Eight days, overlapping showtimes, and lines that eat entire afternoons stand between me and all 25 of these. Realistically I won't see them all, but here's everything I'm chasing anyway.

By MIGUEL MATEO | AUGUST 22, 2026

This is my first time at TIFF, and I want to be upfront about something before we get into it: there is no version of this festival where I actually see all 25 of these movies. I'm only in Toronto for eight of the eleven days, screenings overlap constantly, the lines for anything even a little buzzy can eat an entire afternoon, and by day four or five, fatigue just sets in. That's the real, messy shape of a festival schedule. It is not the tidy list I'm about to hand you.

But this is the list I'm building my days around anyway, because in a perfect world, this is exactly what I'd watch. Some of these I already know I love, I saw Josephine back at Sundance earlier this year, and I'm putting it back on my schedule anyway, now that it's sitting inside an actual Oscar conversation instead of just festival buzz, I want to see if it hits the same way a second time. The rest are the ones I've been building toward for months, from Netflix's biggest Oscar swing of the year in La Bola Negra, to Martin McDonagh reuniting with Sam Rockwell in Wild Horse Nine, to a scrappy slasher that TIFF's own programmer is already comparing to last year's biggest breakout.

So here's what I'm hoping to see. If I only manage to see half of these, I'll still call it a win.

ALL OF A SUDDEN

dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

North American Premiere | Cast: Virginie Efira, Tao Okamoto

Hamaguchi's first film made outside Japan, and his first in French, follows Marie-Lou (Efira), who runs a nursing home outside Paris and fights to implement a radical, dignity-first care philosophy against her staff's resistance, and her transformative friendship with Mari (Okamoto), a terminally ill Japanese theater director who arrives at the facility. It premiered in Cannes Competition to a seven-minute standing ovation, the longest of the festival, and Efira and Okamoto shared the Best Actress prize there. Drive My Car pulled off a rare across-the-board showing for a foreign-language film, Picture, Director, and Screenplay nominations plus an International Feature win, so the Academy is primed to pay attention again, and Neon, which holds North American rights, has real incentive to push this hard.

LA BOLA NEGRA

dir. Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi

Canadian Premiere · Cannes Best Director (tied) | Cast: Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Julio Torres, Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close

Inspired by an unfinished fragment by poet Federico García Lorca, this queer epic follows three generations of gay men across 85 years of Spanish history, from the 1930s to the present day. The duo known as Los Javis shared the Best Director prize at Cannes 2026, tied with Paweł Pawlikowski, and Penélope Cruz will receive a Special Tribute Award at TIFF specifically for her performance here. It is, at this point, the clear Oscar frontrunner of the festival: Netflix paid four to five million dollars for it out of Cannes and is giving it a record-setting 47-day theatrical window before streaming, the widest theatrical commitment in company history. Awards trackers crowned it the biggest Oscar player to come out of Cannes almost immediately, with early rankings already placing it significantly high across the board. This could be the film that spoils Best Picture for studio juggernauts like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three.

ELSINORE

dir. Simon Stone

Canadian Premiere | Cast: Andrew Scott

Stone's drama dramatizes the final act of actor Ian Charleson's life and career, following the Chariots of Fire star as he takes on Hamlet at the National Theatre while dying of an AIDS-related illness, a performance now considered one of British theater's legendary final bows. Scott has been an Academy near-miss before (All of Us Strangers was a notable 2023 snub critics still cite), and trade press is already running ongoing coverage of this performance specifically.

WILD HORSE NINE

dir. Martin McDonagh

Canadian Premiere | Cast: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Parker Posey, Mariana di Girolamo

Reuniting McDonagh with Searchlight after The Banshees of Inisherin earned nine Oscar nominations, this pitch-black thriller follows two CIA agents (Malkovich and Rockwell) dispatched to Easter Island just before the 1973 Chilean coup, where buried secrets and fresh conspiracies threaten to unravel their decades-long partnership. McDonagh previously directed Rockwell to a Best Supporting Actor win for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Searchlight has already dated this for a November awards-corridor release. It was topping several forecasters' Best Picture boards even before a festival stamp was attached, and an ensemble this stacked, rounded out by Buscemi, Waits, and Posey, gives it depth across nearly every acting category.

