Here are some of the biggest TIFF 2026 highlights to have on your radar in Toronto today.
Diego Luna
Diego Luna has two TIFF events on the schedule Tuesday, beginning with a 6:10 p.m. screening of his new film Ashes at Scotiabank Theatre. Luna directed and co-wrote the drama, which follows Lucila, a young woman who leaves Mexico with her younger brother to reunite with their mother in Madrid after years apart. Instead of the better life they imagined, the siblings arrive to find a far harsher reality and must try to build a new life in Spain.
Cole Sprouse’s star-packed awards dinner
Later Tuesday night, Luna is one of four honourees at The Creative Coalition’s 2026 Spotlight Initiative Awards Dinner at Le Germain Hotel Toronto Mercer, alongside Adam Arkin, filmmaker Ira Sachs and Riverdale star Cole Sprouse (who stars in Vintage Violence, about a livestreamer (Sprouse) who discovers a cache of vintage denim only to run afoul of the Yakuza when he’s lured to Japan to sell the jeans by one of his subscribers. The awards dinner begins at 9:30 p.m., with tickets costing $500.00 per non-TCC member and $250.00 per member.
Look out for Tom Hiddleston on the red carpet
One of tonight’s biggest premieres is Hiddleston’s Tenzing, which gets its Canadian premiere at Roy Thomson Hall at 9:30 p.m. The biopic is directed by Jennifer Peedom and tells the story of Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese-Indian Sherpa mountaineer who became one of the first two people to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. Genden Phuntsok plays Norgay, while Tom Hiddleston stars as his climbing partner Edmund Hillary and Willem Dafoe plays expedition leader John Hunt.
The film goes way back into Norgay’s life, following him from his early years as a yak herder living in the shadow of Everest through the British expeditions that eventually led to the historic ascent!
Danny Boyle’s Ink
Danny Boyle’s Ink screens at the Princess of Wales Theatre at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, with Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy leading the cast.
The film is set in 1969 and follows media mogul Rupert Murdoch, played by Pearce, and editor Larry Lamb, played by O’Connell, as they transform The Sun into a new kind of populist newspaper built around giving readers what they want (aka tabloid journalism). Foy plays journalist Jules Davies.
Boyle has another TIFF appearance coming Wednesday at noon, when he takes part in a Visionaries event at the John W. H. Bassett Theatre. Boyle’s session is expected to look back at his career, which includes Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
Atonement
Before Tenzing takes over Roy Thomson Hall, Atonement gets its North American premiere there at 5:30 p.m! The film stars Boyd Holbrook, Hiam Abbass and Oscar winner Kenneth Branagh.
The flick is from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Reed Van Dyk and is based on Dexter Filkins’ 2012 New Yorker essay of the same name. The story follows the consequences of a deadly incident during the Iraq War and, years later, an encounter between an Iraqi mother who lost members of her family and one of the American Marines involved. But the story doesn’t end on the battlefield, the drama looks at how wartime trauma, guilt and grief continue long after the violence itself is over.
Aimee Lou in The Idiot(s)
Tuesday’s celebrity watch continues with The Idiot(s), which gets its Canadian premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre at 9:30 p.m. The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood plays Anna Dostoevskaya opposite Johnny Flynn as Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, with Vicky Krieps and Christian Friedel also in the cast.
The film follows the newly married couple as what is supposed to be a European honeymoon turns into a years-long stay complicated by Dostoevsky’s gambling, mounting debts and struggle to write. Anna gradually becomes far more than his wife, working as his stenographer, editor and manager and eventually becoming a publisher herself as she helps create the conditions in which he can finish The Idiot.
The film is inspired by Andrew D. Kaufman’s book The Gambler Wife and shifts some of the attention usually given to the famous writer onto the woman who helped keep both his work and their lives together.
FYI: The TIFF fan-zone schedule changes today
There’s also a change for TIFF fans hoping to catch celebs from outside the theatres! Lineups for TIFF’s three fan zones at David Pecaut Square now open at 2 p.m. instead of 11 a.m. As usual, wristbands are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. TIFF also has public fan-viewing areas along King Street for red carpets at the Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra theatres (and fans don’t need tickets or advance registration!)
