TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey’s attempt to explain the process behind ultimately programming The Road Between Us, a decision made to offer “multiple perspectives” on the conflict, didn’t fully clarify matters. Bailey confirmed in an interview with The Globe and Mail that after Avrich’s film was initially turned down by programmers, the director — a former TIFF board member and donor — asked organizers to give his documentary a second look, prompting Bailey to personally screen the picture for consideration. Furthermore, The Road Between Us was the only Official Selection to, notably and unusually, not screen for press. Bailey claimed because of its late addition, they could only accommodate a single, public screening. However, this proves a curious answer as organizers found space for last minute, additional press screenings for popular titles like The Testament of Ann Lee and No Other Choice, and added public showings for highly buzzed films like Sentimental Value and Hamnet. Avrich, in an interview with The Toronto Star, shared his disappointment that conclusions about his film were being made about his film before anyone had a chance to see it, making its inaccessibility to journalists all the more strange.

Inside the cinemas, the festival once again proved to be an awards season augur. Films such as Toronto favourite Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, Park Chan-Wook’s No Other Choice, Oliver Laxe’s Sirat, and Kathouer Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab drummed up plenty of positive buzz and chatter in queues and over drinks. Among TIFF’s World Premieres, David Michod’s Christy starring an Best Actress touted Syndey Sweeney, James Vanderbilt’s WWII drama Nuremberg, Chandler Levack’s breezy Mile End Kicks, Paul Greengrass’ thriller The Lost Bus, and Steven Soderbergh’s chamber piece The Christophers were among those that earned praise from the first look audiences and critics.

Those looking for world cinema gems found them in smaller pockets of the festival’s programming, particularly in the Platform and Discovery sections. European Film Promotion helped put a shine on number of memorable premiere bows. Agnieszka Holland’s Franz offered a terrifically slippery portrait of the tortured writer. Saipan saw Steve Coogan and Eanna Hardwicke go head-to-head in a compelling and colorful true story tale of soccer egos on the World Cup stage. Jan Komasa impressed in his English feature debut with the intriguingly oddball anti-thriller Good Boy. To the Victory! offered a meta look at the war in Ukraine with both heartbreak and hope from Valentyn Vasyanovych, while Joscha Bongard’s Babystar took on the age of influencers with inspired verve and sharp wit.

The festival’s demanding screening schedule, in which top-tier titles frequently overlap with smaller foreign or independent movies means that, unfortunately, the opportunity to discover a true breakout surprise Oscar contender or the emergence of a vital new filmmaking voice is more challenging than ever. In 2026, TIFF will launch its first major market, and the festival will become even bigger. Sitting at a crossroads of a beloved local institution, a big deal event for A-listers at the start of the awards season, an excellently curated platform of world cinema’s finest, and soon, a place for major league industry wheelings and dealings, TIFF arguably faces an identity crisis. The festival’s infrastructure, brand, and reputation will need a hard, honest look in the coming weeks and months as they break down the findings of 2025 and plan for next year. Going forward, the festival needs a strongly defined identity and vision — artistically, culturally, and politically — because, in trying to please everybody, this year’s festival struggled to find its footing.

Jensen has a golden statuette himself, for his 1998 short film Election Night about a progressive aid worker navigating a series of outrageously racist taxi drivers as he tries to make it to the voting booth on time. It was the third time his short films were shortlisted by the Academy and two years later he went on to direct his first feature, Flickering Lights, which starred Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who have both gone on to appear regularly in his films.

Across films like The Green Butchers, Men & Chicken, and Riders of Justice, Jensen has refined his knack for telling darkly comic and absurd tales with out-there performances from distinguished actors. The same can certainly be said for The Last Viking, Jensen’s latest film which premiered recently in Venice and now screens as part of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. A fable about delusion and duty, it’s a typically offbeat meditation on how we construct our identities with some fabulously funny moments. In the event of its bow in North America, The Film Verdict had the chance to pose a few questions to Anders Thomas Jensen.

TFV: It’s always a cliche, but could you speak a little about the inception of The Last Viking? There is so much going on here – as always – and I wonder where it started?

The themes of identity and different realities are present almost everywhere in the western hemisphere. I have had ongoing conversations with my surroundings about these themes since the internet became readily available. People’s engagement in self-development and identity has exploded and I’ve always been fascinated by how almost all of us now are living in our own reality and will go to great lengths to uphold it.

TFV: You obviously have a great and long-standing collaboration with Mads Mikkelson, but over the years you’ve built an impressive troupe of actors you regularly work with. How important are those existing relationships?

They are essential. Mads, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro have been in almost all my films. I like working with them first and foremost because I think they are amazing actors. I know what they are capable of and we can skip a lot of the initial stages, dive straight in, and also dare to go places with the story and the characters where I’m not sure I would go without this ensemble. What Mads does in The Last Viking is really second to none. I know I couldn’t have gotten that from anyone else. He is outstanding in my book.

TFV: Your films as a director often have an absurd black comedy to them and yet – as is the case in The Last Viking – are akin to therapy for the characters. Do you find that surreal humour the most useful way to break open the characters’ psyches?

Yes. I like to wrap the story in a fable-layer and build my own universe. It allows me to take things to the extreme. You can get away with a lot more if you put a little sugar on the spoon – be more dramatic, more profound and more poignant. But the characters also have real pain and real problems. It’s not all laughs. We are always trying to find the right balance.

TFV: Throughout your career as a director, you’ve made films that are a mash-up of tones and genres – do you enjoy the challenge of balancing those things?

Of course. If you free yourself from genre you open up a realm of possibilities. For me good comedy also has pain and drama. The juxtaposition elevates both. It’s not that I’m opposed to genres, but it is a convention, a sales tool created to keep the audience safe from surprises. It can be great to know more or less what you are getting but sometimes the opposite is also nice. Life is multitudes so I don’t see why I should have to settle with one genre.

TFV: Do you tend to know when you start a screenplay, or come up with an idea, whether it’s something you want to direct yourself? Or does this realisation come later?

I’ll know from the start. I am often interested in something – either a theme or a character. Then it grows from there.

Read our review of The Last Viking.

As the picture opens, Dejan (Vucic Perovic) is in the horrible throes of quitting heroin cold turkey. Suffering spasms, chills, and uncontrollable bowels, it’s only when he finally comes out the other side that he can fully take stock of the unorthodox rehab facility where he’s landed. Located deep in the Serbian countryside, the facility is a monastery commune, run with an orthodox iron fist by Father Branko. The rules are straightforward: no methadone, with work and prayer as the only tools of rehabilitation. Indeed, bodily recovery is just one step. Father Branko demands spiritual cleansing too. But woe to those who find themselves in breach of the regulations. Dejan learns this the hard way when he’s caught, high as a kite, after relapsing on another resident’s smuggled stash. Bent over a table, with his arms held to prevent him from moving, Dejan is beaten with a metal shovel, and then with fists, until he can no longer stand. But it’s when a surreptitious video of that beating goes viral that all hell breaks loose.

