The biggest movies and moments of TIFF 2025, according to our film experts | Canada Voices

On Thursday, Sept. 11, film editor Barry Hertz and writer Johanna Schneller answered reader questions about the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, including who’s expected to take the festival’s top awards, their personal top picks, and more.

Readers asked about the biggest films of the festival, including the latest Knives Out mystery and the controversial Oct. 7 documentary, their picks for early Oscar contenders, their favourite celebrity spottings and thoughts on how the festival can survive the next 50 years. Here’s an edited transcript.

On TIFF’s 50th anniversary, 50 moments that define Canada’s glitziest cultural behemoth

The biggest TIFF films

There were so many incredible Canadian films that premiered at this year’s TIFF. Which one was your favourite?

Barry Hertz: Heads and tails, it’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. A riotous, wildly ambitious, audacious comedy that is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, Canadian or otherwise. The very best Toronto movie ever, and deserving to be a worldwide hit!

Johanna Schneller: I second Barry on Nirvanna. I’d also add Nika & Madison. It’s an important subject – how Indigenous people are in danger from the police who are supposed to protect them – from an interesting filmmaker, expanding on her short. And though Tuner isn’t Canadian, it has a Canadian director, Daniel Rohrer, who’s already won an Oscar for his documentary, Navalny, making his feature debut here. A lot of it is shot in Toronto, and it’s fantastic.

Sidebar: There are an interesting number of Canadians-in-show-biz documentaries this year – John Candy, Lilith Fair, Godspell. They’re not all made by Canadians, but reminding people what this country has contributed to the arts feels good.

What are your thoughts on the Canadian film Out Standing?

Schneller: Thanks for asking about that one, I should have included it in my Canadian films to watch answer. It’s really good: it’s both the story of one incredible woman, and something every person who’s ever been marginalized, or the victim of micro- and macro-aggression, can relate to. I got to meet the subject, star and director, and all three are incredible women.

What was your favourite screening at TIFF this year?

Hertz: There were two different but equally memorable screenings for me this year. First was the Midnight Madness opening night, which saw the Canadian premiere of the Toronto-set and Toronto-shot Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. The entire audience was into the film from the first second, and large portions of its dialogue were drowned out by laughter. An instant, generational kind of screening. On the more sombre hand, I absolutely lost control of my emotions (well, tear ducts) during the final few minutes of Train Dreams, the latest drama from the team that made Sing Sing and Jockey. Starring Joel Edgerton as a logger in the early 20th-century Pacific Northwest, the beautiful and stirring film is the kind of sincere, epic, lyrical, decades-spanning character study that we don’t see too often in mainstream American cinema these days.

Schneller: I had really high expectations for Tuner, Daniel Rohrer’s movie about a piano tuner turned safecracker, and it exceeded all of them. It’s a sexy, stylish adult drama/romance/caper that confirmed my idea that those types of movies are eternally fun but harder to do than they look. And like Barry, I had a real experience at Train Dreams, mostly because I went in with zero expectations, and then was utterly moved by its beautiful, elegiac depiction of the glory of ordinary life. Both films were made for around US$8-million, by the way – enough to make a movie look like twice that. This is the kind of movie I’ve been missing and would love to see more of.

How is the new Knives Out movie?

Barry Hertz: I found it to be a step down for the franchise. While it departed from the huge cameo-strewn comedy of the second film, and rooted itself more in the locked-door mystery of the first, I felt this iteration was too long, its twists too dull. And worst of all: there was precious little Daniel Craig! He doesn’t show up until about 45 minutes in. Josh O’Connor, who is enjoyable (but no Craig), is the real star here.

What’s your impression on the TIFF films that are major Oscar contenders? Any performances from actors that could snag some potential nominations during award season?

Hertz: I think several films came into TIFF that could develop into serious Oscar contenders (even if most of these movies played other festivals before Toronto). Big ones include The Smashing Machine (which should net Dwayne Johnson a Best Actor nod, really), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Rose Byrne is wonderful), Hamnet (Jessie Buckley feels like a lock for Best Actress), Sentimental Value (for both Best Picture and Best Actor Stellan Skarsgard), and … possibly … Brendan Fraser for Rental Family.

Schneller: I agree with Barry, but will also add Sydney Sweeney as best actress for Christy. The film got a huge standing ovation at its premiere, the real person she’s playing is fully supporting it (and showing up at events with her adorable dog), and it’s the kind of transformational role Oscar voters seem to love.

The biggest TIFF moments

There has been much controversy surrounding the Oct. 7 documentary titled The Road Between Us. What was it like to attend the premiere this week?

Hertz: This was the defining story of the festival, for better or worse. It was a nerve-wracking experience covering the story, to be honest, given the sensitivities of the subject matter and the high emotions on all sides of the war in Gaza. The premiere was sold out and passions and tensions inside and outside the theatre ran high, but I am mostly relieved that the film screened without incident and that people were able to see it and make up their own mind about its content. Hopefully valuable lessons were learned on all sides.

Do you think TIFF allowing Ticketmaster to resell tickets at exorbitantly inflated rates is a good idea?

