The feeling on Festival Street — the popular pedestrian thoroughfare that passes in front of key venues TIFF Lightbox and Princess of Wales Theatre — bubbled at full energy as the public craned their necks to star gaze and join in the convivial and vibrant spirit. As for moviegoers, there was plenty to discover well beyond the glitz and glamor.

EFP (European Film Promotion) arrived in Canada to proudly shine a light on a dozen titles, spread across the range of TIFF’s programming categories from TIFF Docs to the competitive Platform section. Many of the pictures were impressive feature debuts from directors who marked themselves as names to watch including: Radu Jude disciple Sarra Tsorakidis with her tough look at relationships under capitalism in Ink Wash; Jasmin Gordon’s flinty and tender portrait of motherhood in The Courageous; a nearly Shakespearean tragedy in Dimitris Nakos’ Meat; and Anastasiia Bortuali’s unique documentary Temporary Shelter, capturing the lives of Ukrainian refugees in Iceland.

Seasoned filmmakers returning to the circuit also shined in a variety of genres. Frida Kempff offered a distinct take on the period-set sports biopic with her story about swimmer Sally Bauer in The Swedish Torpedo. Frederik Louis Hviid’s flexed serious muscle in his gritty heist flick The Quiet Ones, while the coming-of-age dramedy got a lovely spin in My Fathers’ Daughter from Egil Pedersen. Meanwhile, Guillaume Senez traveled to Tokyo with Romain Duris for his winning tale of fractured fatherhood, A Missing Part.

As press and industry bounced between titles big and small, as usual there were some films proving so popular that lineups stretched down city blocks. Brady Corbet’s Venice Best Director-winning epic The Brutalist was easily the hottest ticket in town. The sole press screening had industry folks lining up two hours early to try and snag a seat, and many wound up shut out. Luca Guadagnino’s sprawling, Daniel Craig-starring, Beat adaptation Queer created a similar traffic jam. And everyone wanted to get their eyeballs on Carolie Fargeat’s eye-popping, Cannes Best Screenplay barnburner The Substance.

Academy Awards season came into view as several titles rose into contention. After taking home Best International Feature two years ago with All Quiet On The Western Front, director Edward Berger spurred more Oscar talk with his starry, well-received papal thriller Conclave led by Ralph Fiennes. Amy Adams and Nicole Kidman staked their ground in the Best Actress race with go-for-broke performances in Nightbitch and Babygirl, respectively. Legendary director Mike Leigh not only delivered a late career stunner with Hard Truths — which was rejected by Cannes, Venice, and Telluride — but another potential Oscar-contending performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Canadian Jason Reitman tossed his hat into the ring with his buzzy, crowd-pleasing ensemble piece Saturday Night. Meanwhile, Pedro Almodovar’s Golden Lion-winning The Room Next Door got a victory lap as it gears up for its Oscar run.

Controversy also called at TIFF this year. The Canada-France co-production of Anastasia Trofimova’s documentary Russians At War prompted a large protest outside the Scotiabank Cinema on the afternoon of its first press screening. The film joins Russian soldiers on the frontline of their invasion of Ukraine, purporting to give a unique perspective to the conflict. While Trofimova — who previously worked at Russia’s state-backed media outlet RT (which is banned from broadcast in Canada) — has vehemently declared her film as “anti-war” and says it was created without the knowledge of the Russian government, she has faced significant pushback. Organizations have criticized the film for ignoring or whitewashing Russian war crimes, while calls for inquiry are being made about how the documentary received support from provincial broadcasters TVO in Ontario and Knowledge Network in British Columbia, along with funding support from the Canada Media Fund. Following the protests, TVO has since withdrawn their backing, while TIFF kept Russians At War in their lineup, but paused screenings claiming “significant threats to festival operations and public safety.”

As TIFF looks ahead to growing even bigger in the next few years, with plans for a formal market launching in 2026, organizers don’t just want to be another stop on the fall festival run. They want to be the premiere destination where big films can make an awards season splash, and the next generation of auteurs can be discovered by a cinephile hungry crowd. And certainly, as the 2024 festival unfolded, it looks like TIFF has pieces in place to do just that.

It’s 1939. The radio burbles incessantly with the latest news about Adolf Hitler. Sally’s (Josefin Neldén) sister Carla (Lisa Carlehed) has suffered another miscarriage. As a single mother, Sally is doing all she can to care for her young son Lars (Arthur Sörbring), while her exasperated mother (Gunnel Fred) wants her to enroll in housewife school. Yet, despite a looming war, and a growing pile of domestic problems, all Sally can think about is one thing: swimming the English Channel. It’s with these straightforward narrative goalposts that Kempff and Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten craft a sturdily composed screenplay that is as much about Sally’s journey as a study of both the visible and invisible shackles of patriarchy.

Freeing themselves from the obligation of getting lost in the weeds of swim world mechanics and statistics allows Kempff and Hausswolff to give the spotlight to Neldén, and she wields it well. Her performance — both impressively physical and deeply moving — deserves to be an international breakthrough for the already well-regarded Swedish actress. Nelden imbues Sally with flinty and vulnerable spirit, creating an admirable determination to be a parent and champion, even if it seems absurdly impossible. It’s once again the well-written script that gives Nelden so much room to find Sally, and all her flaws and convictions, but without losing sight of the fact that in breaking barriers, she nearly breaks herself in the process.

Opening its view well beyond the Baltic Sea and English Channel, there are no training montages or inspirational monologues in The Swedish Torpedo. It takes nearly an hour for Sally to complete her qualifying swim of the Kattegat and it’s the most biggest and most cinematic sports moment in the picture. Then, it takes until just before the film rolls credits for Sally to step into the channel off the Cliffs of Dovers. It’s almost to the point of afterthought that Kempff cares about the sports elements of the picture, and its the better for it. The filmmaker trusts that the audience doesn’t hold the outcome in doubt, and instead leads them through a different, and more interesting direction.

It’s in these wide storytelling spaces where she prefers to explore and give space to small, but affecting subplots that illustrate the suffocating cultural waters that Sally and women like her faced. Whether it’s the tragic friendship Sally strikes up with a fellow student at school, or the absolute humiliation she faces in a meeting with sponsors following her Kattegat swim, these sequences as impactful as the expected triumphs.