Based on a true incident, Stankovic offers a surprisingly complex blend of empathy and measured indictment of Branko’s methods. The screenplay — co-written with Ognjen Svilicic, Maja Pelevic, and Dejan Prcic — sees that Branko’s cruelty is rooted in a genuine desire to help the addicts in his care, who have often been dropped at his doorstep by exasperated family members. The Father’s extreme methods are a last resort for those who can’t break the vicious cycle of addiction. However, there is a fine line between being stern and authoritarian, and it’s falling on the right side of humility and humanity that turns out to be the breaking point. As Dejan becomes one of Branko’s favored disciples, his own behaviour begins to shift toward the tyrannical, leading to an inevitably brutal tragedy.

Though the wintry setting is captured with blue, overcast, rough hewn photography by cinematographer Dragan Vildovic, it’s not at the expense of the picture’s intimacy. Stankovic draws a portrait of warm, masculine fraternity, particularly between Perovic’s open performance as Dejan, and his relationship with his sponsor, Mionica (Goran Markovic). United in a common struggle, they work to stay together inside the bounds of sobriety, and create a model for everyone else to follow. Stankovic and the screenplay never resort to the cheap theatrics that usually mark this kind of movie. Instead, the battle with substance abuse modestly runs through pitches and bows. The stakes are rooted in Dejan’s moral code, and how much he will allow it to bend in pursuing good intentions.

After the video goes viral, Dejan’s mother visits, concerned about his wellbeing, and asks about his assault. “It had to be done,” he says. It’s those five, plain words that mark the horrifically low estimation he has of his own worth, and Father Branko’s hold on those in his care. For much of its running time, until an epilogue that is slightly too neat, Our Father offers a stark and perceptive study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual battle that marks addiction. However, as it turns out, just as Dejan was addicted to heroin, Father Branko is drawn to something as nefarious: power — power, under the guise of the righteous. And there’s no rehab facility for that.

Director: Goran Stankovic
Screenplay: Goran Stankovic, Ognjen Svilicic, Maja Pelevic, Dejan Prcic
Cast: Vucic Perovic, Boris Isakovic, Goran Markovic, Jasna Zalica
Producers: Snezana Van Houwelingen
Cinematography: Dragan Vildovic
Production design: Zorana Petrov
Costume design: Dejana Sremcevic
Editing: Marko Ferkovic
Music: Alen Sinkauz, Nenad Sinkauz
Sound: Milos Drndarevic
Production companies: This and That Productions (Serbia), Nightswim (Italy), PomPom Film (Croatia), Dream Factory (Macedonia), Kino (Montenegro), Novi Film (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
World sales: Split Screen
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Serbian
90 minutes

In the film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, teenager Luca (Maja Bons) has been at the centre of the content her parents produce as they build a vlogging empire monetising their domestic life. When they decide to have another baby, she spirals into an identity crisis, as her sense of alienation grows. It’s Bongard’s first fiction feature, and follows his 2022 documentary Pornfluencer, which delved into similar thematic territory in its portrait of a couple based in Cyprus who make internet porn.

“With Babystar, what we hope to do is to talk about not just influencers but about our society,” said the director, when we spoke to him ahead of the Toronto premiere. “We need to rethink if we really want to commodify everything we have and every intimate relationship,  and if this is really a strategy for living together, or if there should be borders. I have the feeling we are somehow there already; we talked to some influencers who said there was a house next to them getting sold, and were wondering if they should buy it just to renovate it and make content out of it.”

Bongard, who lives between his hometown of Kassel and Berlin, interned at a YouTube channel network before studying film, at a time influencers were a new and rarer phenomenon. “It was quite an interesting time, because it was this golden age of social media, and insane amounts of money were being paid to these young YouTubers in Germany back then. This influencer thing stayed in my head and it took me a while to come back to it, but when I did I decided to explore the private power dynamics of a family, something we all know, but in a very hyper way.”

A lot of thought went into how to represent this world on screen in a manner that looked convincing, said Bongard. “It was very important to make content in the film that feels real because we know it so well, therefore we shot on iPhones and really tried to make it as basic as possible and to really find the right tone of the social media content we produced. In our motion design we worked with advertising. Every brand in the film is pixellated because we really wanted to point the people to them, because we got so blind seeing them everywhere.” A small age gap between Maya and her parents was important for the casting. “We always had this idea when writing that the parents are YouTubers themselves from the early times, and so we had the feeling they had to be pretty young.”

We enter a world of  tension between an invasive, always-on exposure, where even time in the womb is on camera, and an alienating compartmentalisation, as if all the characters have been quietly encased in glass. “Most of the people sharing so much online are very private people. They don’t have too much connection to the outside, and really tend to be in their golden cage somehow, or like being in their home and don’t mingle too much, and this I also find very interesting,” said Bongard.

“My D.O.P. Jakob Sinsel and I were pretty clear that we wanted a film that is about social media but not a social media film, so it was very important to us that we somehow find an antithesis to social media and really try to have people look at the images for a longer time,” Bongard said. “We talked a lot about voyeurism, and we often chose to  have our camera above the characters to really show how this life is very lonely.”

Despite the dystopian aspects of Babystar, Bongard is optimistic about the possibilities for rebellion as a way out of the modern discontents that the internet era has fostered. “I think everything in life comes in waves, and I think we are in the extreme of the wave at the moment somehow,” he said. “I think there will be a way back to getting more into real human connections again. But on the other hand, if we choose to stay in our late capitalism this will be the way, and we can even add AI like a cherry on top now to the very interesting human experience we have been facing with social media since it started.”

Tommy (Anson Boon) is your typical English lout. As the film opens, he’s out having a night, fighting, dancing, puking, snorting, drinking, and fucking all that he can. As he staggers home, utterly wasted, there’s a flash of car headlights and the next thing he knows, he wakes up chained in a cellar with a metal collar around his neck. Tommy’s unlikely captors are a mild-mannered family led by Chris (Stephen Graham), his emotionally fragile wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and their ten-year-old son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). They live in a small estate deep in the countryside; Tommy could scream for help all he wants, but no one would hear him. Chris’ objective, on the surface, is right there in the film’s title — he wants to rehabilitate the young man who has made no secret of his penchant for ultraviolence, posting it on social media for all to see.

Understandably, Tommy at first rages against his jailers, which also includes Rina (Monika Frajczyk), a Macedonian housekeeper, whose silence is bought on the promise of not reporting her to immigration authorities. But it soon emerges that Chris’ objectives are about making Tommy a more permanent part of a family suffering from grief. As Tommy is slowly allowed more freedom, given books to read, and spends more time getting to know each member of the household, the tattooed, loudmouthed hooligan who entered the house, becomes a softer spoken, gentler, and more considerate young man. The idea that he could willingly turn into an ideal, well-behaved son and brother suddenly seems not so unlikely…or is he just playing a part?

The film’s assured eccentricity relies heavily on the skill editor Agnieszka Glinska who ensures Tommy’s hand isn’t titled one way or the other until the climax demands it. Paired with Boon’s perfectly elusive turn as Tommy, and Abel Korzeniowski’s score which subtly supports the picture, it allows Good Boy to become more unnerving with each passing moment. The mood is reminiscent of the first half of Christian Tafrup’s 2022 slow-burner Speak No Evil in which the secrets of a strange household begin to stick uncomfortably under your chest.

