TIFF 2025 Review: Dinner With Friends – “an incredibly enjoyable watch.”

Courtesy of TIFF

If you’ve tried recently to get a group of friends together for, well, anything, you’re likely to jive with Dinner With Friends.  The struggle is real.  In Sasha Leigh Henry‘s latest film, she embodies what it is like to be in your late 30s (or early 40s – age is just a number, right?) and to realize that things are changing constantly.  Life happens.  One moment you’re carefree, hanging out at that lake house you rented together, the next you’re changing diapers.

In Dinner With Friends, eight longtime friends try to navigate this tricky space.  From the beginning, it becomes clear that they haven’t managed to get together for a while.  There are some fractures within the group.  Malachi (Alex Spencer) tries to convince his wife, Joy (Tattiawna Jones), to reach out to the group to get back on track with the regular dinner parties, but she’s feeling the pressure of being the constant host.  Is the effort worth it?  This couple is our ‘in’ to these friends, but each of them eventually has their focus as we meet up with them over the course of a couple of years.  Sometimes the dinner parties are close together, sometimes they’re far apart.  Henry introduces us to each new meet-up by giving us a quick view of the group chat that puts it together.  It’s a clever way of changing focus and giving us some hints as to what is to come.

Writing alongside Tania Thompson, Henry reveals the friends’ history in a way that seems organic.  Dialogue feels natural here, and the chemistry between our eight friends is always shifting, as it would in real life.  These friends deal with death, birth, relationships developing and dissolving and everything in between. Each get together reveals a little more, and sometimes subtleties in the often fast-paced dialogue are all you’ll get to inform you.

Henry keeps close to her actors (who are all wonderful) as she works in tight spaces.  Full disclosure, I had to watch this film in the very front row of the packed theatre, so close-ups were extremely close (and up), and some of the camera work would likely be better admired from afar.  However, one dinner party in particular was amazingly shot by cinematographer Grant Cooper.  Putting the camera in the centre of the table, it moves from person to person, sometimes concentrating on the speaker, sometimes concentrating on the reactions of the listeners.  Henry said post-screening the shot was inspired by the table scenes from That 70’s Show, and it’s really effectively used.

Dinner With Friends somewhat reminded me of the Netflix series released this year, The Four Seasons, which I also loved.  In this way, you can see the film as almost being episodic but without the filler.  Connecting the dots between meetings is part of what keeps you engaged in this type of project, and Henry never lets the audience down.  Dinner With Friends is an incredibly enjoyable watch that showcases a lot of great Canadian talent.  Plus, it has the occasional Toronto reference that will be relatable for local audiences, especially anyone who has sat in traffic in this city.  But most of all, it just encapsulates what it is like getting older, experiencing the ups and downs of life.  May we all be so lucky to have a similar group of friends to do that with.

Dinner With Friends had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival September 5, 2025.  For more information, head to tiff.net