The Swedish Torpedo is a reminder that sometimes the endurance required to make history and fulfill your purpose is sometimes more trying than the goal itself. Five days after Sally Bauer made it across the English Channel in 15 hrs 22 minutes war broke out. What the film doesn’t you is that in 1951, Sally did it again, this time with an even faster time of 14 hrs 40 minutes. It seems the world needed to catch up with Sally Bauer, but it’s clear she wasn’t going to wait around for that to happen.

Director: Frida Kempff
Screenplay: Frida Kempff, Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten
Cast: Josefin Neldén, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Arthur Sörbring, Lisa Carlehed, Gunnel Fred
Producers: Erik Andersson, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski
Cinematography: Hannes Krantz
Production design: Elle Furudahl
Costume design: Eugen Tamberg
Editing: Julie Naas
Music: Martin Dirkov
Sound: Louis Storme
Production companies: Momento Film (Sweden), Amrion, Inland Film Company (Finland), Velvet Films, SVT (Sweden), TV4 (Sweden), Film i Väst (Sweden), RTBF (Belgian Television), Proximus (Belgium)
World sales: Urban Sales
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In Swedish, Danish, English
120 minutes

From the start, the film’s deeper concerns float on the surface, but don’t immediately leave their sting. Lena (played by the film’s co-writer Ilinca Harnut) is a painter and mural artist enduring the bumps and bruises of a midlife transition. She has decided to go legit and apply for a job at her brother-in-law’s graphic design firm. As if this swap of an art career for corporate life isn’t enough, she’s getting over a still fresh breakup with an ex-boyfriend who has quickly moved on to someone younger. As much for the work as a chance to get away, she leaves Bucharest for the countryside, and takes up a job painting a mural for a luxury hotel that’s being constructed inside the shell of an old, brutalist building.

At first, the location’s bucolic sentence and the isolation it affords is a welcome change for Lena. But soon, she falls into a relationship with Asger (Kenneth M. Christensen), one of the Danish managers of the project. And when her artistic partner can’t make it, a Syrian migrant named Roni (Radouan Leflahi), part of social program for refugees that’s associated with the hotel’s backers, becomes Lena’s assistant as she works on her piece.

The aesthetic imprint of Radu Jude — who Tsorakidis served as assistant director on several of his films — is felt throughout. From the wide, unblinking, and beautiful work by cinematographer Radu Voinea to the steady cutting by Smaro Papaevagelou, Ink Wash feels like a hybrid of early Romanian New Wave with a fresh vision of what contemporary cinema from the country can be. And it’s through these careful, stylistic choices that Tsorakidis slowly reveals the growing mold of fury curdling inside Lena. She grows to learn that Roni isn’t his real name; that the workers at the social program just stuck him with that nickname because of a soccer jersey he was wearing. That’s not to mention the larger hypocrisy of assisting migrants only to place them in service positions that exacerbate income disparities. She then begins to question the motives of the firm whose land grabbing, tourist ambitions are moving well beyond the hotel. And finally, Lena wonders if Asger’s attraction to her, while genuine, isn’t reflexively a form of capitalist patriarchal rescue; the upper class Dane sweeping a lowly Romanian artist off her feet.

With her art described by one admirer as containing a “maelstrom of feelings underneath” its entrancing surface, so too is Ink Wash. It wonders if love can be a form of exploitation, it mourns a country that sees its best workers go abroad for better wages, leaving behind them the groundwork for corruption. One afternoon on a hike through the woods, Lena passes around the back of the hotel and notices a large fissure in the ancient, concrete block. It’s symbolic of the feeling running through Romania and through her own psyche. Ink Wash accumulates into a powerful drama that yearns for a nation to find its footing, and sympathizes with those who have to make the hard choice to leave it. The film doesn’t offer any answers, and how could it, when the world won’t stop giving us new questions to be answered every single day.

Director: Sarra Tsorakidis
Screenplay: Sarra Tsorakidis, Ilinca Harnut
Cast: Ilinca Harnut, Kenneth M. Christensen, Radouan Leflahi
Producers: Anca Puiu
Cinematography: Radu Voinea
Production design: Alma Ungureanu
Costume design: Alma Ungureanu
Editing: Smaro Papaevagelou
Sound: Alin Zabrauteanu, Ionut Geadau
Production companies: Mandragora (Romania), Bad Crowd (Greece), Angel Films (Denmark)
World sales: Shellac
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Romanian, English, German, Danish
91 minutes

Powered by an unflinching performance by Ophelia Kolb, she leads the picture as Jule, a dreamer and fighter in equal measure, whose every step in life is led by scrappy determination. Her children — tweenage Claire (Jasmin Kalisz Saurer), sensitive middle-grader Loic (Paul Besnier), and youngest Sami (Arthur Devaux) — are the reason she desperately tries to prove her worth, even if the townspeople, old acquaintances, and her own social workers meet her with barely concealed contempt. Jule’s erratic and unpredictable behavior raises concern with adults and worry her kids, but there’s no one but the mother herself who knows just how hard she’s fighting for the stability everyone else takes for granted.

The screenplay by Julien Bouissoux — from a story developed with Gordon — slowly teases out the background that keeps Jule is bravely trying to overcome. From the ankle monitor she carefully keeps hidden to the flutterings of rumors that circulate in the air, there are no specifics, just enough for the audience to know there’s an added burden to her financial struggles and a further weight to her emotional wellbeing that’s on the cusp of falling apart. The film’s larger plot involves Jule trying to get the finances together put the down payment on a house, but it’s practically a Macguffin; it’s hard to believe there’s any reality in which the barely employed, ex-convict mother could make it happen. As Jule’s web of fabrications and justifications to her kids for their constant moves and her mercurial choices starts to teeter, that’s when the film is at its most charged and affecting.

