The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off Thursday, with Hollywood stars Russell Crowe, Sydney Sweeney and Daniel Craig bringing hotly anticipated world premieres to the fiftieth version of North America’s largest film occasion.
Though missing the historic glamour of Cannes or Venice, TIFF dwarfs rival festivals for sheer scale and is a key launchpad for Oscars campaigns, luring A-listers, critics and large public audiences for 11 days of red-carpet galas.
On this anniversary yr, Matthew McConaughey, Paul Mescal, Angelina Jolie and Anya Taylor-Joy will all hit the screenings and soirees in Canada, whereas French administrators Romain Gavras, Claire Denis and Arnaud Desplechin convey an added European aptitude.
Among the world premieres, Crowe provides what organizers describe as a nuanced and eerily charismatic efficiency as Nazi Hermann Goering on trial in historic drama “Nuremberg,” reverse fellow Oscar-winner Rami Malek.
“The unexpected part of this performance is you don’t expect to be disarmed by this person, who you know has done horrible things,” stated TIFF director of programming Robyn Citizen. “And then, through the course of the movie, you are.”
Sweeney goals to pivot from her current denims advert controversy to Academy Award contender with “Christy,” a gritty, uncooked biopic of U.S. feminine boxing pioneer Christy Martin.
“I think this is the role that’s going to make people take notice again of the actor that she is,” predicted Citizen.
In one other harrowing true-life story, McConaughey rescues schoolchildren from California wildfires within the emotionally searing action-thriller “The Lost Bus.”
With an estimated 400,000 annual attendees, the “audience-first” Toronto competition historically showcases splashy crowd-pleasers alongside awards fare.
This yr marks the return for a 3rd time at TIFF of Netflix’s widespread “Knives Out” whodunit franchise, with former 007 actor Craig again investigating the most recent homicide in “Wake Up Dead Man.”
Josh Brolin performs an unnerving demagogue with a cult following in a movie that “tackles current issues in a fun, locked-room, classical-plot way,” says Citizen.
Several French auteurs are set to attend this yr’s fest.
Matt Dillon seems in Denis’ drama “The Fence,” a couple of mysterious demise on an African building website, whereas Desplechin launches love story “Two Pianos” starring Charlotte Rampling.
Alice Winocour pairs with Jolie for Paris vogue drama “Couture.”
Gavras’s celeb climate-change satire “Sacrifice” stars Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans as an eco-terrorist and a waning film star, respectively.
Elsewhere, the competition’s comedy alternatives include a few of its starriest names.
Keanu Reeves performs an incompetent angel in Aziz Ansari’s body-swapping farce “Good Fortune,” whereas Channing Tatum portrays a real-life fugitive who lives clandestinely inside a Toys R Us retailer in “Roofman.”
Brendan Fraser performs a lonely actor out there for rent at funerals and weddings in Tokyo-set “Rental Family.”
The Bard and the King
Toronto follows sizzling on the heels of the small however influential U.S.-based Telluride competition, and as normal invitations a number of films from that intimate occasion to make an even bigger, second splash within the Canadian metropolis.
Among them, Mescal performs a younger William Shakespeare in literary adaptation “Hamnet” from Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao — although the main target is squarely on the Bard’s long-suffering spouse Agnes, performed by a “transcendent” Jessie Buckley, says Citizen.
Director Edward Berger, on a sizzling run after “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Conclave,” will current Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck gambler pursued by means of the casinos of Macao by Tilda Swinton’s investigator in “Ballad of a Small Player.”
And contemporary from Venice, Guillermo del Toro brings his reimagining of “Frankenstein” to Toronto.
Latino reggaeton megastar J Balvin makes his film debut, taking part in a Eighties cop chasing cocaine smugglers to the remotest reaches of Nova Scotia in “Little Lorraine.”
“Brat” singer-songwriter Charli xcx has two new movies — Gavras’s “Sacrifice,” and Polish arthouse drama “Erupcja.”
And Baz Luhrmann will premiere “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” that includes long-lost footage of The King that the director unearthed whereas making his 2022 biopic “Elvis.”
TIFF runs from Thursday by means of to September 14.
© 2025 AFP