Shane Slater
Hot on the heels of Telluride and Venice, the fall film festival circuit makes its next stop in Canada, with the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival set to unravel from September 4th to the 14th. And with another impressive lineup of exciting titles, it promises to be another wonderful showcase of new cinema. As the popular festival celebrates its milestone 50th edition, many Oscar hopefuls will hope to join its renowned club of People’s Choice Award winners, long seen as a bellwether for future awards success. As always, the possibilities for the top prize are seemingly endless, but here are some of the film’s we’re particularly looking forward to at Awards Radar.
STARRY PREMIERES
TIFF is nothing without its avid fans and they largely flock to the festival for one thing – a chance to see the stars. Based on the talent involved in this year’s high profile world premieres, there will be ample opportunities for stars to shine. Indeed, one of the most anticipated films will see Matthew McConaughey return to prestige fare in Paul Greengrass‘ The Lost Bus, a survival drama inspired by the real life heroics of a bus driver during a deadly California wildfire. Another former Best Actor winner will also be in the spotlight in the form of Brendan Fraser, who stars in the Japan-set Rental Family as a hired companion who becomes unexpectedly attached to his assigned family. Meanwhile TIFF favorite Saoirse Ronan will aim to delight audiences again with her latest work in Jonatan Etzler’s Bad Apples, playing a teacher struggling to manage an unruly student.
Attendees should also look out for two additional crowd-pleasers set to draw media attention, as Elizabeth Olsen gets entangled in an afterlife love triangle with Miles Teller and Callum Turner in Eternity, while Derek Cianfrance directs a ensemble cast that includes Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, in the stranger-than-fiction biopic Roofman.
INTERNATIONAL OSCAR CONTENDERS
If you’re a fan of the Best International Feature category at the Oscars, then TIFF is the place to be to get a head start on watching the long list of submissions. With 10 submissions and counting, festivalgoers will certainly get a taste of some of the films we’ll be talking about ahead of the shortlist announcement. Leading the way is undoubtedly Norwegian submission Sentimental Value, which sees Joachim Trier reunite with Renate Reinsve for a moving family drama that has garnered universal raves from Cannes to Telluride.
Another expected heavyweight in this race is the agonizingly timely The Voice of Hind Rajab from director Kaouther Ben Hania, whose two previous efforts received Oscar nominations in Best International Feature and Best Documentary Feature. This Tunisian entry examines the events surrounding the murder of a Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip, and credits Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Jonathan Glazer as executive producers. Exploring similar sociopolitical territory is Palestine 36, which reflects on the tumultuous period of the 1930s British Mandate for Palestine.
As always, a plethora of Cannes premieres will also make their way to TIFF as official Oscar submissions. Among them are Jury Prize winner Sound of Falling (Germany), Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner A Useful Ghost (Thailand), Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan), Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love that Remains (Iceland), Lee Sang-il’s Kokuho (Japan), Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic (Sweden) and Lav Diaz’ Magellan (Philippines) starring Gael García Bernal in the titular role.
DOCUMENTARIES
Some of the season’s best non-fiction work will also screen at the festival in the dedicated TIFF Docs lineup. The opening night film for this section will be Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana, which digs into the archives to reveal hidden footage of events surrounding various African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck will be at TIFF with his 4th documentary in a row, as he brings Orwell: 2+2+5, which uses the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four as a starting point to explore contemporary politics. And after a well-received debut in Venice, Toronto audiences will be treated to the brilliance of Laura Poitras with her latest documentary Cover-Up, following the career of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
HIDDEN GEMS
While many TIFF selections possess the built-in appeal of familiar stars and directors, the festival also provides a platform for new talent and more experimental fare. One of the more unique filmmaking efforts this year is To the Victory! which sees Valentyn Vasyanovych effectively playing himself as a filmmaker struggling to navigate the malaise of an imagined postwar Ukraine. We’d also recommend a pair of social realist dramas in which young protagonists find their coming of age brutally interrupted by systemic oppression. In Seemab Gul’s modest but profound Ghost School, a young Pakistani girl sets out to find the truth behind the sudden closing of her school on account of a supposed haunting. Meanwhile, Zamo Mkhwanazi lands a stunner with her debut feature Laundry, which follows an aspiring musician whose laundromat-owning family is threatened by the escalating tensions of 1960s apartheid South Africa.
Stay tuned for Awards Radar’s daily coverage of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival from September 4th to 14th.
The way tickets are sold is the main turn off. I can’t navigate how it’s set up. I’d like to go but can not figure it out… it’s seriously ridiculous.