Instead of the powerfully bleak conclusion of that picture, the screenplay by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid takes a different, but also uneasy turn. Without giving away the goods, it suggests that Tommy, even if against his will, did come away with some (albeit twisted) lessons about the better person he could become.

In this way, Good Boy is an intriguing concoction that oddly echoes A Clockwork Orange. Alex and Tommy would probably get along like gangbusters, even if their paths of healing ultimately diverge. “Destroy what destroys you,” Chris advises Tommy. “Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man,” the prison chaplain tells Alex. The statements are two sides of the same coin, coming from societies that in both pictures appear to treat the symptoms of bad behaviour, but not the disease.

Director: Jan Komasa
Screenplay: Bartek Bartosik, Naqqash Khalid
Cast: Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, Kit Rakusen
Producers: Jeremy Thomas, Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski
Cinematography: Michal Dymek
Production design: Fletcher Jarvis
Costume design: Julian Day
Editing: Agnieszka Glinska
Music: Abel Korzeniowski
Sound: Radoslaw Ochnio
Production companies: Skopia Film (Poland), Recorded Picture Company (United Kingdom)
World sales: HanWay Films
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In English
110 minutes

For three decades, Professor Andrews has worked to rise to the top of her field, but as a woman, and someone from the West, her groundbreaking ideas are met with skepticism in Poland. There’s no time to be neurotic, she’s told, as the political situation in the country is such that everyone is occupied with their day to day survival. The Professor soon has a taste of what that means. The conference is interrupted by protests, and she’s quickly ferreted away to a flat belonging to the parents of her handler Alina (Zofia Wichlacz). Joan’s itinerary over the following days includes tours and various functions, but feeling disrespected, she’s ready to pack up and go back home. But overnight, the military takes over the government, martial law is declared, the borders are closed, and Alina goes into hiding.

So begins a Kafka-esque, nearly dreamlike journey for Joan. It turns out that Alina is an activist with Solidarity, the group that eventually helped dismantle the communist government in Poland. And not only is she wanted, but any associates too, and that includes Joan. Her Polaroid pictures of tanks lining the street and dead activist comrades puts Joan in grave danger. As she tries to stay ahead of the secret police, her fight for survival takes Joan from the revolutionary underground all the way to the British Embassy, for a meeting with an ambassador who may not be entirely trustworthy, played by Tom Burke.

What emerges is the portrait of two women, from two different generations, who nonetheless have much in common. Joan is a woman of practical solutions, who has carved out a career — rare for her gender at the time — through application and determination. Alina is an idealist, who looks to create a better world by subverting an unfair system. This is really the core of the film, inspired by a short story by Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk, but it never quite feels fully formed. The audience may see the parallels of the characters, but Joan and Alina don’t see the echo in each other. Ultimately, this is a film about a privileged Westerner finally deciding to do a halfway decent thing and smuggle out evidence of the Polish government’s repression.

Perhaps aiming to drum up a pulse, Adamik includes a couple of chase sequences, but it’s clear it’s not the comfort zone for the filmmaker. A car chase is badly filmed and staged, lacking both choreography and coherence. The same goes for a pursuit on foot, as the cuts between Joan and her pursuer, an enigmatic Beata (Sascha Ley) who is eager to keep state secrets from slipping out of the country, similarly stumbles.

Carp is a traditional meal in Poland at Christmas, and it’s customary to keep the fish in the bathtub first, before killing and preparing it. But the fishmonger, as Joan learns, will offer to kill the fish for you if you prefer. It’s a broad and clumsy metaphor for the choices facing Joan and Alina, as they each must consider submitting to the pressures on their shoulders or attempting to fight for that last bit of air. Winter of the Crow never quite takes flight or ratchets up to the nerve-jangling possibilities of its story. But for just a few days, Joan understands why getting a mental health diagnosis isn’t at the top of mind for the Polish people fighting for the wellbeing of their very country.

Director: Kasia Adamik
Screenplay: Sandra Buchta, Kasia Adamik, Lucinda Coxon
Cast: Lesley Manville, Zofia Wichlacz, Andrzej Konopka, Sascha Ley, Tom Burke
Producers: Olga Chajdas, Stanislaw Dziedzic, Katarzyna Ozga, Nicolas Steil, Samantha Taylor
Cinematography: Tomasz Naumiuk
Production design: Aleksandra Kierzkowska
Costume design: Virginia Ferreira, Krzysztof Loszewski
Editing: Andonis Trattos
Music: Emre Sevindik
Sound: Gabriel Ohresser, Kacper Habisiak
Production companies: Wild Mouse Production (Poland), Film Produkcja (Poland), Iris Productions (Luxembourg), Film and Music Entertainment Ltd (United Kingdom)
World sales: HanWay Films
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In English, Polish
112 minutes

One pull of the trigger changes everything for Jen (Natasha O’Keeffe) when a romantic, teenage dalliance in the woods with her boyfriend Oscar (Aaron McCusker) winds up with her accidentally shooting and killing her sister Erica. As midlife approaches, Jen has made an uneasy peace with her past. Now working as a park ranger, the solitude of the forest brings relief to the memories she’s not yet fully dealt with. That all changes when Oscar, who had moved away, suddenly returns to their small town after the death of his mother. Rocked by this reappearance, Jen must now confront the adolescent-turned-man who abandoned her in her moment of crisis and reckon with what she’s made of her life.

Jen, who has never let anyone get too close, now starts actively pushing people away. Whether it’s her ex-boyfriend Bobby (Rory Nolan) or local cop with a crush Liam (Aidan O’Hare), she remains as her father Daniel (Andrew Bennett) describes, “stuck in tar.” On top of this, Jen is trying to track down a poacher killing deer in the protected conservation area that she oversees. The result is a character who is an intractable bundle of nerves, who is asked multiple times if she’s “alright,” only to wave away any concerns about her wellbeing. It can make following Jen, who is all scowls and cigarettes, and occupies almost every frame of the film, quite trying.

Much of the drama in Whitetail takes a good time to unfold, and not just because scenes or sequences cut by editor Katharina Wartena seem to drag on a few beats longer than they should. Leopold’s screenplay doesn’t get to the confrontation between Jen and Oscar until over halfway through the picture, only for them to quickly come to an imperfect, but adequate understanding almost immediately. The rest of the story is occupied by incomplete strands of subplot including Bobby’s lingering feelings for Jen, which threaten to derail his marriage, and the widowed Daniel navigating a fledgling romance with Pei (Helene Patarot). However, if the narrative has trouble finding its footing, the cinematography by Frank van den Eeden (Close, Girl, Small Things Like These) provides an intimacy with the rural Irish setting, even if Jen herself remains at a distance.