The strongest moments in The Courageous are also its smallest. Looking after her brothers at a local soccer pitch, Claire stares longingly at a trio of girls her age, aching for a friendship she knows isn’t tenable. Sami accepts that Jule won’t accompany him to a friend’s birthday party, but its his wave to the car before he goes inside that will break your heart. Its in these fleeting instants where the impact of Jule’s actions are most keenly felt. Yet, her kids love her unwaveringly and without condition, and even as Claire begins to see through the lies to the precarious situation her family is really in, it only draws her closer to her mother as she begins to understand what really has been at stake.

You can tell your kids to look both ways before they cross street or not to talk to strangers, but it’s often your actions that make the biggest impression. Their rent may be three months behind, and a stretch in prison is likely not too far in Jule’s future, but headstrong, proud, and filled with a heart-bursting adoration for her children, they sense that love in every decision she makes. “Those who are courageous are free from fear,” Confucius said. Jule knows this well. There are no easy answers or pat conclusions in Jasmin Gordon’s compassionate film, but as it closes, and Jule and her kids literally take their next leap, being free from fear will serve them well wherever they land next.

Director: Jasmin Gordon
Screenplay: Julien Bouissoux
Cast: Ophelia Kolb, Paul Besnier, Arthur Devaux, Jasmine Kalisz Saurer
Producers: Brigitte Hofer, Cornelia Seitler
Cinematography: Andi Widmer
Production design: Rekha Musale, Ivan Niclass
Costume design: Linda Harper
Editing: Jan Muhlethaler
Music: Mirjam Skal
Sound: Jurg Lempen
Production companies: maximage (Switzerland)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In French
80 minutes

Takis (Akyllas Karazisis) is the hard-working head of his family and has fought tooth and nail for everything he’s had. On the eve of opening on a new butcher shop in the small, Greek town where he resides, his neighbor, recently sprung from prison and out on parole, wastes no time in challenging Takis over a claim of half an acre of farmland. The dispute, which goes back at least a generation, starts at a boil and quickly turns into a conflagration leading to Takis’ hot-headed and dimwitted son Pavlos (Pavlos Iordanopoulos), taking matters — and a rifle — into his own hands. Soon, a body is buried, and Takis, scrambling to protect Pavlos, launches a scheme so Christos (Kostas Nikouli), a longtime Albanian employee and practically a son and brother of the family, will take the fall. Of course, try as he might to force his best laid plans and maintain control over his empire, Takis soon sees blood and soil run through his fingers.

Thoughtfully worked out on the page, Nakos’ screenplay is not interested in setting up a whodunit, so much as exploring the unending chain reaction of murder. As Takis works to assuage his concerned and weary wife Eleni (Maria Kallimani), dodge a cop navigating his way toward solving the crime, and appease a blackmailer who has stumbled upon the truth, what emerges is an entire community where one hand has been washing the other for far too long. Years of neighbors and authorities looking the other way in exchange for cash and favors now have to contend with a dead man in their midst. Try as he might to cash in the chips he’s accumulated, Takis begins to see that when self-preservation takes reign, all bets are off on the loyalties he once took for granted.

However, the intricate and fragile bonds of community that Nakos’ intriguingly draws are undermined by the cinematography of Giorgos Valsamis. Utilizing a handheld camera that would make Paul Greengrass queasy, one presumes the intimacy of that choice was made to underline the urgency facing Takis, and the gravity of the decision Christos contends with as he considers shouldering the blame in exchange for a heap of cash when he’s out of prison. One wishes Valsamis had just invested in a tripod. The shaky cam is more distracting than engaging, making the film’s build to a tragic but inevitable emotional chord, just a bit less resonant. The same goes for the guitar driven score by Konstantis Pistiolis, which feels just slightly off register and a bit too crude for a picture that offers far more nuance than a straightforward genre piece.

Nevertheless, Nakos impresses in his feature debut. Meat displays a firm understanding of the sometimes craven motivations of ambitious men and the claustrophobia of small towns where your business is everybody else’s too. The filmmaker also has an acute awareness of how easily families can fall apart when put into a pressure cooker. With the crime exposing Takis’ longtime resentment and disappointment in Pavlos like an open wound, that pain becomes another victim in Meat. It’s one laid bare for all to see, and it might just be as deadly as any bullet or as long-lasting as any jail sentence.

Director: Dimitris Nakos
Screenplay: Dimitris Nakos
Cast: Kostas Nikouli, Akyllas Karazisis, Pavlos Iordanopoulos, Maria Kallimani, Giorgos SymeonidisProducers: Thanos Anastopoulos
Cinematography: Giorgos Valsamis
Production design: Kyriaki Tsitsa
Costume design: Vasileia Rozana
Editing: Lampis Haralampidis
Music: Konstantis Pistiolis
Sound: Nikos Exarchos
Production companies: Fantasia Ltd (Greece), Greek Film Centre (Greece), ERT S.A. Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (Greece), Foss Productions (Greece), Dimitris Nakos (Greece), EKOME (Greece)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Greek, Albanian
104 minutes

Jay (Romain Duris) might be a gaijin, but after more than a decade living in Japan, he’s the one giving directions to lost locals. Taxi cab driver by night, by day he acts as a conduit between lawyer Michiko (Tsuyu) and her French expat clients who find themselves in a similar situation to Jay — trying to reunite with their children following a separation. As Jay knows all too well, Japan’s “clean break” approach essentially affords legal custody to the first parent who claims the child. It’s a legal situation made all the more thorny for parents who may not have full resident status in the country. Jay, who has been searching for his daughter Lily (Mei Cirne-Masuki) for nine years has developed a hardened shell to survive navigating the system, but it’s all new to Jessica (Judith Chemla), Michiko’s latest client. Jessica is a Parisian who will do anything it takes to see her son after her Japanese husband split and suddenly whisked their child to Tokyo. Jay does his best to guide Jessica and help her understand the nuances of Japan’s cultural customs and legal maneuverings, but finds himself struggling to follow his own rules when Lily unexpectedly comes back into his life.

