Chloé Zhao
CANADIAN PREMIERE
United Kingdom | 2025 | 125m | English
Frontmezzjunkies reports on the Toronto International Film Festival – Part One
By Ross
As a theatre junkie with a deep love for cinema, I couldn’t be more thrilled that the Toronto International Film Festival is almost here. Kicking off on Thursday, September 4th, TIFF’s 50th edition is packed with a staggering lineup of films and features—far too many to catch in just eleven days, even with the amazing press pass I was fortunate enough to receive this year. Every year, I try to plan for the madness, yet somehow, my schedule is already feeling hectic and intense. But also thrilling. This time, I’ll do my best to remain calm and see (and write about) as many of these films as I possibly can. This is part one of two, sharing what I hope to see each day of the festival.
At the 50th annual TIFF, the festival boasts a total of 291 films: 209 features, 6 classics, 10 primetime TV selections, and 66 shorts—an incredible feast of storytelling, innovation, and artistry. Beyond the six official Gala screenings I already highlighted in a previous post (click here), I aim to dive into around 15-20 films, mostly in the morning press screenings, eager to be transported, challenged, and inspired by the magic of cinema on a grand scale. Stay tuned—I’ll be sharing part two of this tale, along with all the highlights, surprises, and must-see moments from this spectacular festival. It promises to be an unforgettable celebration of film and storytelling. So here we go: TIFF Wanna See List, Part One of Two.
Day One: I already have my Gala ticket to the Opening Night film, “John Candy – I Like Me”, but the one I’m most excited for on that first day is an early morning press screening of “Blue Moon“.
Blue Moon
Richard Linklater
CANADIAN PREMIERE
United States of America, Ireland | 2025 | 100m | English
Ethan Hawke delivers a charming, lived-in performance as lyricist Lorenz Hart, holding court at Sardi’s on the historic night of his former collaborator Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) greatest triumph: the premiere of Oklahoma!
In Blue Moon, director Richard Linklater (Hit Man, TIFF ’23, and at this year’s Festival with Nouvelle Vague) crafts a riveting chamber piece set in real time at Sardi’s on the historic night in 1943 of Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) greatest triumph: the premiere of Oklahoma! Ethan Hawke (also at the Festival in The Lowdown) delivers a charming, lived-in performance as Rodgers’ former collaborator, lyricist Lorenz Hart, an alcoholic and marginally closeted raconteur grappling with the fact that Rodgers’ biggest success now belongs to a new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein.
As flowers and accolades pour into the restaurant, heralding a new era of American musicals, Hart holds court at the bar, regaling a plainspoken bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and a young, aspiring composer and military officer with stories. His current fixation is a 20-year-old Yale student, Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), whom he reveres with a fervour that drifts between romantic longing and aesthetic worship.
Among the guests is essayist E. B. White (Patrick Kennedy), perched in a corner, making his presence known to offer le mot juste — “ineffable” — during one of Hart’s rhapsodic monologues about Elizabeth. The film imagines White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, drawing creative inspiration from Hart as he contemplates a shift into children’s literature.
Hart and Rodgers affectionately spar throughout the night, working through the regrets in their partnership and promising to start anew. Ultimately, through Hart’s reflections on love, art, and legacy, the film becomes a bittersweet elegy for his overshadowed place in musical history — a graceful tribute to the man behind Pal Joey, A Connecticut Yankee, “My Funny Valentine,” and the titular “Blue Moon.” – ROBYN CITIZEN
On the second day of TIFF, I hope to see two films at their press screenings: “Wasteman” and “BloodLines“; both capturing my attention for a variety of different reasons.
Wasteman
Cal McMau
WORLD PREMIERE
United Kingdom | 2025 | 90m | English
David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus) delivers a gripping performance as a mild-mannered inmate whose hopes for an early release are jeopardized when his charismatic but menacing new cellmate (Tom Blyth) forces a choice between prison loyalty and freedom.
In his debut feature, Wasteman director Cal McMau peels back the conventions of the prison drama to reveal something raw, intimate, and unsettling. Set within a claustrophobic and often brutal UK prison, Wasteman conjures a world where hyper-masculinity is identity and armour, and where even a flicker of vulnerability can be fatal.
At its heart is Taylor (David Jonsson, Rye Lane, Industry), a soft-spoken inmate serving a crushing sentence for a petty crime. He survives by becoming invisible: cutting hair, avoiding trouble, and occasionally numbing the monotony with pills, all the while clinging to faint memories of the son he hasn’t seen since infancy. Jonsson delivers a performance of remarkable restraint, each gesture seemingly shaped by years of swallowed pain.