Perhaps aware that the picture needed a dose of vitality, a surprising event in the film’s third act shakes Jen out of her isolation. It’s an unearned and clumsy bit of writing that comes too late, and forcefully pushes Jen to realize that family and community are necessary to carry one through difficult times. That going it alone doesn’t let someone catch you if you fall. Rumi also wrote, “Don’t say goodbye / Remember a grave is / Only a curtain / For the paradise behind.” It’s a graceful way to approach mourning, one that acknowledges the reality of losing someone, but offers a sliver of hope. It’s the sort of nuance that Whitetail is missing, as it forgets that death is not just an ending, but can be an opening as well.

Director, screenplay: Nanouk Leopold
Cast: Natasha O’Keeffe, Andrew Bennett, Aaron McCusker, Rory Nolan, Simone Kirby, Aidan O’Hare, Abby Fitz, Sean Treacy, Helene Patarot
Producers: Stienette Bosklopper, Maarten Swart
Cinematography: Frank van den Eeden
Production design: Emma Lowney
Costume design: Manon Blom
Editing: Katharina Wartena
Music: Stephen Rennicks
Sound: Max van den Oever, Oliver Pattinama
Production companies: Keeper Pictures (Ireland), Circe Films (Netherlands), Kaap Holland Film (Netherlands), Savage Film (Belgium), VPRO Television (Netherlands)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In English
98 minutes

Lina (Sola), an Argentinian fashion designer, is in Switzerland to receive an award. But her face betrays anything but joy. After promptly dumping the statuette in the trash, she wanders the streets before launching herself off a bridge and into the water. She hauls herself out, cleans herself up, and returns home, but she can’t shake off the strange mood that enveloped her abroad. “It’s like you never came back,” her husband Pedro (Esteban Bigliardi) observes. Distant and prone to sleeplessness and panic attacks, Lina can’t seem to settle back into life with Pedro and their daughter Sofia (Emma Fayo Duarte). Even worse, she can’t stand running water; a shower is out of the question, and even strong pressure from the tap is unbearable.

The picture is at its most compelling when it ventures away from traditional narrative. Mumenthaler’s visual reference of Jenaro Pérez Villaamil’s painting “Explosión de una locomotora,” and the use of classic pieces including Morton Feldman’s “Something Wild In The City: Mary Ann’s Theme” and Gustav Holst’s “The Planets, Op. 32: II. Venus, the Bringer of Peace” bring an ethereal feel to the film. The opening, eight-minute sequence of The Currents documenting Lina in Switzerland are nearly dialogue-free, but the filmmaker truly offers something special in the third act. As Lina and Sofia watch the city from a spotlight atop their apartment building, we drift down into the city, dropped inside an imaginative snapshot of the lives of the film’s supporting characters. Moments that Lina — because she’s an artist and a mother; because of the choices she’s made and not made — will never know or experience. Because life only gives us the one path we tumble down. It’s a gorgeous, stirring sequence that evokes the visual language of early career work by F.W. Murnau or King Vidor.

It’s a disappointment, however, that following the buildup to the climax, The Currents tips its hand toward a more ordinary domestic drama and offers a rather anodyne explanation for Lina’s existential crisis. Mumenthaler’s screenplay works best when it lives and breathes in the ambiguities of Lina’s malaise and dissatisfaction, and how she balances it with her responsibilities as an entrepreneur, wife, and devoted mother. Splitting the difference between its more lyrical touches with more straightforward storytelling saps some of the power out of the film.

“I don’t know if they’re real or just an artifice to fill the void,” Lina’s colleague Julia (Ernestina Gatti) says about the tension of romantic gestures. It cuts to the heart of Lina’s own uncertainties about her life, and what she’s left behind and where she’s going. Even as Pedro longs for the woman he knew before she left for Switzerland, one thing is certain, that version of Lina is no more. As she pushes open the windows and listens to the rain at the film’s close, the realization that she can craft a new identity within a society that asks her to subsume to its demands, is just enough to keep her going.

Director: Milagros Mumenthaler
Screenplay: Milagros Mumenthaler
Cast: Isabel Aime Gonzalez Sola, Esteban Bigliardi, Emma Fayo Duarte, Ernestina Gatti
Producers: Eugenia Mumenthaler, Violeta Bava, Rosa Martínez Rivero, David Epiney
Cinematography: Gabriel Sandru
Production design: Aili Chen
Costume design: Simona Martinez
Editing: Gion-Reto Killias
Sound: Carlos Ibanez Diaz, Federico Esquerro, Denis Sechaud
Production companies: Alina Film (Switzerland), Ruda Cine (Argentina)
World sales: Luxbox
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In Spanish
104 minutes

It’s one year after the war and Ukraine is on unsteady footing. The government is mulling plans to close half the schools and universities, and given that women left the country en masse during the conflict and haven’t returned, it’s no surprise. Ukraine has become a country of men, which makes it all the more difficult for movie director Valik to mount his next picture. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, Vasyanovych is in the midst of production on a film about parents and children co-starring himself and his teenage son Yarik (Hryhoriy Naumov). But he confesses to his producer Vlad (Vladen Odudenko — also an actual producer on To the Victory!) that he’s not sure if it’s relevant, and wants to pivot the movie to thematically address the depopulation of Ukraine. Valik is also mourning the fracture of his family, as his wife and daughter have established a life abroad, with no plans to come back.

The playful, meta aspects of To the Victory! are enjoyable, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, but never overwhelming the film’s narrative arc. We’re always certain of where we stand with Valik, whose process of making the film-within-the-film is one that sees him wrestling with the state of his family, country, and what lies ahead. Via Valik, Vasyanovych also has some fun at his own expense, with his onscreen character lamenting that his new film doesn’t have the juicier elements of Atlantis which included a suicide and sex scene. Valik wonders if any film festivals will even be interested in his latest venture at all. (Of course, Vasyanovych has an open door in plenty of festivals around the world).

Unfolding in Vasyanovych’s trademark long, locked off shots, the formal approach balances the screenplay’s structural tease with the thematic issues he wishes to discuss. Peppered with literal and metaphorical landmines, they are ably handled by the cast made up largely of non-actors/Vasyanovych’s own crew members. As discussions range from moviemaking to Ukraine itself, the undeniable intimacy between everyone involved makes resonant the larger ideas at play. Is it responsible for artists to pursue their craft as a country rebuilds? Is it delusion to imagine that things can return to how they were before? Should Ukrainians who have fled the war, and made the most of opportunities elsewhere, feel compelled to come back and start anew when the war ends? Vasyanovych and Valik are tormented by not having those answers.

As To the Victory! draws to a close, Valik’s film has wrapped, and he drives around the neighbourhood of Podil in Kyiv with Yarik in his recently deceased father’s vintage car. As they drive by Zhovten Cinema, Valik fondly reminisces that he once lived nearby, and would regularly go to the movies and take a dip in an adjacent pool. Eventually, Valik lets Yarik take the wheel as he works the pedals, giving his son his first driving lesson. As a metaphor for two generations of Ukrainians looking both backward and forward, it couldn’t be more on the nose. But when Yarik jokingly warns his father, in the film’s last line of dialogue, “Just don’t fall asleep, so we don’t end up somewhere weird,” Vasyanovych delivers a profound note of discontent. It’s a sober warning to his countrymen about their duty to stay vigilant, and it’s a lesson for the audience to take with them as the director smash cuts to credits.