After Wim Wenders’ wildly overrated and idealized, postcard perfect vision of Tokyo in Perfect Days, Senez offers a welcome counterpoint with A Missing Part. The director withholds the problematic Western gaze that soured Wenders’ film and presents a nation of complicated, beautifully flawed, and wholly fascinating characters. Senez and Jean Denizot’s sensitive screenplay is not a condemnation of Japan’s legal system. Rather, they get to the weary, emotional heart of Jay and Jessica’s lives that are stuck in stasis as they try to find some hope in a situation that, try as they might to deny it, is largely hopeless. Plans are pushed back, jobs are lost, and their futures are upended as Genez and cinematographer Elin Kirschfink take us through a city feels lived in, dipping everywhere from the Ichigaya Fishing Center to a wreck-it-room squirreled away on a rooftop.

At fifty years-old Duris’ youthful charm has transformed into a rugged handsomeness that has lost none of its allure, but its pitched differently in a A Missing Part. The beguiling attractiveness that he can turn on and off like a switch is reconfigured to a haggard, world weariness here. It’s a finely tuned performance in which Duris (bouncing between French and fluent Japanese) finds the meeting point in many of Jay’s contradictions: optimism and fear; despair and nonchalance. The melancholy, melodious pop of composer Olivier Marguerit’s score helps underscore the film’s specific tone. And even if the picture may threaten to tilt at times into the saccharine with an overcooked needle drop or the inclusion of a pet monkey for Jay, Senez’s sure hand keeps it from tipping over.

When we finally meet Lily, she’s just as heartbroken as Jay by the years they have been separated, and A Missing Part wisely understands no neat piece of dialogue can patch up lost time. Hope can be a difficult and even delusional place to live, but it’s all Jay and Lily have. And as we leave them, Senez makes us believe that their unlikely path will one day have the storybook ending it deserves.

Director: Guillaume Senez
Screenplay: Guillaume Senez, Jean Denizot
Cast: Romain Duris, Judith Chemla, Mei Cirne-Masuki, Tsuyu, Shungiku Uchida, Yumi Narita, Patrick Descamps, Shinnosuke Abe
Producers: Jacques-Henri Bronckart, David Thion
Cinematography: Elin Kirschfink
Production design: Takeshi Shimizu
Costume design: Julie Lebrun
Editing: Julie Brenta
Music: Olivier Marguerit
Sound: Nicolas Paturle, Virginie Messaien, Sabrina Calmels, Franco Piscopo
Production companies: Les Films Pelléas (France), Versus Production (Belgium)
World sales: Be For Films
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In Japanese, French
98 minutes

Based the true story of The Tsarichina Hole, and spiced with considerable liberties, the film centers on psychic Pirina (Margita Gosheva) and the head of the Bulgarian Army’s Science Department, Colonel Platnikov (Julian Vergov). Sleeping her way through the ranks, Pirina now holds incredible sway over General Zlatev (Ivan Savov), and convinces him that through telepathic contact with an alien named Yolo, she has learned that an extraterrestrial vessel lays buried in a bucolic, rural field. Zlatev orders Platnikov to lead the operation, and the Colonel sets up camp with a platoon of soldiers, orders the dig to get started, and brings his daughter Slava (Maria Bakalova) along who soon becomes just as central as Pirina to the excavation.

Of course, it seems preposterous that any government entity would just dig a hole based on a psychic’s intuition, but that’s really what happened. Wisely, Valchanov and Grozeva don’t overtune the comedic overtures of Pirina channeling the voice of Yolo with a growl. Or officials touching a dirt wall hoping they’ll receive healing powers. Or military higher-ups gamely believing they may actually not only be in communication with an alien species, but have a chance to travel and meet them. The filmmakers play every step completely straight, letting the strange, dark, and amusingly surreal elements of the story speak for itself. The result is a picture that, like the dig, can be tactical in one moment and feverish the next, and always a bit mystifying. The feeling throughout the film is how could this have happened, but that’s exactly the point Valchanov and Grozeva want you wrestle with.

Set in the early ’90s as the Soviet Union is in mid-collapse, Triumph, is really about a nation seeing an entire way of living and an elemental belief system fundamentally change overnight. On the radio we hear reports that Bulgarians, in a free election, have elected communists to power. It’s an outcome so surprising that even French papers have picked up the news. But is that desire to cling to the known and familiar, so strange? And for those reaching for answers and understanding in an unclear future, it gives some reason why an extraterrestrial dig (which in real life lasted two years) is possible. Because if the world as you know is falling apart, whose to say a guide for an entire other way of being isn’t waiting out there in outer space? If you’re afraid to face tomorrow, grabbing a shovel is as good a distraction as anything else.

“Dig in both directions,” Platnikov orders at one point under growing pressure from the President to get results after the classified mission gets exposed in the press. It’s in that confident yet uncertain declaration where the cosmically grounded, darkly comic, and surprisingly moving Triumph is at its most provocative. Coupled with a growing discord between Pirina and Slava — who becomes the biggest believer of them of all — over the influence of the dig, Triumph suggests that even as the old ways crumble, the misguided, manipulative, and corrupted grasp for power will still be there, no matter what democracy says. And if it’s that the case, maybe it’s better if the aliens hold off on making first contact.

Director: Petar Valchanov, Kristina Grozeva
Screenplay: Kristina Grozeva, Decho Taralezhkov, Petar Valchanov
Cast: Maria Bakalova, Margita Gosheva, Julian Vergov, Julian Kostov, Stanislav Ganchev, Ivan Savov
Producers: Konstantina Stavrianou, Irini Vougioukalou, Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov, Maria Bakalova, Julian Kostov
Cinematography: Krum Rodriguez
Production design: Ivelina Mineva
Costume design: Ivelina Mineva
Editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis
Music: Theodore OikonomouIvan
Sound: Ivan Andreev, Kostas Varympopiotis
Production companies: Abraxas Film (Bulgaria), Graal Films (Greece)
World sales: Bankside
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In Bulgarian
97 minutes

Coming-of-age is never easy but Elvira (an endearing and spiky performance by Sarah Olaussen Eira) is truly — as the kids say — going through it. Her single mother Beate (Inga Elisa Pave Idivuoma) has come out and plans marry her girlfriend Rita (Anne Magga Wigelius), who is always hanging about the house, much to Elvira’s chagrin. At school, rising influencer Margrethe (Sara Sofia Mienna) tries to befriend Elvira and manipulate her position as the daughter of a queer woman and a supposed half-Dane to get more followers. As far as Elvira knows, she was conceived in a fertility clinic in Denmark, and it’s no secret to anybody who she thinks her father is. But when her real father Terje (Aslat Mahtte Gaup) is released from prison, and shows up at her door, Beate’s lie to Elvira about her origin is revealed, and it turns her world and sense of identity upside down. And not even the wisdom of Karl Marx’s “Kapital,” toted around by her best friend Aslat (Amund Lode — playing a far dorkier version of Timothee Chalamet’s “A People’s History Of The United States” by Howard Zinn-reading Kyle from Lady Bird) can help.