A LONG WINTER

dir. Andrew Haigh

Canadian Premiere | Cast: Fred Hechinger, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kit Connor, Caitríona Balfe, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo

Adapting Colm Tóibín's short story of the same name, Haigh's follow-up to the widely acclaimed All of Us Strangers is set high in the Canadian Rockies, where an alcoholic mother storms into a sudden snowstorm after a fight with her husband, triggering a search involving her son, neighbors, and local law enforcement. Backed by Mubi and Film4, the same combination behind Strangers, this has appeared repeatedly on early Best Picture forecasts.

CLUB KID

dir. Jordan Firstman

Canadian Premiere | Cast: Jordan Firstman, Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva, Reggie Absolom

Firstman's feature writing and directing debut, in which he also stars, follows a washed-up underground party promoter forced to care for the ten-year-old son he never knew he had, with Cara Delevingne as his business partner and Diego Calva as the boy's social worker. It premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, where it picked up nominations for the Caméra d'Or and the Queer Palm, and reviews out of the festival were close to unanimous, several critics called it one of the strongest directorial debuts of the year. A24 has since boarded U.S. distribution, and that pairing, a studio with a real track record of turning acclaimed debuts into Oscar contenders, with near-universal raves gives this genuine Original Screenplay and Best Actor potential for Firstman himself.

INK

dir. Danny Boyle

Canadian Premiere | Cast: Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy

Opening the Venice Film Festival before its Toronto bow, Boyle's biographical drama dramatizes Rupert Murdoch's 1969 acquisition of The Sun and his partnership with editor Larry Lamb in creating the modern British tabloid. This has turned up on the very earliest Best Picture forecasts, tracked even before Netflix confirmed U.S. rights, and Guy Pearce is coming off a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Brutalist, giving this a strong overall package.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

Canadian Premiere | Cast: John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany

Turturro plays Harry Lehman, an aging, old-school pickpocket getting by on ever-diminishing returns in a New York that's moved on to credit cards and cell phones, who unwittingly lifts a USB stick from the wrong mark, the heir to a ruthless crime family, and has to return it before things turn violent, all while caring for his disabled wife. It premiered at Sundance to raves for Turturro's performance, and he turns up individually in published Best Actor forecasts, a stronger signal than this title's modest festival slot might suggest, though it will likely need that same kind of critical breakout to convert the early buzz into a nomination.

RIVER

dir. Joshua Giuliano

World Premiere · Midnight Madness Opening Film | Cast: Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe, Max Mattern

Giuliano's feature debut is a slasher about three estranged siblings who reunite to scatter their late father's ashes along a remote river, only to find themselves hunted by a faceless killer. It opens Midnight Madness this year, and TIFF's own programmer, Peter Kuplowsky, has already compared it directly to last year's breakout hit Obsession, which went on to become the highest-grossing festival acquisition of all time after Focus Features picked it up. That's not a comparison TIFF makes lightly, and with Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe leading the cast, this reads like exactly the kind of midnight premiere that turns into a bidding war before the credits finish.

THE DEBUT

dir. Jesse Eisenberg

International Premiere | Cast: Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti

Eisenberg's follow-up to his Oscar-winning A Real Pain is a musical comedy about a shy housewife (Moore) who is cast in a small-town theater production and, under her demanding director's (Giamatti) eye, transforms into a fiercely committed method actor. This has been tracked under its working titles on Best Picture forecasts since before TIFF was even announced, with one insider already calling it Moore's best performance.

BUNKER

dir. Florian Zeller

North American Premiere | Cast: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, Patrick Schwarzenegger

Real-life spouses Bardem and Cruz play a married couple whose 17-year relationship fractures after he accepts a morally dubious commission to build an apocalypse-proof bunker for a tech billionaire, in a film Zeller wrote specifically for the pair. Both actors already turn up individually across multiple published forecasts, an unusually strong signal this early in the season, and Sony Pictures Classics, which also released Zeller's Oscar-winning The Father, has announced a year-end qualifying run built explicitly around an awards campaign.

