Toronto International Film Festival 2025: Best Movies

Jonathan Swift proposed, modestly, that overpopulation might be solved by consuming children. This satire, starring Saoirse Ronan, suggests that students who’ve fallen through the cracks of a broken school system could be best served by one-on-one tutoring — specifically while being forcibly chained up in a basement. (Chaining folks up in basements seemed to be a recurring motif in this year’s TIFF lineup, by the way; no less than five films featured this plot point, and that’s just out of the ones I saw.) Swedish filmmaker Jonatan Etzler doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of such a premise, and his star leans heavily into the unlikable aspects of her elementary school teacher, who finds herself a rather reluctant jailer of a severe problem child (played by Eddie Waller). Yet this black comedy of manners doesn’t stop at indicting the failings of modern education, and points its finger at larger systematic issues — the demands of the gig-economy, the uneven plating fields of meritocracy — that play into the problem as well. Also? It’s genuinely fucking funny and wields its sense of irony like a épée.

Look, we’d have been perfectly happy if Steven Soderbergh had simply given us a solid art-heist movie starring Michael Coel and Ian McKellen, and not broken his 2025 winning streak. (He’s already blessed us with both Presence and Black Bag this year!) His moody, more-meditative-than-usual drama about a young artist hired to find, pilfer, and “finish” some unfinished works from a controversial painter goes the extra mile, however, and delivers a pensive piece about creative blockage, the burden of legacies, and how the anxiety of influence can be a boon instead of a burden. And the hot-cold dynamic between its stars, with McKellen in full cantankerous-old-coot mode and Coel offering a cool and aloof counterpart, fits the specific tone Soderbergh and Ed Solomon’s script to a tee.

The concept is simple: You’re walking down a corridor in a Tokyo subway underground. You notice everything around you, from advertisement posters to a passing fellow commuter. After turning a corner or two, you find yourself in the same hallway — but if you notice any “anomalies,” such a different billboard or an extra door, turn back. If everything is the exact same way it was the first time, proceed. Do this successfully eight times, and you can exit the building. The 2023 Japanese cult game doesn’t exactly scream “movie adaptation” when you play it, but director Genki Kawamura not only captures the feeling of existential panic and the flexing of deductive muscles. He also constructs a parable about parental anxiety and the peril of making bad choices — in and out of this strange prison — as he puts his hero, the “Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya), through his paces. It’s fun and stylish and creepy and oddly touching, in all the right places.

Guillermo del Toro finally tackles the movie he was born to make, and his take on Mary Shelley’s misunderstood monster and the man who made him is exactly what you’d hoped for: tony yet pulpy, tender yet perverse, faithful to the original source material while paying homage to all sorts of other Gothic and genre-related influences. Above all, however, it’s a passionately personal story about being an outcast, and trying to break cycles of bad parenting — no, seriously — that does not skimp on bringing the sound and the fury. Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein is part 18th-century dandy and part swaggering Swinging Sixties rock star, as if Lord Byron had been genetically spliced with Brian Jones. The above-and-beyond production design and costumes are filled with both period-appropriate lushness and totally idiosyncratic touches, like sarcophagi that showcase the naked faces of the dead and several flowing gowns that resemble full-length veils. And for those who only know Jacob Elordi from Euphoria, his sympathetic interpretation of the creature as both an innocent and an angel of vengeance is eye-opening.

Meet the Shakespeares. Chloé Zhao‘s rigorous, moving, and altogether transcendent take on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel — about the untimely passing of William and Anne “Agnes” Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, and the way that tragedy inspired the Bard’s play Hamlet — was the most shattering fiction film we saw at TIFF this year, and is most likely to be the movie of 2025 that leaves you in a puddle on the floor. Yet it’s a chronicle of reckoning with death that nonetheless bursts with life, renewal, rebirth. Young Hamnet’s shuffling off this mortal coil once laid the groundwork for a masterpiece. It’s now done so twice. Paul Mescal makes for a rugged Shakespeare, and young actor Jacobi Jupe delivers a surprisingly sublime portrayal as the title character. Yet it’s Jessie Buckley’s performance that truly drives this grief-stricken tale, and the manner in which she ultimately finds a sense of solace and catharsis through art feels revelatory.

