We’re in the back half of summer, unfortunately, and while most of us are sadly putting away our sunscreen, bathing suits, and fruity cocktails, for us film fans that means it’s Festival season. BBP will be covering the Toronto International Film Festival once again and your faithful Boppers Jeromme Graham, Karen Shute, Sanjay Rajput, and Sachin Hingoo will be foregoing sleep for a marathon of darkened cinemas to bring you news, reviews, and previews from one of the most exciting weeks of the year that the movie calendar has to offer. To properly kick off our coverage, here’s each of our top picks from the lineup!
Sanjay
Drifter (dir. Sung Kang, World Premiere)
As an unabashed lover of all things Fast and Furious I am totally amped to see Sung Kang back behind the wheel (and in the director’s chair) as a drifter in Drifter. Car films can lean a bit hard into the melodrama when they get into deep explorations of family or aging mentors passing the torch and such. To be really memorable you just need some adrenaline and nitrous fueled racing and drifting. Hopefully this has the right balance of all of it.
HALF (dir. Samjad, World Premiere)
Obviously, when people think of Indian cinema the first thing that comes to mind are Bollywood musicals. But India has been killing it with its action game with bangers from the YRF Spy Universe Series, anything by SS Rajamouli, and its two recent EPIC Midnight Madness entries: The Man Who Feels No Pain and KILL. Looks like this year we’ve got what looks like a mashup of martial arts, curry westerns, and vampires so you know I am there for it!
Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story & The Ultra Runner & Run Terry Run:
If sports are your thing then there is likely a movie about your sport of choice. Baseball, Football, Hockey, Bobsledding, etc. This year, TIFF even has a movie about the making of a movie about Boxing! But endurance runners don’t get a whole lot of love on the big screen. Thankfully, TIFF has 3 documentaries about endurance runners so for those of us who love to pound the pavement we’ve finally got a few more options that show the world why we lace up and run these streets.
Jeromme
Turtle Island Rap (dir. Alexandra Lazarowich, World Premiere)
One of the TIFF docs I’m most excited about this year, Turtle Island Rap feels like exactly the kind of music documentary we need more of. Director Alexandra Lazarowich follows Indigenous hip-hop artists Wiidaaseh, A$h Da Hunter and Travis Thompson as they hustle, chase, and grind for their moment onstage. Turtle Island Rap promises an intimate look at young Indigenous artists carving out space on their own terms in largely uncharted territory. How often do you see that story told on the big screen?
Pretenders (dir. Joss Crowley, World Premiere)
Chrissie Hynde has never needed anyone’s permission to be cool, which is exactly why I’m so ready for Pretenders. This new Joss Crowley-directed doc digs into five decades of the Pretenders through extensive interviews, great archival footage and appearances from everyone from Paul McCartney to Johnny Marr. I’m expecting sex, drugs and rock & roll. Hynde’s story has all that, plus danger, tragedy, reinvention and, obviously, fantastic songs. Can’t wait!
Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple (dir. Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn, World Premiere)
If you’ve ever listened to Rush or seriously picked up a pair of drumsticks, you already understand the phenomenon that was Neil Peart. This doc from Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn brings the late Peart’s Rush bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson together with Stewart Copeland, Danny Carey, Chad Smith and Gavin Harrison to honour the legendary drummer. Between breaking down the genius of Peart, awesome performance footage, and genuinely moving memories, I don’t think there will be a dry eye in the house.
Karen
Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo (dir. Takashi Miike, World Premiere)
I’m a very simple girl at heart – I see a Takashi Miike film listed in the program and I buy a ticket. It’s been that way since I saw The City Of Lost Souls at Midnight Madness back in 2000 and I am rarely disappointed. I also love the idea that these Bad Lieutenant movies are sort of like the Alien franchise of dirty cop movies. You have wildly different filmmakers take the concept and put their own unique spin on it, and they are all fascinating in radically different ways. I’m not sure how he can top the iguana scene from Port Of Call New Orleans but I have faith in him.
The Stunt Driver (dir. Michael Dowse, World Premiere)
Like any person of a certain age who grew up in a small Northern Ontario town, Fubar hit like crack when it was first released, but my favourite Michael Dowse film is still his 2004 mockumentary It’s All Gone Pete Tong. It had a lovely blend of humour and sentimentality that avoided getting too cloying, so seeing him return to the realm of biography with a docudrama about a Canadian stunt driver has my interest revved up to overdrive.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (dir. Bassam Tariq, World Premiere)
Would it have been fun to see Mahershala Ali as Blade? Sure. Who wouldn’t want to see that incredible actor slash his way through hordes of vampires. But if that project had to get staked in the heart to allow this film to exist, I will happily celebrate its demise. In the end, we all just really wanted to see Mahershala Ali kick some ass, and now he gets to do that in an original and personal story from writer / director Bassam Tariq which sounds way more interesting to me than another comic book movie remake.