Director: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Screenplay: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Cast: Valentyn Vasyanovych, Vladlen Odudenko, Misha Lubarsky, Sergii Stepanskyy, Volodymyr Yatsenko, Marianna Novikova, Hryhoriy Naumov
Producers: Volodymyr Yatsenko, Valentyn Vasyanovych, Anna Yatsenko, Marija Razgute, Iya Myslytska
Cinematography: Misha Lubarsky, Valentyn Vasyanovych
Production design: Vladlen Odudenko
Costume design: Hanna Chabaniuk
Editing: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Music: Dominykas Digimas
Sound: Sergii Stepanskyy
Production companies: Arsenal Films (Ukraine), ForeFilms (Ukraine), M-Films (Lithuania)
World sales: Best Friend Forever
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In Ukrainian
105 minutes

“We had all these people coming in, saying, ‘I’ll do whatever you want for free,’?” Vice co-founder Shane Smith told New York magazine in 2018. “That was when we realized we were onto something.” Those words could’ve also come from the mouth of Dino Davis (Tyler Labine), who uncoincidentally looks a helluva lot like Smith, and runs a similar, guerilla-style outlet called the Kalamazoo Herald. Arriving in the Stockholm offices of his media empire, he immediately pulls together a crew of starry-eyed illustrator Sonja (Ella Rae Rappaport), and camerapersons Gemma (Emma Creed) and Turan (Arvin Kananian). The mission: a gonzo journey inside the most radioactive place on Earth, a patch of Soviet Kazakhstan, controlled by both the United States and Russia. Imagine Chernobyl if it was in Death Valley, and you’ll get an idea of this dry and dusty parcel of land. Dino hopes to find proof of the aforementioned mythological creature. For Sonja, Gemma, and Turan, they’re aiming to make a name for themselves, and earn a place at the Kalamazoo Herald.

“I make people into stars. I make them become gods,” the smarmy Dino boasts. A master manipulator, the editor-in-filth pits Sonja and Gemma against each other. They each seek his approval, because they want, respectively, their drawing or photo, to make the cover of the next issue. And Dino isn’t above using their desperation to try and solicit sexual favors. Turan, meanwhile, is also trying to prove he can be Dino’s right hand man and trusted shooter, but his favourability is dependent on saying yes to his boss’ every demand.

Based on the novel by Arno Schmidt, the picture’s sci-fi touches are the framework for a caustic portrait of edgelord media. Kagerman draws from her own time at Vice, and there’s no doubt her experience accompanying Smith to Chernobyl for an episode of The Vice Guide to Travel informed the screenplay. The blurred lines between truth and fiction, fuelled by even blurrier bouts with alcohol, paint a morbidly funny look at how toxic masculine excess corrupts journalism. Egghead Republic probably didn’t need the fantastical elements; the picture becomes far less interesting in the moments it leans into its world-building. But perhaps if it was too straightforward, too precise in hitting its target, the honesty might be harder to stomach.

Powered by a breakthrough performance by an effervescent Schmidt, and great, commanding work by Labine in his best role in years, Egghead Republic zips along with all the energy its 2004 setting can muster. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have tracks by The Knife, Bloc Party, and Lykke Li pumping through the speakers either.

At a time when newspapers are dying, magazines are being bought up and consolidated, and budgets are being slashed at whatever outlets are left, paying your dues by not being paid at all has become a more frequent reality. Thankfully, Egghead Republic is here, and if there’s someone you know who is even considering trading their labor for a byline, it might be best to sit them down in front of Kagerman and Lilja’s spiky creation.

Director: Pella Kagerman, Hugo Lilja
Screenplay: Pella Kagerman, Hugo Lilja
Cast: Ella Rae Rappaport, Tyler Labine, Arvin Kananian, Emma Creed
Producers: Nina Lund, Pella Kagerman
Cinematography: Malin Gutke
Production design: Petra Kagerman
Costume design: Charlie Malmsten
Editing: Oskar Blondell
Music: Juhana Lehtiniemi
Sound: Ted Krotkiewski
Production companies: YouSavedMe, The Swedish Film Institute, Film Stockholm, NonStop Entertainment, Gotlands Filmfond, Film i, Dalarna, Pie in the Sky Productions (Sweden)
World sales: Best Friend Forever
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In English, Swedish
97 minutes

The Sommers are a family of vloggers who share their joy and wisdom across social media on their account Our Bright Life. Sixteen-year-old Luca (Maja Bons) has had every milestone of her life — birth, potty training, her first period, her first kiss — documented in a video or podcast by her equally online parents Stella (Bea Brocks) and Chris (Liliom Lewald). Luca is the center of their world, and the core of the lucrative branding partnerships that pays for their chic and palatial modern home. But Luca begins to question everything when Stella and Chris decide to create a new revenue stream by having a baby. First jealous of a sibling taking away from her shine, soon Luca begins to worry about someone else having the choice to be off camera wrestled away from them the moment they’re born.

Luca decides to do the only thing she can think of — rebel. But raging against the parental machine has never quite looked like this. Armed with a credit card, she checks in for a month at a boutique hotel so she can figure out how to take back control of her online and offline life. She starts seeing the motorcycle riding Julie (Joy Ewulu), a woman she met during a commercial shoot. She rents herself out for clout as a daughter to another family. But most troubling, Luca starts confiding in the beta version of an AI chatbot of…herself. Her own avatar becomes her therapist, which in the era of people seeking analysis from ChatGPT, is a mortifying harbinger of things to come. When digital Luca advises human Luca, “You’re a brand, you just have to use it,” she finally comes up with a plan for the ultimate online disruption.

Eschewing the usual, 16:9, shaky digital look of many movies centered around social media, cinematographer Jakob Sinsel creates a beautiful and unique visual palette for the picture. Pastels abound across the Sommer home and especially in Luca’s hotel room, with some terrific work from production designers Martha Ines Brenner and Felicitas Antonia Puels. Sinsel allows the camera to hover and float down stretches of roadway each time Luca and Julie take a ride. It gives Babystar a contemporary feel, but not one rooted in swiping and scrolling, ensuring it won’t feel dated when Silicon Valley figures out the next way into our front cortex.

The film’s centerpiece sequence sees the Sommer family having dinner at a fancy restaurant with each of them capturing the evening on their phones. As Luca, Stella, and Chris chat, their dialogue is played over shots of each immaculately and sumptuously prepared dish. It all leads to a terrific, hilarious punchline: a smash cut to the family seated in their SUV, in the garage, silently eating McDonald’s. In a film that can occasionally be too didactic, this proves to be the perfect and sharpest shot across the bow. And ultimately, the best metaphor for the current age, as we eagerly consume high calorie slop in private, and push it offscreen when it’s time to present ourselves to the world.

