Cut, print, and [insert every other movie buzzword] because after ten or eleven days of movies, TIFF 2026 (TIFFty Two if ya nasty) is in the books. For me (Sachin), I got about 30 movies deep and that’s even with prioritizing a bit of self-care in there. But TIFF, for me, isn’t just about the movies. It’s about the unique experiences you can really only have at the Festival and the many friends, new and old, that I get to hang out and talk movies with a this time of year. Sure, I talk movies with friends throughout the year, but like a TIFF bumper reel says before this year’s screenings, during TIFF, “everyone’s a critic.” Here’s our rundown of the last bit of the Festival, and our final thoughts before we shut the ol’ projector down until next year!
Sachin Hingoo
Karen and I got to attend one of those “only at TIFF” experiences with a special screening of Matt Barats’ Anchors Aweigh with Barats doing live narration and a live band of local Toronto musicians scoring the film along with the movie. We’d both already attended a screening of the film earlier in the Festival, so this marked the induction of Barats’ melancholy but hilarious comedy into the very rare and exclusive “two-timer” club for me at TIFF which includes Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) and Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s Livide (2011). Barats’ signature delivery and some of the most quotable lines of the Festival (I’ve been saying “s’all good” and “tight, tight” far too often since) made this a delightful denouement for TIFF.
I also got to see one of only a couple of Midnight Madness selections at Midnight, and director Samjad’s HALF was so good that I decided to make it my last film of TIFF. Made even better by the incomparably raucous Midnight Madness crowd at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, acknowledged by Samjad (and many others) as the best film audience on earth, this bloody actioner blew the roof off the theatre. Starring Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj as half-blood daywalker vampire siblings, this one didn’t let up its spine-ripping onslaught for a minute, which is exactly the kind of movie I needed to close out the Festival proper.
Closing out the Festival, I attended the TIFF Awards Press Conference for the first time, where the jury prizes for the Short, Canadian, and Platform categories are given out as well as the audience-voted People’s Choice Awards. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra and Simon Stone’s Elisnore picked up the People’s Choice and International People’s Choice respectively, Special shoutout to Cody Lightning, director of Smudge The Blades, for breaking my heart and everything else with his acceptance speech for the Best Canadian Discovery award as well. I’m hoping with all my heart that this movie and everyone behind this film get to be seen by a massive audience.
Karen Shute
As a denim head who once blindly walked into a nondescript building in Harajuku because she spotted the Levi’s batwing design etched into a granite panel next to a numberless door, Vintage Violence was bound to check a lot of boxes for me. Eugene Kotlyarenko’s new film for the chronically online follows a disgraced Kick streamer who finds an old crate of Levi’s from the 1880’s and travels to Japan in hopes of selling them for big bucks. Of course selling the jeans won’t be as easy as he had hoped, and before long he will need to contend with denim obsessed goons who will stop at nothing to posses these indigo colored symbols of classic American artistry and ingenuity. This is a film I will definitely need to watch again because the frame is often split between the film’s reality, and the character’s reality as seen through a live stream POV complete with running commentary from his online followers. I feel like I missed a few gags because my attention was pulled in all directions, but the film is entertaining enough that I am looking forward to the rewatch so I can catch anything I missed the first time around. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I was lucky enough to find a tiny Levi’s concept store in that nondescript building, and thankfully not an agbada clad yakuza cyborg, whose only mechanical enhancement is a ketamine laced binaca finger. IYKYK.
Overall, TIFF 2026 was a pretty good year for the films, but the ticketing process left me pining for the days when you would slip your highlighted physical schedule into an envelope and drop it off in a numbered box for the chance to get your first picks in the lottery. Somehow, the archaicness of that method felt like it produced fairer results, and it was heartbreaking to sit in an “offsale” screening surrounded by dozens of empty seats knowing that there were probably people refreshing the ticketing window every day hoping for a seat drop that would never come.
But I digress.
Let’s get back to what’s really important – the movies! I saw several films that I would eagerly watch again as soon as they drop in theaters. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother was an absolute stand out for me, and I almost bailed on another film to watch it again. Thankfully I didn’t, because that film turned out to be the screening of Anchors Aweigh with a live orchestra and live narration which was a hoot that I would be kicking myself for having missed. And speaking of kicking myself, Arne Goes To Space eluded me the entire festival and I will forever regret allowing FOMO to cause me to choose a screening of River when I had to make a scheduling Sophie’s Choice between the two films.
Canada had some excellent offerings this year with The Stunt Driver, Toy Gun Bandit and Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney. Tearjerkers like Elsinore and Tangles had me sobbing in the dark, while Inherit, The Spiral and Kick On left me shuddering. As always, the best thing about the festival each and every year is the way that the city transforms into a haven for movie lovers, where deep conversations can be had and lifelong friendships forged in the line waiting to see the next film. Until next year friends!