TENDER LOVING CARE

dir. Mike Leigh

North American Premiere | Cast: Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Kate O'Flynn, Alice Bailey Johnson

Working in his signature devised, semi-improvised style, the 83-year-old Leigh, who has said this will likely be his final film given his ongoing struggle with the muscle disease myositis, follows Amy (O'Flynn), a government child protection worker who moves back in with her best friend Rosie (Bailey Johnson) after a failed relationship, while Amy's aging parents (Bailey and Jesson) confront a crisis of their own, all set against the daily grind of Britain's underfunded care sector. Leigh already holds seven Oscar nominations and a Palme d'Or, and a farewell narrative around a beloved auteur's last film is precisely the kind of story that tends to generate sentimental Academy momentum.

MISTY GREEN

dir. Chris Rock

World Premiere | Cast: Rosalind Eleazar, Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace, Chris Rock

Rock's feature directorial effort for A24 stars Rosalind Eleazar as the title character, an actress whose once-promising career has stalled out after a physical altercation on set left her unhireable, until her former director (Rock), a man with a complicated shared history with her, dangles the best role she's been offered in years. Adam Driver plays a shadier Hollywood figure pulling her toward a messier path, with Daniel Kaluuya as her brother and Anna Kendrick and Topher Grace rounding out the cast. A24's involvement alone puts this on the map, and Eleazar's inclusion on TIFF's Tribute Awards slate is an early signal that hers may be the standout performance.

POSSIBLE LOVE

dir. Lee Chang-dong

North American Premiere | Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong

Lee's first film in eight years follows two married couples whose lives intertwine and expose long-buried desires after one spouse begins shooting a documentary about displaced workers. Netflix has already dated a global release and will campaign hard, and Jeon Do-yeon, a Cannes Best Actress winner for Secret Sunshine, another Lee film, is the most likely above-the-line beneficiary.

FJORD

dir. Cristian Mungiu

Canadian Premiere · 2026 Palme d'Or Winner | Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve

This year's Palme d'Or winner follows a Romanian-Norwegian couple whose lives unravel after Norwegian authorities investigate them for child abuse, a slow-burn drama about faith, immigration, and a self-proclaimed progressive justice system that critics have called both a masterwork and a deliberate provocation. Stan and Reinsve both carry real Oscar buzz out of Cannes, with Reinsve individually predicted for Best Actress, and Mungiu, a two-time Palme winner who has never been nominated by the Academy, may finally have his best shot.

LOOK BACK

dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

North American Premiere | Cast: Natsuki Deguchi, Aju Makita

Kore-eda's live-action adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's beloved one-shot manga follows two young manga artists across thirteen years of friendship, ambition, and loss. It shows up on multiple experts' watch lists, and Kore-eda is a former Palme d'Or winner and Oscar nominee for Shoplifters, though he is releasing two films this year, which may split both critical attention and Japan's single International Feature slot.

JOSEPHINE

dir. Beth de Araújo

Canadian Premiere | Cast: Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Mason Reeves, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy

After eight-year-old Josephine witnesses a violent assault in a San Francisco park, she begins acting out in ways her devoted but ill-equipped parents (Tatum and Chan) struggle to understand. I actually saw this one already, back at Sundance, and it's stuck with me since. But now that it's sitting inside a real Oscar conversation instead of just festival buzz, with Tatum drawing attention for some of the best work of his career and newcomer Mason Reeves earning raves for what critics are calling one of the most remarkable child performances in recent memory, I want to rewatch it and see if it hits the same way a second time.

LA GRADIVA

dir. Marine Atlan

North American Premiere · Centrepiece | Cast: Antonia Buresi, Colas Quignard, Suzanne Gerin, Mitia Capellier

Atlan's feature directorial debut, following her transition from a celebrated career as a cinematographer (she shot The Innocents and earned a César nomination for it), follows a group of French high schoolers on a class trip to Pompeii, where wandering among the ruins and the preserved bodies frozen by Vesuvius stirs a collective, dizzying intensity between three of the students, a tangled thing of desire, identity, and grief. It won the Grand Prize at Cannes' Critics' Week, the festival's dedicated section for discovering new filmmakers, and by the numbers it's the best-reviewed film to come out of Cannes this year, a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 98 on Metacritic. It already ran a week of Oscar-qualifying screenings in France that sold out completely, and it's shaping up as France's likely pick for the International Feature race.