The screenplay by Pedersen may approach gossamer — the film runs to 75 minutes, including credits — but it doesn’t waste a moment. Highlighting his background in short film and music videos, the director is quick to establish the tight-knit environs and people of the small village of Unjarga in northern Norway. Just as efficiently established are the dynamics between Elvira, her mother, and the fledging relationship she develops with Terje. My Fathers’ Daughter even manages to make the handful of fantasy sequences with Coster-Waldau himself as Elvira’s spirit guardian both amusing and meaningful. But most of all, it’s what the film gets right about both parents and teenagers that makes it find the right note.

Above all else, this a film about accepting that parents and kids are going to screw up — and it’s how you deal with it that counts. What comes through is a lesson about honesty, and realizing when white lies have to give way to truth. It’s also, for children, about knowing who will actually be there for you when things go wrong — even if those people drive you up the wall — and that parents will always be cringe. There’s an authenticity in the fractious yet affectionate and protective relationship between Beate and Elvira that overrides some of the film’s moral simplicity. Beate is mother who doesn’t always get it right, while Elvira doesn’t know enough to have all the answers (even though she might think she does). And that’s in that well-meaning heart where the film succeeds best.

Perhaps better suited for tweenagers than adults, with its broad emotional beats, genial and inoffensive tone, and easy disposition, the picture is nonetheless wise enough to wrap everything up in a neat bow. My Fathers’ Daughter leaves Elvira changed, but in someways, right back where she started: a young woman, with a bright future, still trying to figure it all out as best she can.

Director: Egil Pedersen
Screenplay: Egil Pedersen
Cast: Sarah Olaussen Eira, Ingá Elisa Pave Idivuoma, Aslat Mahtte Gaup, Amund Lode, Anne Magga Wigelius, Sara Sofia Mienna, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Producers: Mathis Ståle Mathisen, Pål Røed, Aleksander Olai Korsnes
Cinematography: Anna Myking
Production design: Emma Skoog
Costume design: Nina Erdahl
Editing: Thomas Grotmol, Toril Strøm, Geir Ørnholt
Music: Remi Semshaug Langseth, Mathis Ståle Mathisen
Sound: Johannes Dekko
Production companies: Rein Film (Norway), Paasan (Norway), Oktober (Finland), Bautafilm (Sweden), Filmpool Nord (Sweden)
World sales: Pluto Film
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Sámi, Danish, English, Norwegian
78 minutes

In a contemporary literary world powered by BookTok, so-called “New Adult” fiction, and what seems to be a shying away from confrontational material, it’s easy to understand how trained pharmacist turned “untrained” novelist Edna O’Brien’s arrival on the scene in 1960 with “The Country Girls” shook the establishment to its foundations. Not only was a woman daring to break through the largely male-dominated domain of letters, O’Brien was doing so by shining a light on the plight of Irish working class women, a subject that was almost entirely ignored. The author’s frank account of coming-of-age and sexuality, and its subsequent trilogy, was banned in Ireland, deemed that it “was filth and should not be allowed inside any decent home.”

The irony of the government defending decency as her own home was falling apart was likely not lost of O’Brien. What started as passionate and scandalous May-December romance with Irish writer Ernest Gébler, quickly turned sour. Gébler envied her talent, to the point of attempting to take credit for her success by, shockingly, adding his own false claims in the gaps of her personal diaries he found. Moreover, for a man who presented him as worldly, his view of domestic life was strictly old-fashioned and patriarchal. It was all O’Brien could do to break free, and did she ever.

With skillful editing by Gretta Ohle, O’Shea makes terrific use of a bounty of archival television interviews, curated footage, and photographs to emphasize the size of O’Brien’s fame. Even today, it boggles the mind that an author could count Robert Mitchum as a lover, while also notching Richard Burton (whom she declined) and Marlon Brando (who just drank milk all night) as potential paramours. At the height of her popularity, it’s almost taken for granted that she could rely on Sean Connery showing up to make sure she’s okay after her first, medically guided dose of LSD.

However, despite plenty of showbiz anecdotes, O’Shea never loses the thread of O’Brien’s revered talent. Through passages from her memoir and personal diaries (read by Jessie Buckley), and a modest amount of talking head interviews including Gabriel Byrne and O’Brien’s one-time student Walter Mosely, Blue Road conveys a deep appreciation for the author’s craft and how it contrasted with her troubled personal life. Wisely, the documentary never attempts any easy answers or cheap psychological rationalizations for the overlaps between O’Brien’s work and personal affairs, and instead lets the author speak for herself. It’s something like a miracle that O’Shea got O’Brien on camera for interview segments before she passed this summer. It’s perfectly fitting that when asked if she had any regrets about her life, O’Brien gamely replies, “I wish it had been funnier.”

Born to violent father, married and then divorced to a destructive husband, O’Brien was often put to task for her negative view of men and masculinity. She defended herself as best she could, but it was the pen that was her greatest weapon. “Write what you know in your guts to be true. And if it’s true, if it is, a reader will respond to it. And if it’s not true, to hell with it,” was O’Brien’s guiding mantra. And Blue Road makes it clear, she lived with a blazing, inspiring truth that refused to be contained.

