Last year’s Toronto film festival, a key stop on the fall circuit for some of the season’s biggest new movies, was a subdued edition, the strikes affecting both the films in the lineup as well as the stars who were unable to attend.
But this year, things seem to be back to where they once were, the more commercially minded festival offering A-listers from Amy Adams to Florence Pugh to Hugh Grant as well as welcome returns for Mike Leigh and Pamela Anderson.
In what’s set to be a stuffed year, here are the films to look out for:
Heretic
Whenever we’ve seen Hugh Grant lean into his darker side on screen, it’s still been delivered with a smile, as rambunctious PG bad guys in Paddington 2 and Dungeons & Dragons or cheekily refusing to play ball on the red carpet for the Oscars. But in his new horror Heretic, scripted by the duo behind A Quiet Place, it’s looking like the actor is remaining in the shadows for once. He’s playing a man happily allowing in two door-knocking missionaries, hoping to spread the good word of the Lord. But once they’re in, they start to worry that they might not be getting out. A creepy trailer suggests that he has a rather horrible plan for them.
Hard Truths
The return of Mike Leigh, whose last film was 2018’s Peterloo but whose last contemporary film was 2010’s Another Year, is arguably the most convincing reason to head to Canada this September. Originally expected at both Cannes and Venice, the writer-director’s latest, Hard Truths, will make its world premiere in Toronto, a splashy commercial home for a film that sounds like one of his darkest and toughest to date. He’s reuniting with his Secrets & Lies star Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who stars as a woman overcome with anger at the daily annoyances of life and whose family have struggled to find ways to handle her and the anger she holds inside. Described as tragicomic, it sounds like the emphasis might be placed more on tragedy.
Eden
After his Thai cave rescue drama Thirteen Lives received strong reviews but a botched streaming release from Amazon (its star Viggo Mortensen later called it a “shameful” strategy), director Ron Howard is hoping for more noise surrounding his follow-up Eden, another tough-going tale of survival. It’s a fact-based thriller set in the late 1920s following an international group of settlers (including Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas and Vanessa Kirby) who seek a new uncharted way of living on an uninhabited island in the Galápagos archipelago. But their arrogance and hubris leaves them unprepared for the hell that awaits them. Premiering without a buyer yet with one of the starriest casts of the festival, Eden promises to be an in-demand market title.
Nightbitch
It’s been a rocky few years for Amy Adams, a six-time Oscar nominee whose last genuinely great movie was 2016’s Arrival (a film she was ironically snubbed for). Her run of disappointments (including Hillbilly Elegy, Dear Evan Hansen and The Woman in the Window) is hopefully set to end with Nightbitch, a sharp-clawed dark comedy about an exhausted stay-at-home mother whose furies and frustrations start transforming her into a dog. It’s based on the acclaimed novel by Rachel Yoder and comes from the director Marielle Heller, who has shown a knack for telling the stories of nuanced and complex female characters in The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?
The Last Republican
As Americans struggle to find common ground in the lead-up to another divisive election, it seems that the answer is simple: Hot Tub Time Machine. The 2010 comedy is a favourite of the former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger and in a new documentary, The Last Republican, he lets the film’s leftwing director Steve Pink follow him over his final year in office as he breaks rank to criticise Donald Trump. He was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president after the January 6 riot before becoming a lead player in the ensuing investigation.
We Live in Time
The Irish director John Crowley might not have the warmest memories of Toronto (his Brooklyn follow-up The Goldfinch was, somewhat unfairly, savaged upon its premiere in 2019) but he’s returning five years later to unveil his follow-up, the sweeping romantic drama We Live in Time. He’s less restricted by expectation this time (it’s an original script rather than an adaptation) while also assisted by two of our most likable working actors (Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield). They play a couple grappling with how to deal with a grim medical diagnosis and figure out how to spend the time they have left. The trailer promises a grand melodrama of unfettered emotion.
The Bibi Files
Announced as a last-minute addition this very week, the Alex Gibney-produced documentary The Bibi Files, directed by We Steal Secrets’ Alexis Bloom, promises to be one of the most talked-about films of the festival. It’s focused on Benjamin Netanyahu and features unseen police interrogation footage from when the Israeli prime minister was investigated for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The recordings, which had been buried due to the country’s privacy laws, were leaked to Gibney in 2023 and the film-maker claims they show him to be “venal and corrupt”. It’s being presented as a work in progress seeking distribution from a brave buyer.
The Last Showgirl
Aiming for a Wrestler-sized comeback, Pamela Anderson is playing a Vegas showgirl facing the end of her career in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, a character drama seeking a buyer at the festival. It’s Anderson’s first lead role for years and follows the actor’s ongoing attempt to regain control of her narrative in the wake of Pam & Tommy, a Hulu series she openly criticised after it went forward without her involvement. She has since been the subject of a Netflix documentary and now this marks a major step forward, leading a Toronto premiere that also stars the recent Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis.
Elton John: Never Too Late
There are a number of musician-led documentaries at the festival (Andrea Bocelli and Paul Anka also feature) but the one with the loudest buzz is from the loudest star of the lot: Elton John. In Elton John: Never Too Late, the singer’s husband David Furnish and The September Issue’s RJ Cutler combine unseen archival footage and intimate interviews to tell the highs and lows of a career like no other. The film follows John, who achieved Egot status earlier this year, on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour and will feature a new original song.
The Fire Inside
Fitting for a film about a boxer’s long and arduous journey to train for the Olympics, The Fire Inside has also had a difficult route to screen. Based on the 2015 documentary T-Rex, which tells the story of record-breaking wunderkind Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, it was set to be adapted by Barry Jenkins post-Moonlight premiere. His script was then confirmed to be Black Panther cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s directorial debut in 2019, then titled Flint Strong, before production was shut down two days in when the pandemic hit. Ice Cube later dropped out after reportedly refusing to get vaccinated and Universal then offloaded it to Amazon-MGM with production restarting in 2022. Now, post-Paris with Olympics fever still in the air, it’s premiering at a festival that also has a boxing thriller (The Cut) and a wrestling drama (Unstoppable). A Christmas Day release suggests awards are being considered with a recent nominee, the ever dependable Brian Tyree Henry, playing coach.