ON BEHALF OF MY SON

dir. Gabriel Martins

Platform · World Premiere | Cast: Rejane Faria

Anchored by Rejane Faria's performance, Martins's drama follows a grieving mother seeking forgiveness from the families affected by a fatal bus accident, in what TIFF describes as a humane meditation on guilt and the limits of absolution. Martins's previous feature, Mars One, was Brazil's official Oscar submission for Best International Feature, giving him a direct track record with the country's selection committee, and that matters more than usual right now. Brazil's last two submissions were I'm Still Here, which won the category outright, and The Secret Agent, which landed four nominations including Best Picture. That's an incredible run for one country to be on, and it's exactly why I'm paying closer attention to whatever Brazil sends next. Platform's new rule automatically qualifying its top prize winner for International Feature consideration gives this a genuine path on two separate fronts.

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER

dir. Bassam Tariq

Special Presentations | Cast: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Abubakr Ali, Tramell Tillman, Tiffany Boone

Tariq's action thriller follows a devoutly religious hitman (Ali) racing across Houston to protect his children after his wife's death, as the forces closing in around him start to unravel the very beliefs holding him together. Amazon MGM is backing it, and Mahershala Ali, a two-time Oscar winner for Moonlight and Green Book, taking on a role built around this kind of moral and physical pressure is exactly the type of performance that tends to get noticed, even inside a genre picture.

COWARD

dir. Lukas Dhont

North American Premiere | Cast: Emmanuel Macchia, Valentin Campagne

Set on the WWI front, Dhont's third feature follows a young soldier who falls for a fellow soldier staging morale-boosting theatrical performances behind the lines, drawn from archival research into queer soldiers of the era. Dhont's last film, Close, earned Belgium an International Feature nomination, and this one already has a head start: its two first-time leads shared the Best Actor prize at Cannes.

THE BELOVED

dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen

North American Premiere | Cast: Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo

Sorogoyen, whose As Bestas swept Spain's Goya Awards and represented the country at the Oscars, casts Bardem as a celebrated but volatile film director who offers his estranged adult daughter (Luengo) a role in his new project, ostensibly to revive her stalled acting career, only for thirteen years of buried resentment to resurface once they're working side by side. Both Bardem and Luengo turn up individually in published acting forecasts, though Sorogoyen now faces an unusually competitive three-way race with Bitter Christmas and La Bola Negra for Spain's single Oscar submission slot.

PRIMA FACIE

dir. Susanna White

World Premiere | Cast: Cynthia Erivo

Adapted from Suzie Miller's acclaimed solo stage play, this legal drama follows a formidable defense barrister forced to confront the justice system's failures from the other side after she is sexually assaulted by a colleague. Erivo, a three-time Oscar nominee, is taking on a role that already won Olivier and Tony Awards on stage, about as clean an awards setup as exists, and this title already turns up on multiple experts' watch lists.

THE LIBERATION

dir. Guy Nattiv

Canadian Premiere | Cast: Carrie Coon, Lily James, Bella Ramsey, Odessa Young, Tracy Letts

Nattiv, who already has an Oscar for the short film Skin, directs Carrie Coon as a woman in midlife who leaves her family behind to follow a magnetic young spiritual leader, played by Lily James, into an all-female commune, only for her daughters to unexpectedly show up and get pulled into the group themselves. A commune drama built around a cast this strong, with Coon forced to choose between the family she left and the new life she believes might save her, has the kind of high-wire ensemble tension that tends to travel well out of a festival.

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID

dir. Radu Jude

North American Premiere · Wavelengths | Cast: Ana Dumitrașcu, Mélanie Thierry, Vincent Macaigne, Marie Rivière

Jude's first French-language feature follows Gianina, a young Romanian immigrant working as a housekeeper for a wealthy family in Bordeaux, who spends her evenings rehearsing the role of a maid with an amateur theater troupe staging an adaptation of the very novel her life echoes, Octave Mirbeau's The Diary of a Chambermaid, all while her own daughter grows up without her back in Romania. It premiered at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, where it was praised as satirical, angry, and ultimately tender, and Jude, a Golden Bear and Golden Leopard winner, remains one of the most consistently acclaimed voices in world cinema right now, even if a title this formally adventurous, playing TIFF's more auteur-focused Wavelengths section, is a longer shot for the Academy's radar than the prestige dramas elsewhere on this list.

I will be filing dispatches all festival long. If we skip your favorite, blame the cruel arithmetic of overlapping screenings, and then tell us what we missed.

My First TIFF: 25 Films I'm Hoping to Catch