Director: Sinéad O’Shea
Screenplay: Sinéad O’Shea
Cast: Edna O’Brien, Jessie Buckley, Gabriel Byrne, Carlo Gebler, Sasha Gebler, Walter Mosley
Producers: Claire McCabe, Eleanor Emptage, Sinéad O’Shea
Cinematography: Eoin McLoughlin
Editing: Gretta Ohle
Music: Richard Skelton, George Brennan
Production companies: SOS Productions Ltd. (Ireland), Tara Films (United Kingdom)
World sales: Submarine Entertainment
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF Docs)
In English
99 minutes

After spending six years in prison, 46-year-old Iranian human rights and women’s rights activist Maryam (Vishka Asayesh) receives a rare seven-day medical leave to see a doctor about her heart condition. Instructed by the authorities to stay off social media and not engage in any political activity, the indefatigable Maryam still plans to use the week to pick up her work where it left off. Her husband Behnam (Majid Bakhtiari), teenage daughter Dena (Tanaz Molaei), and young son Alborz (Sam Vafa), who have resettled in Hamburg are the furthest thing from her mind. But Maryam is thrust into making an impossible choice when she discovers her brother Nima (Sina Parvaneh) has helped put together a plan to ferry her across the border to Turkey where she can meet her family and escape the authorities. Embarking on the treacherous two-day journey, Maryam is torn between reuniting permanently with her loved ones or returning to continue advocating for reform in the country she loves.

Sure to earn a fair bit of attention thanks to a script from Mohammad Rasoulof, the filmmaker behind Germany’s Oscar entry and Cannes Special Award winner The Seed of the Sacred Fig, unfortunately, Seven Days is unlikely to conjure similar plaudits. Ahadi can’t seem to work around Rasoulof’s diagrammatic and unsubtle screenplay that only glances at the surface of Maryam’s complex personality and predicament. She’s a woman with the courage to fight a regime, but not face her family with honesty. She grapples with the devotion to her cause against the ferocity of her feelings for her husband and children. Yet, Rasoulof’s script has everybody — most of all Maryam — speak in statements rather than with dialogue that attempts to untangle the situation they find themselves in. Furthermore, he introduces elements that are placed with a clumsiness that would make Chekov ill. Whether’s its Maryam’s celebrity status or heart condition, they only matter when the flagging story needs a visible pulse.

That said, Ahadi is no further help to the film’s lackluster spirit. Seven Days often seems just as long as its title, particularly in its sluggish first half. Maryam’s journey to Turkey is both laboriously detailed but worse of all, tension free. We know she has to survive because the second half of the film couldn’t exist without her. Coupled with the flat and overlit cinematography by Uwe Boll regular Mathias Neumann, and a forgettable, vaguely Middle Eastern score by Ali N. Askin, the film veers heavily toward the broad and one-dimensional style and sentiment of a made-for-TV movie.

Seven Days closes with a quote from currently imprisoned, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, whose life is clearly an inspiration on the film. While the quote selected reflects her regrets and love for her children, a comment she made last year in an interview with Angelia Jolie for Time Magazine is far more potent: “In my belief, life and resistance are intertwined, and fundamentally, our struggle is for life.” This simple, yet profound ideal and its inherent conflict is exactly what’s missing at the core of Seven Days, a tedious drama about rebellion that forgets the messy reality that sometimes doing what’s right, can still leave many feeling wronged.

Director: Ali Samadi Ahadi
Screenplay: Mohammad Rasoulof
Cast: Vishka Asayesh, Majid Bakhtiari, Tanaz Molaei, Sam Vafa, Melika Foroutan
Producers: Mohammad Farokhmanesh, Armin Hofmann, Ali Samadi Ahadi, Frank Geiger
Cinematography: Mathias Neumann
Production design: Anonymus
Costume design: Negar Nemati
Editing: Andrea Mertens
Music: Ali N. Askin
Sound: Nico Berthold, Sonke Strohkark
Production companies: Brave New Work GmbH (Germany)
World sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)
In Farsi
113 minutes

Kasper (Gustav Giese) is a doting father, family man, and aspiring boxer who’s eager to make his mark in the world. Sticking to a chicken and rice diet, and a vigorous workout regimen at the local gym, the shredded pugilist dreams of taking one more shot at the title. But Kasper’s plans are interrupted when the shady and slimy Slimani (Reda Kateb) shows up at his door looking for help with a different kind of knockout — robbing the vault at the Loomis armored transport company. Sensing an opportunity to take home the trophy in an entirely different arena, Kasper’s guard quickly comes down and soon he has a commanding role in what becomes the biggest score in Denmark’s history.

Based on a true story, from the first minute Hviid takes a muscular approach to the material. The director’s first major flex kicks off the film with a bracing sequence as a botched heist unfolds in bravura oner. Showing a sure hand at pacing, the picture then slows down and takes viewers across Denmark and Sweden, as Kasper and Slimani methodically put the pieces of their plan together. The slyly devilish screenplay by Anders Frithiof August lulls the audience into a false sense of complacency and even complicity. There is something undeniably alluring about Kasper’s stoic, risk-it-all dedication to caring for his family — until you realize his endeavor is entirely self-centered. If he can’t be champion in the ring, then he’ll be one outside of it, no matter what it takes.

Behind the camera, Hviid assembles his own formidable team that infuses The Quiet Ones with the blockbuster spectacle it aspires to be. Composer Martin Dirkov (Border, The Holy Spider, Independence Day: Resurgence — with a score that falls between Ludwig Göransson’s sensational bombast and Cliff Martinez’s pulsating moodiness), editor Anders Albjerg Kristiansen (A Royal Affair, Riders of Justice), and cinematographer Adam Wallensten work in lockstep to bring a polished, brawny personality to the proceedings. Their efforts culminate in the film’s centrepiece heist sequence, which unfolds over thirty, increasingly nerve-rattling, pulse-pounding minutes that shows serious shades of Michael Mann and William Friedken. There’s also a strong dose of James Gray with a car chase through torrential rain that might be the best of its kind since We Own The Night.

Set against the backdrop of the 2007-2008 global economic crisis, Hviid and August aren’t particularly interested in the ways in which capitalism might push someone to desperate measures to ensure financial security for themselves and their loved ones. But perhaps, unconsciously, the film offers the view that the Kasper and his assembled gang aren’t much different than the financial institutions that played fast and loose with investments until it all came crashing down around them. Taking money from a vault or watching it collapse thanks to risky, unregulated rules on the stock market — which is the greater crime?