After more than a decade inside, Taylor is suddenly offered early parole, thanks to a bureaucratic gift tied to prison overcrowding. But the prospect of freedom comes with a stern warning: one mistake, and it’s gone. Then comes Dee (Tom Blyth, also at this year’s Festival in The Fence), a volatile new cellmate with charm, menace, and a thirst for power. Dee is intent on becoming the “top boy” of the prison’s illicit drug trade and he wants Taylor by his side. Manipulative Dee draws Taylor into his orbit, dangling both protection and the means to connect with his now-teenage son.
As his prospective release date inches tantalizingly closer, Taylor faces an impossible choice: uphold a code that’s kept him alive, or risk everything for a second chance. Wasteman feels unflinchingly real but never voyeuristic. -JASON RYLE
Blood Lines
Gail Maurice
WORLD PREMIERE
Canada | 2025 | 89m | English, Michif
The second feature from director Gail Maurice (ROSIE, TIFF ’22) is a singular film: a Métis same-sex romance led by actor Dana Solomon, who is a revelation.
A search for family and reconnection drives this pastoral drama, the second feature from director Gail Maurice (ROSIE, TIFF ’22).
Blood Lines is a lesbian romance wrapped up in a celebration of Métis culture — with dialogue in the Michif language, which has only about 1,130 speakers in the world, including Maurice — and centres around an upcoming Métis Day festival.
Storyteller and store clerk Beatrice (Dana Solomon) is completely taken by a new woman who arrives in her Métis community looking to find her biological family. Beatrice decides to help Chani (Derica Lafrance) in order to spend more time with her.
Meanwhile, a chorus of older women, collectively referred to as “The Grannies,” try to get Beatrice to mend things with her mom, Léonore (played by director Maurice). Léonore’s past drinking problem had soured their relationship and Beatrice is reluctant to repair it, no matter how many years her mom has been sober.
Solomon is a striking discovery, conveying so much in this role of a disgruntled daughter who has mostly buried her feelings, while The Grannies usher in lighter, funnier moments.
Blood Lines is a singular film — a Métis same-sex romance — with an ending that will leave audiences talking.
Day three is a bit more complicated, as I do have a day job that might get in the way of my press screening obsession. The first two films: “Good Boy” and “Carolina Caroline“, I’ll probably miss, but the third, “Unidentified“, I am hopeful to get myself down to the Festival to see.
Good Boy
Jan Komasa
WORLD PREMIERE
Poland, United Kingdom | 2025 | 110m | English
The latest from Academy Award–nominated director Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi, TIFF ’19) is a Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, and Anson Boon–led twisted thriller about freedom and identity.
Nineteen-year-old hooligan Tommy (Anson Boon) is on a bender with his wild friends. When he becomes separated from the group, he continues partying into the early hours. Though he is no stranger to inflicting violence, Tommy is horrified when he wakes with a chain around his neck in the basement of the isolated suburban family home of well-to-do Chris (Stephen Graham), his wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and their young son Jonathan. The kidnapping is part of a process of turning Tommy into a “good boy,” which he — at first — vehemently rejects. Finding himself the subject of a forced rehabilitation while trapped inside a dysfunctional family unit, he seeks escape at any cost. As the walls close around him, Tommy finds middle ground with his tormentors though he soon learns that, although independence might be close, it would come at a significant cost.
Fresh and unsettling, Good Boy is an intense and unforgettable genre-bending thriller that unfolds like a dark fairy tale. This latest from Academy Award–nominated director Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi, TIFF ’19), is produced by legendary filmmakers Jeremy Thomas, Ewa Piaskowska, and Jerzy Skolimowski (who has had several films at the Festival as a director, including Four Nights with Anna, TIFF ’08; 11 Minutes, TIFF ’15; and EO, TIFF ’22). Flanked by an incredible ensemble of performances by Graham, Riseborough, and Boon, Good Boy is written by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid and shot by Michał Dymek (EO, TIFF ’22, The Girl with the Needle, TIFF ’24). By raising uncomfortable questions about freedom, this daring film challenges our expectations about what we accept as normal. – DOROTA LECH
Carolina Caroline
Adam Carter Rehmeier
WORLD PREMIERE
United States of America | 2025 | 105m | English
With the soulful appeal of the Jonathan Edwards song that shares its name, Carolina Caroline is a sweet, slick road movie about a woman yearning to find herself. Finding love instead, she starts robbing banks.
