since Green Book went from Toronto crowd-pleaser<\/a> to controversial<\/a> best picture<\/a> Oscar winner, director Peter Farrelly hasn\u2019t quite mastered his graduation from gross-out comedy king to serious film-maker. There\u2019s been a Zac Efron Vietnam movie<\/a> no one saw, a Zac Efron comedy<\/a> no one remembers and a Mark Wahlberg caper<\/a> no one liked, but his latest is unlikely to be as easily ignored. I Play Rocky tells the story of how small-time actor Sylvester Stallone, played by Anthony Ippolito, wrote an industry-shifting screenplay that became a franchise-spawning smash hit. It\u2019s fair to be wary of Hollywood myth-making but this is a genuinely fascinating backstory to a film that has truly endured \u2013 and without a great deal of obvious, old-fashioned Toronto crowd-pleasers on the lineup, this could bring the house down.<\/p>\n

Everybody Wants to Fuck MeTaron Egerton in Everybody Wants to Fuck Me. Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk<\/p>\n

There promises to be some raucous Friday night fun with the suggestively titled, and in some places censored, darkly comic thriller Everybody Wants to Fuck Me. It\u2019s a problem that faces Taron Egerton<\/a>\u2019s overly curated \u201cnice guy\u201d whose pained virtue-signalling soon starts turning him into the object of desire and then obsession on the London dating scene. Given how many of us swipe and like, it\u2019s wild there haven\u2019t been more worthy films about the horrors that can come with it (Fresh<\/a> remains one of the only effective examples and barely anyone saw it) and as Egerton reaches an interestingly daring stage of his career (his wildly over-the-top villain in Apex<\/a> felt somewhat revelatory), one wonders how far he\u2019s willing to go.<\/p>\n

Ancestors\u00c9anna Hardwicke in Ancestors. Photograph: Leanne Sullivan<\/p>\n

At last year\u2019s festival<\/a>, one of the best films I saw was also one of the smallest, given a quiet premiere far away from the crowds. The engaging and enraging football drama Saipan<\/a> told us what we already knew about Steve Coogan<\/a> (that he\u2019s a far more versatile actor than any of us had originally predicted) but it also introduced the wonderful Irish actor \u00c9anna Hardwicke<\/a>, who as Roy Keane gave one of the most indelible turns of the season. He\u2019s back again this year in Ancestors, a film that might also be experiencing a similarly low-key rollout but one that\u2019s about something wildly different. It\u2019s described as a ghostly journey through 1980s London, gripped by the horrors of the Aids crisis, through the eyes of a gay man whose visions range from Christina Hendricks<\/a> to Rupert Everett<\/a> as he searches for a lost love.<\/p>\n

Prima FacieCynthia Erivo in Prima Facie. Photograph: Nicola Dove \/ Toronto film festival<\/p>\n

Anyone who was lucky enough to witness Jodie Comer<\/a>\u2019s one-woman feat<\/a> of acting athleticism in Suzie Miller\u2019s gutting #MeToo drama<\/a> Prima Facie will have found themselves rather changed by the experience. They might also understandably be a little cautious about that specifically stage-friendly drama being transferred to the big screen with a new actor in her place. For Prima Facie the movie, Comer has handed the baton to Cynthia Erivo<\/a>, now taking on the role of a ruthless working-class lawyer whose defence of men accused of sexual assault gives her an unusual and unsettling perspective when she is raped by a colleague. Even without the more punishing restrictions of the stage, it still promises to be an intensely difficult challenge on screen but one that, if pulled off, could be Erivo\u2019s most acclaimed performance to date.<\/p>\n

FaithJames McAvoy and Erin Doherty in Faith. Photograph: Toronto film festival<\/p>\n

It\u2019s long been hard to define the career of the writer-director Paul Andrew Williams, who broke out with the relentless crime thriller London to Brighton back in 2006 and hasn\u2019t stayed in the same lane since. He\u2019s given us gloopy comedy gore (The Cottage), grim hoodie horror (Cherry Tree Lane), dark domestic violence TV (Murdered by My Boyfriend), sentimental schmaltz (Song for Marion) and, most recently, bleak suburban drama (Dragonfly<\/a>). It\u2019s therefore hard to know what to expect from Faith, a film starring James McAvoy<\/a> and Adolescence awards<\/a>-magnet Erin Doherty<\/a>, a film billed as a \u201cheartbreaking\u201d supernatural drama about a romance with a twist. It could go a million ways, but as ever Williams is sure to keep us on our toes.<\/p>\n

Being Heumann<\/p>\n

In a time of envelope-pushing best picture winners including Moonlight, Parasite and Nomadland, it became easy to dunk on a film like Coda<\/a>, an old-fashioned, formula-first drama more intent on comforting audiences over challenging them. But it was still far from an obviously safe bet, with a cast of mostly deaf actors making it an Oscars outlier, and a win for Troy Kotsur made him the first deaf man to win<\/a> an acting Oscar. Being Heumann, director Sian Heder\u2019s follow-up, reunites her with Apple and with a noble cause, this time telling the story of Judith Heumann<\/a>, the groundbreaking activist whose work had a major impact on the mainstreaming of disability rights. There are supporting performances from Mark Ruffalo<\/a> and Dylan O\u2019Brien but it\u2019s led by Ruth Madeley<\/a>, who has become one of the most prominent wheelchair-using actors in the UK \u2013 and if all goes to plan, she could be a serious force in the best actress race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defining Toronto\u2019s place within the fall festival season has become a little harder in recent years. As fewer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-766346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}