Park Chan-wook (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Decision to Leave) turns Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel about an unemployed businessman killing off potential rivals for jobs into a pitch-black comedy, one that’s both horrifying and laugh-out funny (see: a set piece involving a loud stereo, a home invasion, and a gun). Squid Game superstar Lee Byung-hun is a paper-company middle manager in Seoul who suddenly finds his middle-class life deteriorating after getting laid off. Desperate times mean desperate measures, which means murder is on the table as an option. Forget it, Jake, it’s late capitalism. Slapstick bits of business sidle up next to satirical jabs at the mercenary aspects of selling yourself as a job candidate and the less-than-level playing fields one is forced to navigate for creature comforts and self-worth. It’s bleak, thrilling, and a blast.

Lucretia Martel (Zama, The Headless Woman) crafts a true-crime documentary out of a case involving a prominent figure within Argentina’s Chuschagasta community being murdered by a trio of men. They were attempting to claim the land for themselves, citing longtime disputes over whether settlers or the nation’s indigenous population owned the rights of the resource-rich land. The proceeding court case lasted years and clearly favored the accused over the persecuted. The typical approach would have been to lay everything out and proceed chronologically, yet Martel favors a more mural-like approach, which skips around chronologically and spends a good amount of time delving into the lives and rich history of the Chuschagasta themselves. It still begins with the inciting incident and ends on a partial injustice, but it’s everything in between those poles that makes this such a compelling, thought-provoking watch.

Curry Barker went into TIFF as an up-and-coming horror filmmaker with a strong YouTube following. He left the festival with a $12 million deal with Focus Features and an official next-big-thing coronation. The big head-turner out of this year’s Midnight Madness program, his debut feature is a spin on the old when-you-wish-upon-a-monkey’s-paw chestnut: A boy (Michael Johnston) is head over heels for a girl (Inde Navarrette). Worried that he’s stuck in the friend zone, he buys an item at a curio shop that will apparently make his dream of true love come true. It works not wisely but too well. Barker takes his time with the wind-up, which only makes the eventual shift into high gear that much more of a jolt. You can totally see why there was a bidding war for this. And a special kudos to Navarrette, who plays the supernaturally obsessed young woman with a commitment that, in and of itself, borders on obsessive.

How do you follow up a film like The Brutalist? If you’re Mona Fastvold, who cowrote and co-produced that Oscar-winning film with her husband Brady Corbet (he’s the co-writer on this one as well), you direct a part-musical biopic about the woman who founded the Shakers in the 18th century with a rigorous attention to period detail. Amanda Seyfried throws herself into the role of Ann Lee like a woman possessed, finding both providence and ecstatic release in worshipping via celibacy, song and dance. Her religious movement will convert many and, because of its strict pacifistic leanings, run afoul of her fellow citizens when the colonies enter the American Revolutionary War. It’s an epic take on the power of resistance and the idea of spirituality as a full-contact sport, as well as a metaphor for sticking to your guns no matter; sub in moviemaking for religious movements, and you feel like Fastvold has made something both highly political and intensely personal.

This absolutely devastating cri de coeur by Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) chronicles an emergency call taken by Red Crescent volunteers in Ramallah: a car in Gaza has been shot at by the Israeli Army near a gas station. Inside, a six-year-old girl named Hind Rajab is surrounded by the bodies of her relatives and is the only survivor of the attack. Workers keep her on the line and try to calm her while others attempt to co-ordinate the safe passage of an ambulance to pick her up. The volunteers frantically rushing around are played by actors, recreating the scene. The voices on the phone calls, including Hind, are real, with Hania using the call’s actual recordings to detail what happened. The movie doesn’t try to simplify the conflict or the ongoing destruction of the region. It simply boils everything down to a single case study in rage, sorrow and unfathomable tragedy, and asks: Why? Why did this have to happen?