Arne Goes to Space (dir. Lars Vega, World Premiere)
Every year I have to pick at least one movie based solely on vibes, and this one piqued my curiosity. I love seeing a genre movie set in an extremely non-genre setting, and the premise of an alien life form intermingling with the residents of a remote Swedish community has plenty of comedic potential. After tracking down Lars Vega’s short Arne Meets Death, I’m excited to see what the director has planned for his debut feature.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney (dir. Matthew Rankin, World Premiere)
I had to do a double take to make sure my eyes didn’t deceive me, but yes it’s true, the National Film Board Of Canada is bringing Matthew Rankin’s latest bizarro history lesson to the big screen! Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise since the NFB was where I was first exposed to experimental cinema by the likes of Norman McLaren and Arthur Lipsett, and this is an important reminder of the vital role they have had in championing and preserving bold, creative visions for nearly a century.
Sachin
Voices: The Musical (dir. Deanté Gray, International Premiere)
Karen, Sanjay, and most of my other friends will tell you how unusual it is for me to choose a musical among my top picks. But here we are! In Deanté Gray’s feature debut, a pair of unassuming hotel staff in 1967 Motown scheme to take a gig from a popular soul duo. Taking place in a single hotel room, this is a film about the importance of art and passion as well as the price of fame. Bolstered by incredible performances, writing, and some songs that’ll keep you riveted to the screen (maybe with your toes tapping), I’d bet on this one being one of the biggest and best surprises of TIFF 2026.
Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad) (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, North American Premiere)
Almodovar is one of those directors – and I have a few – where I don’t need to see or read much of anything about their projects before the ticket is purchased. In his latest, the master filmmaker turns his eye on the art of filmmaking itself, with a pair of auteurs mining their personal relationships for creative projects while struggling with the ever-present conflict between art and commerce. I haven’t seen this one yet, but I can already tell that Almodovar’s ability to bring out the talent in his actors, creating characters that pop off the screen as vibrantly as the colours he paints with, is very much intact here.
In the Heart of the South (dir. Nyla Innuksuk, World Premiere)
Nyla Innuksuk’s first feature, the awesome 2022 sci-fi thriller Slash/Back, was the debut of an unquestionable new voice in genre cinema and, sure, I’m probably biased but also a proudly Canadian one. While that film featured aliens being fought off by two Nunavut teens, her new feature In the Heart of the South is more grounded and grapples with the often-literal horror of an Indigenous artist played by Anna Lambe in the cutthroat Toronto art scene. This is compounded by the reappearance of a sinister figure from her past (Zorga Qaunaq) who threatens to upend her success. Echoes of Single White Female with some supernatural flourishes, In the Heart of the South is one of those movies I always seek out at TIFF that add a little spooky discomfort to my day, in the most delicious manner possible.
Trees Are Watching (dir. Bahman Ghobadi, World Premiere)
After the 10 films composing the Midnight Madness lineup were announced last week, Peter Kuplowsky dropped a hint online that a low-key 11th selection that would hit both horror and arthouse notes was still to be announced. Turns out, he was referring to acclaimed Iranian-Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi’s Trees are Watching which is a haunting, folk horror-tinged ghost story that features Eva Green and a supporting cast of several child actors. It may also be the only TIFF film where one of the primary antagonists is a chair (sorry Amanda Kramer!). If you’re a Midnight Madness fan who’s looking for selections outside of that programme, this is the one for you.
Josephine (dir. Beth de Araújo, Canadian Premiere)
I was absolutely not ready for director Beth D’Araújo’s Soft & Quiet in 2022. That single-take movie about the radicalization of a suburban women’s book club hit like such a gutpunch and has a climax so unique and shocking (despite seeming fairly benign on paper) that I knew I’d be seated for D’Araújo’s next project no matter what. Well, here we are with Josephine, a film about the varying ways in which we deal with trauma that’s based on the real experience of D’Araújo as a child. Just as cinematography played such a large role in Soft & Quiet, it looks to be the same here behind Greta Zozula’s lens. Steel yourself ahead of time for this one, is my advice.
Kissed (dir. Lynne Stopkewich, 4K Restoration World Premiere)
As a film fan and sometimes-critic, I often find myself thinking about the movies that formed my tastes in film and art in general. My answers change all the time, but one that’ll consistently appear on that list is Lynne Stopkewich’s Kissed (1996). I was in my teens when this came out and the film geeks in my high school (and probably yours, if you were Canadian) talked about it in whispers and, most likely, found a copy on VHS or cable later and found that it was and is a beautiful and subversive movie about the embrace of death, both literal and figurative. Here, the movie that gave Molly Parker her breakout role and should be on every list of Canadian classics comes full circle with a 4K restoration exactly 30 years after its premiere at the 21st annual Toronto International Film Festival.
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival returns September 10–20, 2026 with selections in categories like Special Presentations, Gala, Discovery, Primetime, Platform, Wavelengths, Docs, Short Cuts, and Midnight Madness. Join us here at Biff Bam Pop for daily coverage and more from TIFF!
