Welcome, everyone, to the first day of Biff Bam Pop’s coverage of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival!
No matter how long we’ve been attending TIFF (and for Karen, Sanjay, and I at least, we’ve been Festival-goers for over two decades), we somehow have never been able to fully prepare for or anticipate the level of chaos that the first few days bring with it. Part of this is because the Festival has evolved so much in that time and while it’s always been able to adapt to radical changes in the industry from the early days of social media, to the development of the “Festival Village” concentrated in one geographic area of the city, to world events like 9/11 and COVID, it always takes a few days for the training wheels to come off each year. But ticketing snafus and navigating a new and expanded Market (formerly Industry) section which has become a major focus of the Festival, we’ve managed to get quite a few screenings under our collective belts in just one day.
Karen Shute
This year’s festival started off with a whimper, and by that I am referring to myself ugly crying in the dark while watching Miwa Nishikawa’s heartbreaking film Children Untold.
The story centres around Kotoko, a recently orphaned 12 year old girl, who disguises herself as a boy to survive the harsh realities of life in Tokyo after the 1945 firebombing, and her former teacher Sone who has made it her mission to find out what has become of the girl. The talented daughter of musician parents, Kotoko doesn’t have many opportunities pursue that dream in this new reality, as hope slips away in favour of survival. Artistic pursuits seem like an unaffordable luxury in a shattered world, but in the rare moments in which a character picks up an instrument and plays, the world stops in it’s tracks, and people are reminded that beauty can still exist in the darkest of times.
The film serves as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences that war has for the most innocent members of society, and the ways that women and girls find themselves uniquely vulnerable to exploitation under these circumstances. It’s difficult to watch this film and not think of the ways in which this particular story is currently playing out across the globe, with 1 in 5 children living in an active war zone, and millions newly orphaned by seemingly never ending conflicts. To quote a character who chooses to show kindness towards the orphans one point in the film, “It’s our duty to let children sleep well and rest well, or we’ll be punished, because God sent them to us.” Perhaps if everyone felt this way we wouldn’t find ourselves constantly repeating a terrible history.
I’ll never forget the thrill of finding a composite cut of The Devils that had the censored footage spliced back in from low resolution video sources. It felt like I was watching something that was never meant to be seen. So imagine my surprise and delight that in 2026 I get to sit in a theatre and revel in its uncensored, blasphemous glory the way Ken Russell envisioned it. It’s just as impactful today as it was in 1971, and if this kind of movie is your jam, you owe it to yourself to catch it on the big screen during its limited release in October.
TIFF missed a huge opportunity to have a Stuffed / Kissed double bill. Both movies examine love in the face of and in the aftermath of death, and both do so with a striking degree of tenderness. Jodie Comer is excellent as always, but it was Harry Melling who stole the hearts of the audience.
Sachin Hingoo
After some finagling with the online ticket portal, Karen and I attended a screening of the restoration of one of the most thorough depictions of debauchery that exists on film, Ken Russell’s The Devils, and let me tell you, this is a hell of a movie a) for our first film of TIFF 2026 and b) to watch at the early hour of 1:30pm. This painstaking restoration of the original 1971 film, replete with several lost minutes of footage and – it feels weird to describe any of this as “beautiful” – remastering of the film to a 4K format, felt to me like watching The Devils for the first time. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I suppose, is up to you but I can say that for a movie I’ve never seen outside of the cut and edited version, it plays like a movie that could have been produced yesterday and which is unquestionably director Ken Russell’s original vision. And for those that know, in terms of content its themes of religious perversion (however you want to interpret that) are still – maybe more – shocking and frighteningly prescient. This is a movie that depicts such ugliness that it almost seems like you’re doing something wrong by watching it in even higher resolution than it was ever intended to be seen, and in broad daylight no less, but here we are. Definitely one for the whole family when it comes out next month, assuming you’re in the market for a new family afterwards.
In a movie with so many animals and especially one that’s as horror-coded as Theo Rhys’ Stuffed, the first question that people tend to ask is “does the dog/cat/etc. die?” And I think the fear inherent in that question is that the death of that animal comes with it a cruelty, or a feeling that that animal will expire unloved or forgotten. Stuffed is, at its (immaculately preserved) heart, about death not being a permanent end, and the assurance that the memory and presence of the dead being, well, immaculately preserved. I might usually not be one for musicals but it turns out that what I’ve been missing from the works of Lin Manuel Miranda and other creators was, who knew, a massive dose of body horror! The music in Stuffed is gorgeously composed, and it certainly helps that it’s performed beautifully and the screen completely commanded by Jodie Comer’s Araminta, a lonely and surly mortician and prolific taxidermist, and Harry Melling’s Bernie, an unremarkable man who works at the town sandwich factory and wants to nothing more to be remarkable and remembered. I can say with absolute certainty that Stuffed will be the best and most (literally?) heart-rending taxidermy-themed musical of 2026.
Nyla Innuksuk’s In The Heart of the South is the sort of Indigenous-led story that we rarely, if ever, see. A funny but ultimately frightening meta-narrative about the monetization and eventual weaponization of trauma that worms its way right under your skin. In a similar way that Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a movie about making movies, Innuksuk explores what it’s like to be an Indigenous or frankly any sort of creator from any marginalized or minority group trying to establish their voice in a predatory and competitive urban art scene. At the same time, there’s the beating heart of a genuinely scary thriller underneath. Innuksuk’s work here, anchored by two riveting performances by Anna Lambe’s Yura and Zorga Qaunaq’s vicious Sesi, has made her an artist whose voice is essential in Canadian cinema.
So, a debaucherous restoration of a controversial 1971 film, a musical about taxidermy and death, an exploration of the aftermath and ripple effects of war, and a multi-layered thriller about the use of trauma in art. If that’s not a picture-perfect cross-section of the kind of storytelling that TIFF offers in a single day, I’m not sure what is. And that’s just Day One.
Until tomorrow, gang!
The 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10-20, 2026. Ticket and lineup information can be found at the TIFF website, and stay tuned to Biff Bam Pop for all of our coverage all week!