In his latest slice of anarchic Americana, writer-director Adam Carter Rehmeier first introduces us to the always effervescent Samara Weaving (Guns Akimbo, TIFF ’19) as Caroline. Listless and living a small life in a small town, she dutifully cares for her single father (Jon Gries), though she longs to break from her dusty and dull world. But when she observes a handsome drifter (Kyle Gallner) pull a sly con for a few bucks, her curiosity sparks an introduction that ignites an apprenticeship. Before long, their lucrative, if untenable, criminal enterprise dovetails into a passionate romance.
As with his jagged romantic comedy Dinner in America (which also featured Gallner), Rehmeier again captures an unlikely relationship that crackles with chemistry and embodies an authentic sweetness. Gallner and Weaving seductively sizzle together as their small-time swindles escalate and earn them a reputation (and an arrest warrant) worthy of Bonnie and Clyde.
It may be a familiar star-crossed scenario, but Rehmeier’s spry direction, a rhapsodic script from Tom Dean (also making his feature debut at the Festival with Charlie Harper), and the judicious deployment of country music needle-drops combine to maintain an infectiously swooning momentum where hope springs eternal — at least within the measures of a long embrace on a honky-tonk dance floor.
Complete with a striking supporting turn from Kyra Sedgwick, shrewdly deployed at a critical juncture to rattle Caroline’s confidence, Carolina Caroline harkens back to a bygone brew of outlaw romance that is sure to appeal to lovers of every stripe… with the exception of bank managers. – PETER KUPLOWSKY
Unidentified
Haifaa Al Mansour
WORLD PREMIERE
Saudi Arabia | 2025 | 99m | Arabic
The latest from Saudi Arabian director Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda) is a crime thriller that challenges simplistic narratives of femicide and transgresses all manner of jurisdiction in its dogged pursuit of justice.
The latest from Saudi Arabian director Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda) is a crime thriller that pushes against gender norms and challenges simplistic narratives of femicide. Riddled with suspense, Unidentified is a female-driven detective story that transgresses all manner of jurisdiction in its dogged pursuit of justice.
A young woman’s abandoned body is found in the desert and bears no identification. When the Riyadh authorities go to investigate, they recruit police department receptionist Nawal (Mila Alzahrani, star of Al Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate, TIFF ’19) to help the otherwise all-male team discover details only a woman would notice.
The intelligent and observant Nawal, a true-crime fan, possesses an unusual degree of knowledge when it comes to homicide investigations. While the police drag their heels, she quietly takes matters into her own hands, going to different all-girls’ high schools to ask about missing students, only to find the administrators uncooperative, wanting no part in any story about supposedly “sinful” girls. Nawal eventually finds an ally in a teenager who thinks she might know who this Jane Doe is — but do the authorities even care?
Written by Al Mansour and Brad Niemann, Unidentified confronts the failings of a patriarchal social order designed to keep women confined. As she endeavours to uncover the truth about the murdered girl, Nawal must also justify her choice to leave an unhappy marriage. Bringing her characteristic complexity and compassion to bear, Al Mansour cleverly leans into a crime genre to shine a light on universal truths. – ANITA LEE
On the fourth day of the Festival, a Sunday, and on that traditional day of rest, I have a good chance to see “Dead Man’s Wire” early in the morning, and then I’ll have to choose between two desired films, “Between Dreams and Hope” and “Poetic License” that mid day afternoon.
Dead Man’s Wire
Gus Van Sant
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
United States of America | 2025 | 104m | English
Featuring captivating performances from Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino, Gus Van Sant’s latest recreates the strange, fascinating true story of the 1977 kidnapping that made aspiring Indianapolis entrepreneur Tony Kiritsis into an eccentric outlaw folk hero.
Thursday, September 11: This film will be presented with open captions, but please note, ASL interpretation will not be available for the live onstage elements of the screening.
In films like To Die For, Elephant, and Milk, Oscar nominee Gus Van Sant has used cinema as a means of mirroring American life in all its extremes and complexities. Graced with captivating performances from Bill Skarsgård, Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, and Oscar winner Al Pacino (also at the Festival in Easy’s Waltz), Dead Man’s Wire finds Van Sant returning to that based-on-real-events mode, tapping into the culture’s hunger for outlaw folk heroes who seek to wrest control from the privileged elite.