Director: Joscha Bongard
Screenplay: Nicole Ruethers, Joscha Bongard
Cast: Maja Bons, Bea Brocks, Liliom Lewald, Joy Ewulu
Producers: Lisa Purtscher, Lotta Schmelzer
Cinematography: Jakob Sinsel
Production design: Martha Ines Brenner, Felicitas Antonia Puels
Costume design: Stephanie Zurstegge, Joan Besch
Editing: Emma Holzapfel, Wolfgang Purkhauser
Music: Jonas Vogler
Sound: Muhammet Can
Production companies: LiseLotte Films (Germany)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In German
98 minutes

It’s 2002 and a scrappy Irish side have found themselves qualified for the World Cup in Japan. It’s a time of change in the sport. The old days when teams were filled by players who you’d just as likely find down at the pub before the match is shifting to laser-focused, highly trained athletes who spent almost every waking hour conditioning. For Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) — the player turned coach of the Irish squad — it’s a reality he hasn’t yet acknowledged. For Roy Keane (Eanna Hardwicke) — the jewel in the Manchester United team led by the future Sir Alex Ferguson — he not only adheres to rigorous training, he sees it in the next generation of superstars led by names like David Beckham.

Arriving in sunny Saipan three weeks before the tournament to train, it doesn’t take long for Keane to declare the planning by Irish Football Association head Dickie Hughes (Jamie Beamish) as a “shambles.” The practice pitch is brown and patchy, and even if they could run drills, they don’t have any footballs. The hotel is three-star at best, the food isn’t much more than cheese sandwiches, and the pale lads from the Emerald Isle haven’t even been provided sunscreen. The whole thing is seen, from the executives on down, as a vacation and everyone except Keane parties, golfs, and takes banana boat excursions as he patiently waits for manager McCarthy to, well, manage.

That’s the essence of the friction between McCarthy and Keane in the airtight script by Paul Fraser that soon sparks into an international incident. McCarthy’s style is laidback, appearing eager to be a friend with those in his charge, where Keane, as captain, takes his role as leader seriously, and in turn demands to be led. As communication breaks down between the two, an exasperated McCarthy asks Keane if he wants to play in the World Cup, oblivious that it’s not the player’s commitment that’s in doubt.

Compressed into a tight 90 minutes, Saipan is powered by an electrifying performance by Hardwicke who finds an empathetic side to the hard-as-nails Keane (who is also softened through a lovely supporting turn by Harriet Cains as his wife). Coogan plays McCarthy as out of his element, thrust into a role he’s either unprepared for or whose importance he cannot grasp. He’s built his entire World Cup strategy around Keane, but can’t seem to figure out how to serve that crucial cog in the machine. Together, the actors strike a perfect chord of dysfunction.

The picture moves at a terrific pace with sharp editing by John Murphy and Gavin Buckley. Utilizing extensive archival footage that serves as cuts and transitions between scenes, it provides necessary context to those unfamiliar with, as Wikipedia dubs it, The Saipan Incident, and nostalgic color for everyone else. Rounded out with an ace soundtrack including cuts by Oasis, The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan, and Fontaines D.C., it all provides an appropriately adrenaline pumping experience.

“They’ll forget all the rubbish when I’ve gone, and they’ll remember the football,” the legendary George Best once said, a player that Keane notes never had the privilege of playing in the World Cup. Well, Best only had it half right. Saipan proves that sometimes it’s both the rubbish and football that makes it the beautiful game.

Director: Lisa Barros D’Sa, Glenn Leyburn
Screenplay: Paul Fraser
Cast: Steve Coogan, Eanna Hardwicke
Producers: Macdara Kelleher, John Keville, Trevor Birney, Olly Butler
Cinematography: Piers McGrail
Production design: John Leslie
Costume design: Lara Campbell
Editing: John Murphy, Gavin Buckley
Music: David Holmes
Sound: Andrew Graham
Production companies: Wild Atlantic Pictures (Ireland), Finepoint Films (United Kingdom)
World sales: Bankside Films
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In English
91 minutes

“We had the feeling that he is too well known, that he had changed into some kind of a brand and there were so many words, interpretations, and biographical facts about him, that the fragile existence of that human being had somehow disappeared under that pile of information, facts and kitsch,” Holland told The Film Verdict in an interview ahead of the premiere. “I felt such a strong connection to Kafka since practically my late childhood that I had the pretentious assumption that I somehow understood him better, even if it was more through intuition than literary analysis, and it was exciting to try to find the cinematic key to tell this biography, which we knew from the beginning could not be told in the regular, classical, biopic, linear way.”

“What is characteristic with Kafka’s vision is that when you think that you have the key, after you try to re-use it, it doesn’t open. So it is very dynamic, which is also why it’s alive. There is not a final interpretation that can be put on the shelf. Nothing is final with Kafka,” Holland said. “My collaborators and I wanted to have that playfulness which is in opposition to the stereotypical vision of Kafka that is dark, gloomy, and slow, which I think is not true, it is just a stereotype. We talked about the structure being a little like in quantum physics, with time and space not obvious and linear, and that it will be a bit punky, not serious and sad.”

A sprawling, idiosyncratic merging of levels of reality, Franz shifts back and forth between Franz’s life growing up in troubled central Europe on the verge of World War I, balancing an insurance job with a passion for the written word, and present-day Prague, where he is one of the most popular faces on souvenirs, and the tour guides profit from his name.

Holland, who studied film in Czechoslovakia in the Communist era, and previously adapted Kafka’s The Trial for Polish television in the ‘80s, said she was struck by the commercialisation of Kafka when visiting Prague after the Velvet Revolution. “During Communist times Kafka was practically censored, and was considered as a bourgeois, degenerate writer. When freedom came, and with it capitalism, Czechs realised that he is a great tourist attraction, and made everything possible out of him: monuments, a museum, and millions of gadgets.”

A confronting torture scene from Kafka’s story “In the Penal Colony”, about an elaborate execution device, is also visually represented and woven into Franz. “Most of his life, apart from some banal quarrels, was quite uneventful; what was radical was what was on the page,” said Holland. ‘In the Penal Colony’ was shocking for his contemporaries, and we wanted to achieve a similar kind of reaction. That story was extremely important for Kafka’s huge recognition after the Second World War, because he was considered suddenly as some kind of prophet, who anticipated the Holocaust.”

Holland had been thinking it was “practically impossible” to find an actor to convincingly embody Kafka, a singular personality with a complicated identity as a German-speaking Czech Jew, until newcomer Idan Weiss appeared in the first batch of actors sent by late casting director Simone Barr. “It was great luck, especially because it had just been the hundredth anniversary of Kafka’s death, and the directors of a mini-series and a feature had both cast German actors to play Kafka and they didn’t notice Idan. He was just waiting for me. My mentor, the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda, said that you recognise a good director if he has luck with the weather and the casting — so I think I am a good director.”

The resurgence of authoritarianism has made Kafka all too relevant again, Holland said. “Unfortunately we are now approaching a time of hatred and anti-human legislation that somehow recalls the late ‘30s of the twentieth century. We are living through a very deep crisis of liberal democracy and the state of law is a very important part of democracy, but that mechanism of the law has become very arbitrary and dehumanised, and that is the first step towards a total catastrophe. Kafka was extremely sensitive to that, and very visionary I would say, in recognising the dangers of developed capitalism.”