At its heart, The Quiet Ones is an exciting genre effort that thoughtfully explores the hollow pursuit of success. Kasper’s exacting details to pull off the perfect crime curdles into a mania about ensuring the heist is the greatest that’s ever been pulled off. But as the stakes grow higher, it becomes apparent that for Kasper, the job was never really about anything more than doing something big because the opportunity presented itself. And he’ll discover that after counting up the haul and riding off into the sunset, there’s no price tag big enough that’s worth the loneliness that follows from being at the top.

Director: Frederik Louis Hviid
Screenplay: Anders Frithiof August
Cast: Gustav Giese, Reda Kateb, Amanda Collin, Christopher Wagelin, Jens Hultén, Granit Rushiti, Amin Ahmed
Producers: Kasper Dissing
Cinematography: Adam Wallensten
Production design: Sabine Hviid, Benjamin Salomon
Costume design: Emilie Boge Dresler
Editing: Anders Albjerg Kristiansen
Music: Martin Dirkov
Sound: Morten Green
Production companies: Zentropa Entertainments (Denmark), Zentropa Sweden (Sweden), Kazak Productions (France), Zentropa International France (France)
World sales: TrustNordisk
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Danish, English, Swedish, Arabic
110 minutes

Crispin Glover leads the picture as the titular Mr. K, a traveling magician making an overnight stop in an unnamed, vaguely European town. With an appointment the next morning at a local café where he hopes to book his next gig, all he needs is a good night’s sleep, but that’s the last thing he’ll get. Upon checking in to the dilapidated hotel, he discovers a large man under his bed, and a chambermaid hiding in the armoire. They both make a hasty escape, and Mr. K passes an uneasy night in his increasingly eerie room. Bright and early the next morning, he’s ready to leave, but can’t find his way back to the reception desk. In fact, he can hardly find his way off his own floor. The hotel has seemingly turned into a maze where all sense of direction has gone out the window. Doors that should open into rooms, open into closets. Turns of direction that should take him back to where he came from, lead somewhere else. Mr. K is literally caught in place that he can’t leave, but more worrying, it seems none of the residents seem to mind living in an M.C. Escher drawing.

It becomes clear to Mr. K that in order to find his way out, he’ll need to surrender himself to the hotel’s strange ways. The magician gets himself a job in the hotel kitchen (that is bizarrely focused on eggs), finds a friend in Anton (Jan Gunnar Roise), a fellow kitchen worker, and meets a number of oddball personalities including a famous artist (Sunnyi Melles) and a pair of dowagers (Fionnula Flanagan and Dearbhla Molloy). No one can really help him, or relate to his plight, but Mr. K hopes that in better understanding the — let’s just get it out of the way, Kafka-esque — experience he’s found himself in, that he can get out of it.

As folk jazz bands march the halls, an underground resistance grows, and the hotel reveals itself to be a living breathing organism of its own, it’s Glover’s terrific performance that holds it together. There’s a sensitivity he brings to Mr. K, a pain that plumbs more depth than Schwab’s script likely has on the page. Mr. K isn’t just trying to makes sense of the hotel, but it seems of himself too. It’s a reminder that Glover is a remarkable actor, and it’s a shame that Hollywood and the actor have a mutual disinterest in each other. Thankfully, Schwab brings out his best and the filmmaker owes much to Glover in giving the picture its shape.

However, while Glover’s work, along with the considered production and sound design that palpably brings the dilapidated, stained, yet vibrant hotel to life, Schwab’s screenplay remains elusive, allowing one to graft whatever meaning they like onto it. Is this film about purgatory? Perhaps it’s a commentary about being so attuned to life’s inconsequential details, you miss the bigger picture? Or maybe it’s about loneliness and what lies beyond the universe?

These themes all poke their head out but none quite stick. The film asks the viewer to bring their own understanding to Mr. K’s plight, but the picture is best experienced as a fantasia. It’s not often you’ll find a film that — despite owing much to The Shining and Psycho — also brings to mind pictures as wide-ranging as Alien and Oldboy. The deeper meanings behind it all may ring hollow, but feel free to fall down the zany rabbit hole and roam the hotel hallways with Mr. K with no particular destination in mind.

Director: Tallulah H. Schwab
Screenplay: Tallulah H. Schwab
Cast: Crispin Glover, Sunnyi Melles, Fionnula Flanagan, Bjørn Sundquist, Dearbhla Molloy, Barbara Sarafian, Jan Gunnar Røise, Esmée van Kampen, Sam Louwyck
Producers: Erik Glijnis, Leontine Petit, Dries Phlypo, Judy Tossell, Jan van der Zanden, Ineke Kanters
Cinematography: Frank Griebe
Production design: Maarten Piersma, Manolito Glas
Costume design: Charlotte Willems
Editing: Maarten Janssens
Music: Stijn Cole
Sound: Nils Viken, Bror Kristiansen
Production companies: Lemming Film (Netherlands), A Private View (Belgium), Take 1 (Norway), The Film Kitchen (Netherlands)
World sales: Level K
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In English
96 minutes

Bortuali’s own story directly reflects those she captures on camera. The director was studying at the Saint Petersburg State University of Film and Television, working on her diploma film, when the war broke out. Along with her family, they migrated to Asbru, Iceland, where they took up residence in a former NATO base turned refugee camp. It’s here in this former military installation, located just outside Keflavik airport and a one-hour drive from Reykjavík, where Bortuali uses her emerging talent to try and give shape to a situation that, for her and her fellow Ukrainians, is both formless and endless.

In that sense, Temporary Shelter is similarly freeform. Bortuali forgoes formal introductions of her interview subjects and their backgrounds, or markers to indicate the passing of days, weeks, and months. Rather, like the filmmaker herself, we are thrust directly into the community of men and women, fathers and mothers, and young children, as they try to find a balance between transience and permanence. As the refugees keep one eye on the Air Alert app, they navigate learning Icelandic, and completing their paperwork to receive their government-issued kennitala, Iceland’s social security number, that will allow them to apply for employment.

As the new residents of Iceland oscillate between relief, joy, regret, and worry, it’s here where the film finds its emotional resonance. Early in the picture, Maxim, a young first grader, laments that he was too busy to talk to his grandmother before she passed away. Later, a middle-aged woman visits a hairdresser and reveals stress has caused some of her hair to fall out. When a mother learns that a bomb landed 500 meters from her son’s apartment, she falls into worried hysterics, not knowing whether or not he has survived.