It is February, 1977. Having fallen behind on his mortgage and, as a result, lost the commercial property he’d dreamed of developing, aspiring Indianapolis entrepreneur Tony Kiritsis (Skarsgård) shows up for a meeting with Meridian Mortgage Company president Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). Tony expected to meet Hall Sr. (Pacino), but the Meridian founder is enjoying a luxury vacation in Florida, a fact that only stokes Tony’s ire.
The feature screenwriting debut of Austin Kolodney (Funny Or Die), Dead Man’s Wire resonates powerfully with present-day class resentments. It’s also darkly funny, wildly entertaining, and rife with appealing supporting characters, especially Domingo’s beloved local disc jockey, who Tony manages to rope into the negotiations. – ANITA LEE
Between Dreams and Hope
Miane Roya Va Omid
Farnoosh Samadi
WORLD PREMIERE
Iran | 2025 | 106m | Persian
A trans man and his partner travel to a remote Iranian village to face his estranged father and obtain documents that would permit them to live authentically, in visionary director Farnoosh Samadi’s bold queer love story.
A window into the burgeoning underground queer community of Iran, Between Dreams and Hope centres on a young pair with dreams like many others — to live joyfully without restrictions on their love. Azad (Fereshteh Hosseini), a trans man, and his partner Nora (Sadaf Asgari) thrive amongst like-minded friends, a haven of self-expression and acceptance, in bustling Tehran. They live blissfully, but when Azad takes steps towards medically transitioning, he is troubled to learn that his estranged father must grant his permission or the process would be halted indefinitely. Although wary, the couple travel to Azad’s hometown to plead their case to his family. The return is not welcome, and when Azad disappears during a row, Nora must find her lover, with little assistance or care from the local authorities.
With this stunning and unspeakably brave entrant into the queer canon, Farnoosh Samadi (180° Rule, TIFF ’20) highlights the supreme tension between Iran’s so-called radical youth who engage with queer identity and feminist ideals — amongst other revolutions such as the ongoing “Women, Life, Freedom” movement — and the restrictive violence of conservative generations supported by the overarching regime. Harnessing daring and memorable performances from Hosseini and Asgari, and shooting even the most despairing moments with empathy, Samadi’s eye is gripping and sincere. As the stakes escalate, the film balances a tragic potential outcome with deep-rooted love, never absolving hatred as a thing of the past and crucially, never submitting to desolation in the face of tyranny. – DOROTA LECH
Poetic License
Maude Apatow
WORLD PREMIERE
United States of America | 2025 | 117m | English
Maude Apatow’s debut feature, the hilarious and generous college comedy Poetic License, focuses on the unlikely friendship between two college seniors and a mature woman auditing their poetry course. It’s the perfect fall movie — when optimism and excitement rule and finals are months and months away.
Poetic License, the directorial debut of actor Maude Apatow, is a gentle and delightful comedy about college life, focusing on three seemingly mismatched people who find unlikely companionship at a pivotal point in their lives.
Ari (Cooper Hoffman) and Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman) are longtime friends, despite being very, very different. Ari is goofy and self-centred and has to get the last word on everything. The far more conservative, buttoned-down Sam is pursuing a career in finance, in hopes of gaining financial security and mollifying his family.
Enter married mother Liz (Leslie Mann), who’s auditing the boys’ poetry class. Having just moved to this small college town at the insistence of her husband (Cliff Smith, a.k.a. Method Man), she’s utterly discombobulated, feeling increasingly distanced from her daughter (Nico Parker), who’s desperate to return to big-city life. The trio’s friendship is soon imperiled when both boys fall madly for Liz. The ensuing complications cause unexpected and hilarious friction between Ari and Sam — and in Liz’s family.
It’s a long-accepted truism that high school may be the last place where people from different classes engage regularly. Here, college may be the last place where age differences are easily ignored. As Ari, Sam, and Liz’s relationship gets more and more complicated, all three of them forget exactly where they are in their lives. (Liz is reconnecting with her own youthful dreams.)
Deeply affectionate, and laugh-out-loud funny Poetic License overflows with compassion, boasting artful writing, skilful direction, and engaging performances. It’s the perfect fall movie — when optimism and excitement rule and finals are months and months away. – ROBYN CITIZEN
This will bring me to the fifth day of the Festival, I will attempt to see two out of these three films. I will have to choose between a press showing of “Hamnet” or “New Years Rev” (I’m leaning towards the film adaptation of the play, Hamnet), followed by “Hedda“. It’ll be quite the theatrical day, if it happens. I might have to work at my real day job, unfortuantely. But we shall see. – UPDATE: I’ve been Press Vouchered and confirmed for “Hedda” on Sept 7th in the evening, so that’s cool.