Asked whether she is optimistic for Europe’s future, Holland said: “It needs a lot of courage to be optimistic, frankly. Elements are adding one to another and pushing us on a very dangerous path, and I think that the effect of the many revolutions that are going on — the technological revolution, the climate catastrophe, globalisation, inequalities which are growing, and so on — is that something has to explode or change. What it will be we don’t know; it is very possible it will be some outburst of incredible violence. We see that humanity doesn’t have the tools or doesn’t want to use the tools. We have to deal with the challenges and dangers, and the idea that populism is the only way is so dangerous long-term. The only optimism I have is that after the boom-boom, something new will be born, and there will be for another period some kind of progress for humanity.”

Anna (Saga Gardarsdottir) is a newly single visual artist who balances creating giant canvases of her work in the open fields of rural Iceland, as she does looking after her three children, the teenage Ida, and junior high age twins Grimur and Porgils (all three played by the director’s own kids Ida Mekkín Hlynsdottir, and Grímur and Porgils Hlynsson). Her ex-husband and the children’s father, Magnus (Sverrir Gudnason), spends long stretches of time working on fishing boats. But when he’s back on land, he’s a regular fixture at Anna’s, doing his best to be a presence to his sons and daughter. Anna and Magnus (mostly) still get along — arguments flare and fizzle — but for the most part, the home is chaotically joyful.

Set over the course of a year, the film doesn’t so much build a story as shift with the changing seasons. The most narrative time is spent with Anna trying to sell her work to a Swedish gallerist, but even that occupies maybe a quarter of an hour. The decision to buy Ida a horse unfolds in one swift scene, and is almost never referred to again. In fact, we don’t even see the equine; Ida and her brothers spend more time practicing their shot with a bow and arrow.

What does emerge is an interrogation of male entitlement. “I know her and I don’t know her,” Magnus says to a fellow fisherman about his relationship with Anna, but it’s less that she’s elusive than he’s oblivious to the reasons that she sometimes downright hates him. Whether it’s halfway pleading for casual sex or trying to implement his ideas about raising the kids under her roof, Magnus can’t see his family past his own nose. It takes his former father-in-law, played by Ingvar Sigurdsson, to tell him the seemingly simple, obvious lesson: if Magnus wants to be a good father and partner he needs to put himself last. But Magnus would rather play the martyr.

Lensed in 35mm in Palmason’s trademark, Academy ratio, the film — like his previous efforts — looks sublime. But the picture’s magic this time around comes from the score by Harry Hunt which features a handful of filagreed, jazzy, woodwind led interludes. They aid the film in floating along with its characters, from one incident to another — a trip to the emergency room; making jam in the kitchen; having a barbecue — pass like turning pages in a photo album. The music keeps the tone of the film in place, even when it pushes into the fantastical — an imagined plane crash; the appearance of giant rooster — to largely mixed if not outright confusing results.

The film’s best sequence is a conversation between Ida and her brothers. Ida shares that she feels she’s at a crossroads in her life, as she makes decisions about her future, and the discussion rolls into talk about dating and sex. In any other film, one of the parents would be involved, but here Palmason relays that even in the harmonic disharmony of this particular family, the kids are kind, open, and looking out for each other. Perhaps in a way that their mother and father couldn’t do for each other. That, perhaps more than any other metric, should be considered a success.

Director: Hlynur Palmason
Screenplay: Hlynur Palmason
Cast: Saga Garoarsdottir, Sverrir Guonason, Ida Mekkín Hlynsdottir, Grímur Hlynsson, Porgils Hlynsson, Ingvar Sigurosson, Anders Mossling
Producers: Anton Mani Svansson, Katrin Pors
Cinematography: Hlynur Palmason
Production design: Frosti Frioriksson
Costume design: Nina Gronlund
Editing: Julius Krebs Damsbo
Music: Harry Hunt
Sound: Bjorn Viktorsson
Production companies: STILL VIVID (Iceland), Snowglobe (Denmark), HOBAB (Sweden), Maneki Films (France), Film i Vast (Sweden), ARTE France Cinema (France)
World sales: New Europe Film Sales
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In Icelandic, English, Swedish, French
109 minutes

Largely skipping his early life, the ambitious screenplay by Marek Epstein takes a compelling, nonlinear approach, focusing on Kafka’s personal goalposts rather than his professional (which were few during his lifetime). What emerges is a picture of the writer struggling to understand who he is and who he wants to become. The man, born into a Jewish family, was just as ready to contemplate atheism as he was ready to proudly fight for his country in World War I, until he was pulled away, deemed necessary in his role at Workers’ Accident Insurance. Epstein and Holland’s Kafka, you’d be surprised to find out, fucks. Eccentric he may be — writing long into the night; possessing unpolished social graces — he’s nonetheless a creature of interest to the opposite sex. Kakfa becomes engaged, only to fall in love with his bride’s best friend. Afterward, he takes up with the wife of another acquaintance. But, paradoxically, it’s really solace he seeks.

The conflicted desire of intellectual pursuits and quotidian societal norms are beautifully portrayed by Idan Weiss in his first feature film role. In his breakout performance, the actor finds the sweet spot of a man not of this world, but saddled with being part of it. Weiss serves the necessary center of a movie and holds together its admirable flourishes: supporting characters that also serve as Greek chorus-y narrators; anachronistic music from Polish indie rock band Trupa Trupa; and The Zone of Interest-esque leaps to the Frank Kafka Museum, where we follow contemporary visitors on guided tours. This is all wrapped in cinematography by Tomasz Naumiuk that tips toward the wide-lensed look of Yorgos Lanthimos’ recent pictures.

The film’s adventurous spirit modestly tapers off in the back half, disappointingly leaning into a more traditional narrative structure as it heads into the final years of Kafka’s life. And while Weiss and the ensemble do terrific work (Katharina Stark as Franz’s beloved sister Ottla is another highlight), the bellicose performance by Peter Kurth as the writer’s domineering father hits one, increasingly grating note. But these are merely occasional misprints on an overall text that is wholly compelling.

The Franz Kafka Museum sells official tote bags, postcards, and even a travel diary with commemorative stickers celebrating the legendary author. During your visit in Prague, you might decide to stay at the Franz Kafka Hostel, or visit The World of Franz Kafka, an immersive exhibition that has little to do with the author at all. Perhaps you could wrap up your trip by viewing David Cerny’s Statue Of Kafka, a massive, movable, 24 tonne stainless steel sculpture of the author’s head, situated outside a shopping mall. There is no doubt that Kafka himself, who forever sought silence, who wanted his works destroyed upon his death, would be aghast at the noise around his legacy. He’d likely feel like he was caught in the torture device of “In The Penal Colony.” However, Franz might just please Kafka — by choosing not to define him, the film allows the author to be whoever he wants.