Hertz: Absolutely not. It’s one of the worst decisions in the festival history to partner with Ticketmaster so many years ago. It’s a terrible system that no one other than Ticketmaster executives enjoy, and I would be one of the happiest people in Toronto the minute that TIFF drops the system or breaks its contract. It’s a real stain on the festival.

What do you know about the status of movies being sold to distributors at the Toronto International Film Festival? Have there been any important distribution deals or bidding wars for high-profile films?

Hertz: So far, there has been only one high-profile deal to note: the $15-million acquisition of the Midnight Madness horror flick Obsession (which is really good). Otherwise, deals have been on the slow front. While business is still being conducted behind the scenes, it’s in a more quiet manner. Hopefully some bigger deals will trickle out soon.

Do you think TIFF is gradually becoming less of a “people’s festival” and more of a “film market”? As an average public TIFF-goer, I find it harder and harder each year to obtain tickets to films I’d like to see, and it seems that more and more showings are for “industry and press” only.

Hertz: For at least the past several decades, there have been “press and industry” screenings that are only open to those accredited members. But they don’t take away from public screenings, and are merely running parallel to them. But I would agree that the notion of TIFF as the “people’s festival” becomes harder to square given the increasingly high ticket prices, the inaccessibility and simply awful user-experience interface of Ticketmaster, and the general sense that TIFF is more interested in catering to the desires of its corporate backers than that of its public audience. It’s still a great festival, with so many films to see and so much to experience. But the vibe, as the kids say, is off.

Which film do you think will win the coveted People’s Choice Awards?

Hertz: I’m going to place half my chips on Rental Family, which ticks all the right boxes, and the other half on Hamnet, which seems more destined than any other TIFF title to eventually triumph on the Oscars stage.

Schneller: Really hard to say this year. I’m not hearing of any one movie that everyone is talking about. But based on the way Tuner played at my audience, I think if TIFF adds more screenings it has a shot.

The biggest TIFF celebrities

Did you have any encounters with celebrities at this year’s festival? Where, who, how?!

Hertz: I had probably my highest number of encounters than any previous year. Most of them were experienced during scheduled media interviews: Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass, Benny Safdie, Aziz Ansari, Jafar Panahi, Park Chan-wook, the Nirvanna guys Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, Wagner Moura, Daniel Roher. But there were a few very quick handshakes and head-nods had at parties, including Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, and Lee Byung-hun.

Schneller: There are the official encounters with interview subjects – I met Shailene Woodley for Motor City, for example – but somehow the unofficial ones are more fun. I literally bumped into LaKeith Stanfield at a party, and he showed me some of the black and white photos he’s been taking. I try to be cool in these situations, but inside I’m fan-girling.

What is your favourite memory at a TIFF, either past or present?

Hertz: Oh man, that’s a tough one. I could probably single out at least one moment for every single year I’ve been attending (which, I believe, has been 21 years now). I’ll start with one of my earliest memories, which was catching an afternoon showing of Takashi Miike’s yakuza horror movie Ichi the Killer in 2001, which came complete with (much-needed) TIFF-branded barf bags.

Schneller: I’ve been covering TIFF since 1999, so it’s a long list. But I’ll share two. Back when TIFF was uptown, interviews took place at the Intercontinental on Bloor. They had a patio garden, and the studios would book tables for interviews. You would walk onto that patio on the first Saturday afternoon, and every table had a star. You felt like you were in the centre of the movie universe.

The other memory: at one point we also did a lot of interviews at the Sheraton on Queen. One floor down from the lobby was a quiet place to kill time between interviews, which also had a piano. I was still using cassette tapes then (!) and I was organizing them on the piano when I heard a voice say, “Do you mind if I play something?” It was Dustin Hoffman. He sat down, played a lovely little jazz piece, stood up, gave me a small bow, and walked away. No one else saw it. Magical. He plays piano in this year’s film Tuner and it took me right back there.

The future of TIFF

How has TIFF changed in the last 50 years? Is it still the same festival it once was?

Hertz: Ha, where to begin! No, it’s not the same festival as it was 50 years ago. It’s larger, it’s more expensive, but also more respected internationally, more able to pull in world exclusive premieres, more artistically adventurous, more industry-focused, more inaccessible for the general public, and simply MORE MORE MORE. But, hey, things change. For better or worse.

While most know TIFF as a celebrity display case, that’s really only a (albeit large) part of what the festival does. The niche parts of TIFF, like Wavelengths, and the TV section serve their own purpose too. Could they exist without the subsidy of celebrity?

Hertz: Simply put, no. We see this with a million other smaller film festivals across North America. Being niche is great, but there is a ceiling to that in terms of audience, resources, programming, etc. If you want TIFF to be, well, TIFF, then by this point in its evolution it must cater to celebrity and Hollywood in some fashion. Or, it could drastically reduce its footprint. But I don’t see that happening given that organizations like this feel a need to not only maintain size but constantly grow. And whether or not that’s a good idea in the long run, they do have a year-round business at the Lightbox to support. The festival and its massive celeb-friendly size subsidize the rest of its more artistically minded goals.

This has been edited and condensed.