Toronto International Film Festival 2025: Most-Anticipated Movies

It’s hard enough to deal with an elderly mother in the hospital, and get her affairs in order as you and your sibling prepare for the inevitable. Throw in a corpse hidden in the family home’s basement walls, nosy cops, and a former caretaker with blackmail on her mind, and, well — you either have the makings of a collective nervous breakdown or an extremely dark comedy. Kaya Scodelario (The Gentlemen) and Josh Gad (the voice of Olaf in Frozen) are the sister-brother duo trying to keep a nasty situation from going completely nuclear in Alex Winter’s contribution to the dysfunctional-families-behaving-badly subgenre.

Saoirse Ronan is an elementary school teacher whose class is plagued by a bully. Then one day, the kid disappears — and the fact that everyone seems totally cool with the boy being M.I.A. is something she finds even more distressing than his bad behavior. If you were lucky enough to catch 2023’s One More Time, then you know Swedish director Jonatan Etzler has a knack for turning a typical premise on its head. At the very least, we’ll get the Lady Bird star losing her cool, which is one the Oscar nominee’s specialties.

Documentarian Billy Corben has taken on mercenaries gone rogue (Men of War), frat parties gone way out of bounds (Raw Deal: A Question of Consent), steroid use in sports (Screwball), and Miami’s gonzo cocaine cowboys (Cocaine Cowboys). Now he turns his camera on the story of Paula Deen, the former food-TV staple whose empire fell apart. It’s not a pretty story, though we’re curious to see whether Corben is sympathetic to her downfall or not, as well as how her story plays in the context of… let’s say the “politically different” tenor of today’s culture wars.

When does Steven Soderbergh find time to sleep? (Perhaps a better question is: Does Steven Soderbergh sleep at all?!) The highly prolific filmmaker has already given us a stellar ghost story (Presence) and the year’s best spy-vs.-spy thriller (Black Bag), and now he’s gifting us with art heist film — or maybe it’s a heist art film? — involving a legendary painter (Ian McKellen) and his new assistant (Michaela Coel). The young woman has actually been hired by the artist’s heirs to steal a number of his unfinished works, complete them after he dies, and split the profits with them. We’re going to guess it gets complicated.

From the late 1980s until the 2010s, Christy Martin dominated both the “Toughwoman” contests that got her noticed by professional-fight pundits and paved the way for her to win the World Boxing Council’s welterweight championship in 2009. Now Sydney Sweeney steps into the ring, figuratively and otherwise, to play Martin in this sports biopic from David Michôd (Animal Kingdom, War Machine). No word on whether her jeans are good or not, but we can tell you that she apparently trained hard for the role, and Ben Foster plays her manager-slash-husband Jim Martin.

Angelina Jolie stars in this white-hot haute couture drama that follows three different women: a film director (Jolie) undergoing a moment of personal crisis; a make-up artist (Ella Rumpf) writing a roman à clef about her industry experiences; and a newbie model (Anyier Anei) learning the runway ropes. Given how stunning director Alice Winocour’s last movie was — if you haven’t seen her sensitive 2022 PTSD drama Revoir Paris, we recommend you catch up with it immediately — we’re looking forward to seeing how she tackles the good, the bad and the laide of the French fashion world.

Roughly 20 years ago, documentarian Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed) pitched veteran reporter Seymour Hersh on doing a film about his life and extraordinary career. The notoriously prickly journalist told her: definitely kinda sorta maybe. It seems the Oscar-winning filmmaker, along with co-director Mark Obenhaus, finally managed to pin their subject down long enough to ask him about a long, storied career of dragging the dark side of history (My Lai, Watergate, Abu Gharib) into the light and talking truth to power. This should be good.

In 1977, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) walked into the offices of Meridan Mortgage Company in Indianapolis and put a shotgun to the head of broker Dick Hall (Stranger Things‘ Dacre Montgomery). He then drove with Hall back to his apartment and held him hostage for three days, demanding that the company apologize for screwing him out of a land deal. The media jumped all over the situation, the case gained national recognition, and Kiritsis became something like a local folk hero. We’re getting a very gritty, Dog Day Afternoon-style vibe off of director Gus Van Sant’s true-crime thriller — which is appropriate, given that Al Pacino plays the hostage’s father. Coleman Domingo, Cary Elwes and Industry‘s Myha’la Herrold costar.

Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden, Scarlet) returns with a biopic on Eleanora Duse, the 19th century actor who earned her reputation of being the Sarah Bernhardt of the Austrian Empire. The fact that one of the few true auteurs of contemporary Italian cinema cast France’s Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a great performer in her right, to play the theatrical icon should make fans of trans-international productions and diva-centric dramas positively giddy. The only thing that would make this better is if the equally amazing Noémie Merlant was playing Duse’s daughter, and… wait, hold on, she is! Consider us sold.

Bryan Fuller reunites with his Hannibal star Mads Mikkelsen for this dizzying fantasy about a young girl (Sophie Sloan) who must contend with a giant, parent-eating monster under her bed. Fortunately for her, there’s a monster hunter (Mikkelsen) living next door to her who may be able to help her deal with the problem. Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian and The Underground Railroad‘s Sheila Atim add to the mayhem.

True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto turns his attention to Sin City for this tale of a Vegas lounge singer (Vince Vaughn) who’s career has hit the skids. Still, his restaurant-management job pays the bills. Then a living legend (Al Pacino) of the Strip offers to help the younger man get his back onstage and back on track, and suddenly, those dreams of being the next Sinatra don’t seem so far away any more. Please feel free to make your “Vegas, baby!” jokes now. Also, check out this supporting cast: Kate Mara, Cobie Smulders, Simon Rex, Shania Twain (!)….

Charli XCX is set to have a very good TIFF — she’s in two of the festival’s buzzier titles, and this first one casts her as a British tourist traveling to Warsaw with her boyfriend (Will Madden). He is thinking of proposing. She’s thinking of ghosting him, preferring to hang out with an old friend (Lena Góra) with whom she shares an odd connection. Director Pete Ohs and his cowriter, playwright Jeremie O. Harris, gave us the SXSW standout The True Beauty of Being Bit By a Tick, and judging from the woozy, hipster-outta-water look of this new film, they’re about to score another hit with the Dimes Square crowd.

Fans of the Kotake Create game, rejoice! The Japanese phenomenon, in which players have to walk down a nondescript subway corridor and pick out “inaccuracies” in order to level up, gets its own screen adaptation (which Neon is releasing in the U.S. later this year). And at a glance, this thriller from writer, anime producer and director Genki Kawamura (A Hundred Flowers) feels like it’s nailed the tone of the cult hit. Kazunari Ninomiya is the commuter who must make his way through this endless white hallways, in the hopes of making it to the other side. Remember: If anything looks off, turn back.

Claire Denis returns to the festival with this thriller about a manager (Matt Dillon) for a British construction company, who’s overseeing a big project in Cameroon. Then a local worker dies on the job, the man’s brother (the always great Isaach De Bankolé) demands that the body be returned immediately to him, and suddenly, there’s a lot of tension between the two parties that needs to be defused ASAP, or else. How to Have Sex‘s Mia McKenna-Bruce and Tom Blyth (whose prison drama Wasteman is also playing at this year’s TIFF) costar.

Coming to TIFF straight from its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited, labor-of-love adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic is likely to be one of hotter tickets in Toronto this year. Oscar Isaac is the good doctor know for his reanimation experiments; Jacob Elordi is the creature given both life and a sense of existential crises; Mia Goth, Ralph Ineson, and Christoph Waltz lend their talents as well. The fact that del Toro has cited artist Bernie Wrightson’s sketches of the monster as a big inspiration gives us high expectations; that he also wanted to blend elements of both the original story and The Bride of Frankenstein makes us positively giddy.

An unexploded WWII-era bomb is discovered in the middle of a building site in central London. A bomb squad led by a British army veteran (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is called in to defuse the device and evacuate the area. While all this is happening, a gang of criminals is coincidentally — or maybe not so coincidentally — is planning to rob a bank a few blocks away. It seems that this crime thriller from David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water, Starred Up) will finally answer the burning question, “What if The Hurt Locker was a heist movie?” White Lotus MVP Theo James, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Honor Swinton Byrne and Sam Worthington costar.

A message to all you wayward youth, the kind of who spend their late mights and early mornings wreaking havoc and leaving wreckage in their drunken wakes: watch out for strangers approaching you during the wee small hours. They may want to rehabilitate you in a most peculiar manner. Such is the fate of Tommy (Anson Boon), who awakens from a booze-and-drugs bender to find he’s chained up in the basement of a strange gent (Adolescence‘s Stephen Graham). This man wants to “cure” the youngster of his evil ways, and quicker than you can say “Ludovico technique,” Tommy discovers he has to change his attitude ASAP or suffer the consequences. Yikes. Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi) directs.