Director: Agnieszka Holland
Screenplay: Marek Epstein
Cast: Idan Weiss, Jenovéfa Boková, Peter Kurth, Ivan Trojan, Sandra Korzeniak, Katharina Stark, Sebastian Schwarz, Aaron Friesz
Producers: Agnieszka Holland, Sarka Cimbalova, Uwe Schott, Jorgo Narjes, Marcin Wierzchoslawski, Alicja Jagodzinska
Cinematography: Tomasz Naumiuk
Production design: Henrich Boraros
Costume design: Michaela Horackova Horejsi
Editing: Pavel Hrdlicka
Music: Mary Komasa, Antoni Komasa Lazarkiewicz
Sound: Marek Hart
Production companies: Marlene Film Production (Czech Republic), X Filme Creative Pool (Germany), Metro Films (Poland)
World sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
In German, Czech
127 minutes

It’s 2017 and Julian (Laurence Roothooft) and Fleur (Nina Meurisse) get engaged. As they float ideas with their friends about where to celebrate their marriage, they make it clear that destinations like Greece and Italy — where gay unions were illegal at the time (Greece made it legal in 2024) — are out of the question. But limited options provide a stroke of inspiration. Julian and Fleur decide to get married twenty-two times, once in each place where gay marriage is legal, starting in their home of Brussels, Belgium.

Fleur, a journalist, pitches a piece about the project at the outlet where she works. Undeterred when she’s turned down for funding, Fleur pursues sponsorships on her own, as Julian, a hydrographer, takes leave from her work. Armed with camcorders, the pair document their unique adventure each step of the way. Their weddings, they hope, will spark awareness about the surprisingly few places in the world where gay marriage is recognized. But all the planning in the world can’t account for the heartbreaking tragedy that looms on the horizon when Julian is diagnosed with brain cancer.

Based on the memoir by Fleur Pierets, the screenplay by Kusters and Lukas Dhont collaborator Angelo Tijssens (Girl, Close) weaves the story down a non-linear path of longing, remembrance, and the heady immediacy of love. The story is partially framed around Fleur’s preparation of a lecture about the project following Julian’s passing. However, the result is a film that struggles to strike the balance between the melodramatic needs of the narrative and its desire to grasp the deeply ephemeral connection between two people. At times, Julian can feel diagrammatic in its explication of the inequalities queer people face. When a city clerk shares that his queer teenage nephew, who took his own life, would’ve admired Julian and Fleur’s project, it’s a bit of sentimental hand-holding that feels unnecessary. The picture is at its most affecting when it’s at its loosest. A sequence in which Julian rehearses her wedding vows over footage of Fleur racing across a lawn in her wedding dress is truly gorgeous. Small moments, such as the pair catching eyes across a dinner table, or even leaning close to review a spreadsheet, relay an attachment that jumps the bounds of their project.

Technically, the film is finely crafted. The cinematography by Michel Rosendaal seamlessly blends a sturdy hand on the picture’s narrative elements with Julian and Fleur’s pleasingly unpolished home video footage. Editor Lot Rossmark pulls it all together effortlessly, even as the story moves between Europe and New York City. But its the performances — particularly by Roothooft as the tall, buzzcut, spirited Julian — that allows the picture, in its best moments, to feel unguarded and spontaneous.

Hydrographers survey large bodies of water, identifying potential features or obstacles to enable smooth and safe nautical navigation. Julian, in her way, mapped a life with Fleur, one that they planned to follow around the globe under she couldn’t. Death, as Fleur learns, is just as immediate as love, and just as lasting. Julian is a topography of relationship and reminds us that just because something might end, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over.

Director: Cato Kusters
Screenplay: Cato Kusters, Angelo Tijssens
Cast: Nina Meurisse, Laurence Roothooft
Producers: Michiel Dhont, Lukas Dhont
Cinematography: Michel Rosendaal
Production design: Catherine Cosme
Costume design: Josine Immoos
Editing: Lot Rossmark
Music: Evgueni Galperine, Sacha Galperine
Sound: Arne Winderickx
Production companies: The Reunion (Belgium), Les Films Du Fleuve (Belgium), Topkapi Films (Netherlands)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Dutch, French, English
91 minutes

Those conversations, however, will be a sidebar to TIFF’s consistently well-curated lineup, which brings together the best films from the circuit along with a plethora of highly-anticipated world premieres. It can be a scramble and a struggle to grab tickets to the A-list attractions, but the secret of the festival’s programing are the titles that go beyond the big names. This year, EFP (European Film Promotion) is supportng a terrific lineup of adventurous and ambitious European cinema waiting to be discovered by curious cinephiles.

Arriving in Toronto are a trio of hot titles from Cannes that are already angling for major Oscar play. First up is Joachim Trier’s Grand Prix winning Sentimental Value, the director’s reunion with his The Worst Person in the World Star star Renate Reinsve. Norway’s near universally-adored candidate for Best International Feature chronicles a stage actor grappling with family and depression.

Sweden will be swinging for the golden statue with their selection, Eagles of the Republic, starring Fares Fares. The conclusion of director Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy follows a movie star who is wrangled into starring in a propaganda film for the government. Lastly is Hlynur Palmason’s The Love That Remains, which will represent Iceland during the awards season. Taking a detour from his tougher works like Godland and A White, White Day, the filmmaker chronicles a family wrestling with divorce with a fantastical and comic touch.

Boarding a flight from Venice is the latest team-up from director Anders Thomas Jensen and star Mads Mikkelsen. The Last Viking is a dark comedy about a man who must deal with his mentally unstable brother in order to recover the loot from a bank robbery.

Sharp takes on social media and content creation make their debut in Toronto with Egghead Republic and Babystar. The former from writing and directing team Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja follows an aspiring illustrator who finds herself embedded with a documentary crew from a Vice-like media empire where the truth becomes malleable. The latter from filmmaker Joscha Bongard follows a teenager in a family of influencers who begins to see the dark side of getting clicks.

Stories based on real life figures arrive in the shape of Franz, Agnieszka Holland’s ambitious chronicle of the life of Kafka. Cato Kusters tracks a beautiful and tragic queer romance in Julian. Meanwhile, Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn detail the battle between soccer star Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy in Saipan starring Steve Coogan.

Thrillers are also on offer in some intriguing flavors. Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough star in Jan Komasa’s Good Boy, about an out-of-control hooligan who gets kidnapped and chained up in the house of an otherwise ordinary suburban family. Lesley Manville stars in the neo-noir Winter of the Crow, an adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk’s story set in early ‘80s Poland. Meanwhile, trauma and secrets of the past boil to the surface in Nanouk Leopold’s Whitetail.

Rounding out EFP’s strong slate of titles are Valentyn Vasyanovych’s clever, near future imagination of post-war Ukraine in To The Victory!  A man endures brutal, faith-based drug rehab in Goran Stankovic’s raw drama Our Father. And in The Currents, Milagros Mumenthaler unfolds the story of a woman who becomes disconnected from her career and family.

Augmented by director talks, special events, and Festival Street fun, TIFF is once again pulling out all the stops for their anniversary year.

The 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 4th to 14th.