TIFF2026 Film Reviews, Discoveries, Disappointments, and the Festival Experience

September 28, 2026 Leave a comment

Several films emerged as major highlights, particularly Fjord, Elsinore, On Behalf of My Son, Soumsoum, A Good Little Soldier, Minotaur, Coward, and Bitter Christmas. The festival’s audience awards also intersected closely with my coverage: La Bola Negra received the People’s Choice Award, while Elsinore won the International People’s Choice Award, with Possible Love and The Assassin(s) recognized as runners-up. The success of two films centred on gay lives and histories was particularly meaningful, reflecting the openness of Toronto audiences to queer stories told through very different cinematic and historical perspectives.

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Colas Quignard and Mitia Capellier-Audat in Marine Atlan's La Gradiva

TIFF26′ La Gradiva: Excavating Desire in Pompeii

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La Gradiva follows French high-school students in Pompeii as buried desires, family histories, sexual tensions, and questions of identity surface among the ruins. Marine Atlan transforms archaeology into a powerful metaphor for adolescence and repression.

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TIFF26′ Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend: A Precise but Conventional Portrait of a Quebec Racing Icon

September 20, 2026

Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend traces Gilles Villeneuve’s early years, from snowmobile racing and financial struggle to the threshold of Formula 1. Yan Lanouette Turgeon delivers a polished and accessible Quebec biopic, anchored by Rémy Goulet and Rosalie Bonenfant, even if its portrait remains more precise than psychologically adventurous.

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TIFF26′ Trees Are Watching by Bahman Ghobadi: A Striking Environmental Horror of Memory, Trauma, and Revenge

September 19, 2026

Trees Are Watching is therefore most compelling when understood not simply as a horror film but as an environmental and cultural fable, one in which nature preserves what human beings would prefer to forget. Its supernatural dimension gives physical form to something much more disturbing: the possibility that destroying the natural world also means destroying part of our own memory, history, and humanity.

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TIFF26′ The Assassin(s): A Propulsive Political Thriller About Truth Under Korean Censorship

The Assassin(s) works so well because it remains both politically ser
ious and highly entertaining. It is at once a historical drama, investigative film, action thriller, and political conspiracy story. The constant accumulation of information, the newsroom battles, the censorship, the police investigation, and the uncertainty around the assassination attempt give the film an unusually strong rhythm.

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TIFF26′ The World Before: A Slow-Cinema Coming-of-Age Story That Never Finds Its Pulse

The film clearly belongs to the tradition of Slow Cinema, and at times recalls the work of Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang and the broader aesthetic associated with Taiwan’s Second New Wave: long durations, sparse action, quiet spaces, and a focus on everyday gestures rather than conventional plot development. But unlike the strongest examples of that tradition, The World Before never develops a sufficiently distinctive visual or emotional point of view.

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