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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: Girl Group
You would be forgiven if you didn’t realize that Girl Group was Rebel Wilson’s second turn in the director’s chair. Back in 2024, Wilson came to the Toronto International Film Festival with her directorial debut called The Deb. It was an original musical and a fairly solid film, however, it ended up embroiled in several legal battles that ended up burying its release (you can find it now on digital...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: Idda – “Insolia and Vergano are very enigmatic and dynamic leads.”
Director Irene Dionisio dedicated her sophomore film Idda to her best friend, who suddenly passed away. Though she co-wrote the film with Marco Borromei, I hope that her friendship was less problematic than that of Adele (Tecla Insolia) and Sofia (Romana Maggiora Vergano). We meet the pair as Sofia returns to her hometown in Sicily. The two friends embrace, but it’s clear that the two haven’t seen each...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: Up Against It – “There was so much potential here.”
The title card of Up Against It may have been strangely indicative of what was to come in Trudie Styler’s complicated misfire. Garish pink early 90’s style font up against the British parliament buildings is such a strange decision, just like many choices in the rest of the film. Up Against it is just tonally uneven, never really knowing whether it should lean into comedy or drama and therefore...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: The Liberation – “The film finds the emotional weight necessary to balance its dark premise with a profound sense of grace.”
Clarity. Honesty. Forgiveness. It’s what is promised on the business card handed to Rita Cooper (Carrie Coon) by a new customer at her bank. All she needs to do is head down to the beach after work to watch the sunset and have an open mind. Rita is a woman plagued by her present and her past. A child during the Holocaust, she watched her mother and sisters get ripped away. She survived, as did her...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: Smudge the Blades
A rag-tag Indigenous hockey team is helped by a reluctant and unlikely coach. Kicked out of a top league, the Treaty 6 Blades need a new coach, who happens to be the local Zamboni driver, more motivated to bed a particular hockey mom than to put together a winning strategy on the ice. Each of the players comes with their own emotional baggage, along with being victims of rampant racism directed towards...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: The Diary of a Chambermaid
A Romanian migrant is a live-in housekeeper at the behest of her employers she prepares for an amateur production of The Diary of a Chambermaid. While working for an upper-class couple in France as a live-in housekeeper, Gianina has constant FaceTime chats with her daughter who longs for them to be reunited in Romania; her offspring is jealous that the boy of her employers gets more personal attention...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: La Gradiva – “A bittersweet examination of a formative period.”
A group of French teenagers are embarking on a class trip to Pompeii. They’re in their last year of high school and awaiting acceptance letters for the next step in their education. These are kids from different backgrounds and social statuses that may never hang out when they’re at school, so dynamics feel a little different, yet the cliques are still the same. They’re on the precipice of great change,...
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Read MoreTIFF 2026 Review: Josephine – “compelling, uncomfortable and something I will not soon forget.”
Trigger warning: This film, and therefore this review will discuss sexual assault. Please take care while reading (and watching). There’s a movie that I’ve referenced a few times during this festival. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve watched a couple Scandinavian films, but it’s seemingly more for their subject matter, which often involves children and some version of trauma....
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