Hamnet
Chloé Zhao
CANADIAN PREMIERE
United Kingdom | 2025 | 125m | English
Academy Award–winning director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, TIFF ’20 People’s Choice Award) helms this lush and tender drama about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his family, as seen through the eyes of his thoughtful wife Agnes (a luminous Jessie Buckley).
In William Shakespeare’s day, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable. The newest film by Chloé Zhao, director of TIFF ’20 People’s Choice Award winner Nomadland, also an Oscar winner, uses that context as the basis for a tender exploration of Shakespeare’s domestic life, connecting a family tragedy to one of his most famous works. Maybe we can better understand Hamlet, Zhao suggests, if we consider that it was developed while the most famous writer in the Western canon was mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet.
Based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet’s main character isn’t The Bard — played here by an impressive Paul Mescal — or even the child who gives the film its name. Hamnet belongs to Agnes, Shakespeare’s thoughtful wife, played by an enthralling Jessie Buckley, who bathes the film in her warmth.
Many historical accounts preface reports of Hamnet’s death with statistics about how common child mortality was in the 16th century, as though it barely made an impact. Hamnet rejects that premise, presenting Shakespeare not as a distant, untouchable genius but as a real man whose literary prowess was irrevocably impacted by his domestic life.
Grief is a theme here, but Hamnet is not just a film about death. Early scenes of Agnes and William’s courtship are naturalistic, rendered through lush cinematography by 2023 TIFF Variety Artisan Award winner Łukasz Żal (Cold War, TIFF ’18; The Zone of Interest, TIFF ’23). Like any family story, this one contains joy alongside sorrow.
New Years Rev
Lee Kirk
WORLD PREMIERE
United States of America | 2025 | 103m | English
A garage rock trio gets the opportunity of a lifetime to open up for Green Day and hit the road across America to make the gig. The only problem is… they didn’t realize it was a prank.
Since Green Day burst onto the scene in the 1990s, their sound and success have helped launch a countless number of garage rock bands, each aspiring to channel the group’s energy and attitude. Among the most committed are The Analog Dogs, who want nothing more than to meet Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool. Forcing their way to drop off a demo to their beloved idols in hopes of earning some recognition, they instead get an extremely rare opportunity — to open up for Green Day at their New Year’s concert.
Or so they think. Unbeknownst to them, the opener gig is actually a prank played on them by one of their brothers. Nevertheless, naively optimistic, the young trio set off on the road from Kansas to California, with wide-eyed dreams of being on stage alongside their heroes.
Filmmaker Lee Kirk teams up with Green Day (who are co-producers) to make this love letter to road movies, ’90s nostalgia, and the ecstasy of wanting to rock out no matter what it takes. Over a dozen Green Day songs make up the soundtrack, guiding the path for the drive. With a mix of absurd and charming supporting characters (played by Fred Armisen, Angela Kinsey, Bobby Lee, and Mckenna Grace, among others), we’re thrown right into the journey, not knowing where or how it might end up, but ever hopeful that we’ll have the time of our lives. – CAMERON BAILEY
Hedda
Nia DaCosta
WORLD PREMIERE
United States of America | 2025 | 107m | English
Transplanted to mid-century England, Candyman director Nia DaCosta’s bold reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s play features a magnetic lead performance from Tessa Thompson (Passing) in a fresh, feminist game of power.
Transplanted to mid-century England, this ingenious reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s beloved play from writer-director Nia DaCosta (2021’s Candyman) infuses its source material with fresh, feminist power and energy. Starring Tessa Thompson (Passing), Imogen Poots (TIFF ’15’s Green Room), and Christian Petzold regular Nina Hoss, Hedda is an original work of cinematic invention.
Newly wed and precariously dissatisfied with life, Hedda (Thompson), gun-loving daughter of the late General Gabler, has convinced her husband George (Tom Bateman), a timid but ambitious scholar, to throw a lavish party the couple cannot afford. On the teeming guest list is Eileen Lovborg (Hoss), a celebrated author of a book exploring sexuality — and George’s key rival for a coveted academic post. Hedda sees the guests as pawns in an elaborate game she plans to orchestrate with ruthless precision.