Indeed, Temporary Shelter is about the surreal shape survival takes and what it demands from those in its grip. With that in mind, Bortuali keeps political figures mostly absent from the frame; there are no clips of speeches or news reports. Instead, we experience the war through the eyes of the refugees, who receive updates through an informal network of social media and shared dispatches from villages, towns, and cities back home.

Conjuring an intimacy that’s akin to a home movie, Temporary Shelter is occasionally jarred by intrusive editing choices by Dmitrii Novoseltsev and Titti Johnson. From extreme sonic effects to tinted images of war, these moments unwisely tip the film into experimental territory. Enacted to perhaps echo the startling reminders the refugees face each day of the war they’ve escaped, these moments push the audience out of the film’s grip, when the picture has otherwise worked so hard pull them close. Thankfully, these intermittent cuts are few, but they do signal the decisions of a first-time filmmaker and the kind of stylistic tic that a maturing Bourtuali will hopefully do away with in future pictures.

Iceland is a country of opposites. The island that was formed by searing, molten lava spewed from still active volcanoes, is also covered in ice. It’s a remote nation that’s known for the tight-knit bond between its citizens. Magic and spellcraft sit easily alongside the hard realities of life in a rugged, beautiful landscape. It just might be that these very contradictions are exactly what makes it so easy for Ukrainians call Iceland home, at least for now. Temporary Shelter is compelling look at how people in crisis are making a home where they can, even as they dream of returning to their homeland soon.

Director: Anastasiia Bortuali
Screenplay: Anastasiia Bortuali
Cast: Maksym Prystupa, Oleksandr Prystupa, Julia Poliatska, Svitlana Kuchma, Nikolay Alien, Roman Melnytskiy, Inna Holenko, Tymofei Kalinin, Oleksii Kovalov, Vladyslav Stohnushenko, Yana Stohnushenko, Oleksandr kuznietsov, Dmytro Voloshenko, Nataliia Zhyrnova, Zhenia Litvinenko
Producers: Helgi Felixson
Cinematography: Anastasiia Bortuali, Maja Adamska, Helgi Felixson, Olha Yevenko
Editing: Dmitrii Novoseltsev, Titti Johnson
Music: Eovaro Egilsson
Sound: Jacob Felixson
Production companies: IRIS FILM EHF (Iceland)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF Docs)
In Ukrainian, Russian
97 minutes

Following a leadership shakeup earlier this year, TIFF has welcomed a new Presenting Sponsor in telecom giant Rogers following the exit of Bell Canada, and announced plans for the launch of an official market in 2026. But perhaps more importantly for the festival’s loyal, ticket-buying audience, there’s the promise of an abundance of red carpet stars, after several TIFF editions hobbled by post-pandemic hurdles and, last year, the dual obstacles of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.

Hollywood has always had a huge presence and influence at the festival, but TIFF’s best kept secret has been its launching pad for international cinema. Curating the best films from Berlin, Cannes, Venice, and beyond, this year Toronto will provide the North American debut for a number of buzzy and highly anticipated titles including Mati Diop’s Dahomey, Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour, Roberto Minervini’s The Damned, Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By The Tides, Magnus van Horn’s The Girl With The Needle, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest, Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, and much, much more. And that’s not to mention the numerous World Premieres from around the globe ranging from Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths to Woo Min-Ho’s Harbin to Sophie Deraspe’s Shepherds.

Beyond those big names, TIFF offers even more tantalizing and wide-ranging European cinema to discover through a number of titles backed by EFP (European Film Promotion). Recent headlines come to the fore in two documentaries, Anastasiia Bortuali’s Temporary Shelter and Sinead O’Shea’s Blue Road — The Edna O’Brien Story. The former finds Bortuali, an emerging filmmaker whose studies at the Saint Petersburg State University of Film and Television were interrupted by Russia’s war on Ukraine, chronicling life at a refugee camp in Asbru, Iceland. Meanwhile, O’Shea’s picture offers a portrait of the acclaimed, beloved, and groundbreaking Irish author, who passed away earlier this summer.

True stories from the recent past make their mark on a trio of intriguing films. Filmmaking duo Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva pull tales a tale of military operation’s search for an alien object turns more earthbound in their latest Triumph. Those looking for genre thrills will find them in Frederik Louis Hviid’s heist flick The Quiet Ones, which unfolds the story behind Denmark’s biggest robbery of all time. Meanwhile, echoes of recent Hollywood aquatic dramas like Nyad and Young Woman And The Sea will surely be found in Frida Kempff’s period picture The Swedish Torpedo, which brings the story of a Swedish mother who is determined to swim the English channel to the big screen.

Family is at the heart of several films. Guilllaume Senez’s A Missing Part is sure to earn some attention with French superstar Romain Duris taking the lead role as an expatriate father in Tokyo looking to reunite with his daughter. Norwegian director Egil Pedersen aims to find heart and humor in the coming-of-age dramedy My Fathers’ Daughter in which a Sámi teenager firmly believes her father is none other than Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who, yes, has a role in the picture). Meanwhile, 40 marks a turning point in two different movies centered on women facing transition in their lives: Jasmin Gordon’s The Courageous and Sarra Tsorakidis’ Ink Wash.

Rounding out the highlights are films that emphasize the broad scope of European cinematic storytelling. Dimitris Nakos weaves a tale of a neighborhood feud to that turns to bloody tragedy with Meat. Haft Rooz will tell the story of an Iranian human rights’ activist facing the choice of escape and saving her own life or continuing to fight for democracy in the drama Seven Days. Lastly, Crispin Glover will be sure to deliver something absolutely singular when he takes the title role in Mr. K, playing a magician stuck in a hotel facing an increasingly surreal series of events.

For those looking to get closer to international filmmakers and stars, TIFF’s In Conversation With… events including Hyun Bin and Lee Dong-wook, Jia Zhang-Ke and Rafael Manuel, and Cate Blanchett will serve as a nice complement to the bounty of movies to choose from.

The 49th edition of TIFF runs from September 5-15.