Sumptuously photographed by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (TIFF ’13 People’s Choice Award winner 12 Years a Slave), and featuring exquisitely detailed production design from Cara Brower, Hedda ushers us headlong into a milieu of decadence and deception. At the centre of it all is Thompson’s magnetic performance as our single-minded, hedonistic heroine, a woman trapped within the confines of social decorum she cannot help but set fire to. – ANITA LEE
On the 9th of September, I’ll be (hopefully) seeing “Frankenstein” in the morning at a press screening, and I already have a ticket for the Gala that night, the French film, “A Private Life,” purchased as a birthday present. What a day this will be.
Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
United States of America | 2025 | 149m | English
Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s visually sumptuous adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece finds Oscar Isaac as the brilliant scientist whose unearthly creation, eerily and ingeniously conjured by Jacob Elordi, blurs the boundaries between life, death, and madness.
Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water transformed what monsters mean to us, steeping their outsider narratives in deep emotion and grand tragedy. But the pinnacle on Guillermo del Toro’s horizon was always Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece from 1818. Now it is here.
Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant scientist tortured by ambition and his own raging passions. Pushing his work beyond scientific certainty to the boundary between life and death, he brings a new being into existence in a spectacular moment of creation. Played in completely original fashion by Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein’s monster begins as a powerful, dangerous beast but carries the equally dangerous capacity to learn from human behaviour. It puts both Frankenstein and his fiancé Elizabeth (Mia Goth, last at the Festival in 2022’s Pearl) in jeopardy.
Having spent most of his life absorbing and distilling the Frankenstein story and all its lore, del Toro takes liberties with the novel. The result is a singular vision that could only have come from cinema’s master of the monstrous.
Shot at a vast studio in Toronto and on location in Scotland, Frankenstein is a marvel of filmmaking craft rarely seen anymore. Tamara Deverell’s production design is both intricate and staggering. The colours, patterns, and textures of Kate Hawley’s costumes, especially for Goth’s character, add layers of meaning to the story. Even with the boundless reach of its fantasy, much of the film was made with real sets and other practical means, rather than digital effects.
Frankenstein is del Toro’s magnum opus, the story of a brilliant creator driven to the brink of madness, and a creation who meets him there. – CAMERON BAILEY
A Private Life
Vie privée
Rebecca Zlotowski
CANADIAN PREMIERE
France | 2025 | 107m | English, French
Oscar winner Jodie Foster stars in this slyly comic psychological thriller from director Rebecca Zlotowski (TIFF ’22’s Other People’s Children), in which a suspicious death yields a series of twists that lead back to old grievances — and maybe even to past lives.
Academy Award winner Jodie Foster stars in this scintillating, slyly comic psychological thriller from French director Rebecca Zlotowski (TIFF ’22’s Other People’s Children), in which a suspicious death yields a series of twists that lead back to old grievances — and maybe even to past lives.
Lilian (Foster), an American psychoanalyst in Paris, is devastated to learn that her client Paula (Virginie Efira) has taken her own life. Or has she? Visits from Paula’s furious widower, Simon (Mathieu Amalric), and taciturn daughter, Valérie (Luàna Bajrami), along with the discovery that files have been stolen from Lilian’s office, suggest that Paula may have fallen victim to foul play.
Assisted by her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), Lilian undertakes some amateur sleuthing. Her initial investigations prompt more questions than answers until a session with a hypnotherapist causes Lilian to wonder whether her relationship with Paula began in a previous incarnation.
Written by Zlotowski with Anne Berest (Mythomaniac) and Gaëlle Macé (TIFF ’24’s Little Jaffna), A Private Life deftly rides the delicate line between intrigue and zaniness. Perfectly paced and loaded with diverting supporting turns — including a cameo by legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman — the film is partly a whodunnit and partly a story of revisited relationships, with a French-speaking Foster and Auteuil delivering effortlessly charismatic performances as long-time exes whose teamwork creates the film’s other big mystery: why did these two ever break up?
The festival is inching closer and closer to its official opening, and the journey is looking more and more thrilling the more I look into it and poke my head around the impressive schedule. Stay tuned for Part Two of this Wanna See List. I’ll share all that I’ll be experiencing, exploring, and reviewing of TIFF50 as it unfolds—bringing you along for every surprising moment, because the best is still to come, and I can’t wait to share it all with you.