TIFF’s opening night selection couldn’t be more welcome, or more appropriately Canadian: a full-length doc on the life and career of John Candy. Actor and filmmaker Colin Hanks combines a treasure trove of archival clips, as well as interviews from Candy’s SCTV cohorts (Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy), fellow movie stars (Steve Martin, Dan Akyoyd, Tom Hanks), friends and family members about his generosity, his gregariousness, and his great sense of humor. There will be Planes, Trains and Automobiles jokes.

Frustrated by radio’s insistence on icing out female artists and the music-fest circuit being such a literal boys’ club, Sarah McLachlan decided to start up her own multi-artist tour. She called it Lilith Fair, and it would end up making both history and a lot of money, as well as providing a major platform for generations of female musicians. A documentary on this groundbreaking traveling circus has been long overdue, so thank god that Ally Pankiw finally got around to making one.

Park Chan-wook — he of the Vengeance trilogy, The Handmaiden, and the peerless Decision to Leave — adapts Donald Westlake’s 1997 pulp novel, about a manager laid off from his longtime job. His search for a new gig will eventually find him trying to secure one of the only open positions in his region by hook, crook, or, y’know, multiple homicides. Late capitalism is a real bitch, people. Squid Game‘s Lee Byung-hun is the businessman pushed to the brink.

Recently canonized action-movie star Bob Odenkirk and John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstaldt co-conceived this shoot-’em-up about a sheriff (Odenkirk) who’s recently transplanted himself from the big city to the small, All-American hamlet of Normal. He accidentally stumbles across a secret that the local population would prefer stay secret, which pits the lawman against the town. Like, the whole town. Add in the fact that Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List, Free Fire, Sightseers) is directing, and this is the one of the few Midnight Madness entries we’re willing to stay up late by any means necessary to check out.

Few first-time features have knocked us sideways as much as László Nemes’ 2015 debut Son of Saul, and his new film sounds just as unflinching and unforgiving. A 12-year-old living in 1950s Budapest with his mother — who’s still traumatized from her time in the camps during WWII — must navigate the appearance of a stranger who shows up unannounced at their door. He may know something about the disappearance of the boy’s father. Meanwhile, the aftermath of the failed Hungarian revolution that resulted in a harsh, Soviet-led crackdown seems to be causing ripple effects around both family members.

You’ve loved Maude Apatow, actor-for-hire, in projects like One of Them Days and Euphoria — now meet Maude Apatow, up-and-coming director! She makes her feature debut with this dramedy about two college students (Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barth Feldman) who both fall head over heels for the new-in-town tutor (Leslie Mana, a.k.a. Maude’s mom) in their poetry class. The fact that she’s more than a few years older than them, is married (to Method Man!), and is experiencing something close to a mid-life crisis is not helping matters any.

Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin returns to the U.K. folk-horror strains of his previous movie, the eerie-as-hell Enys Men (2022), with this tale of a young fisherman (George McKay) who signs up for a brief tour on a departing boat. It turns out this same vessel mysteriously went missing 30 years ago, and has inexplicably returned with virtually no crew members. Even stranger is the fact that when they return to port, they seem to have gone back in time. Or maybe he and his shipmate (Callum Turner) are the original crew members, and they’ve fast-forwarded to the future? Or the present? What the fuck is going on here?! Slow Horses‘ Rosalind Eleazar costars.

Romain Gavras is not a filmmaker known to pull punches — both 2010’s Our Day Will Come (which builds off concepts he began toying around with in his banned music video for M.I.A.’s “Born Free”) and his 2022 masterpiece Athena are the sort of incendiary movies that leave scorched earth in their wake. So we’re especially jazzed that Gavras is bringing his newest project to TIFF, which sounds like it has the making of a real gut-punch satire. A group of celebrities, including a clueless action hero (Chris Evans) and a billionaire (Vincent Cassel) with a self-serving agenda, gather in Greece to hash out the world’s climate-change issues. Crashing the party: an eco-terrorist (Anya Taylor-Joy) who takes the notion of making sacrifices to save the planet extremely literally. Charli XCX, Salma Hayek Pinault, John Malkovich, Sam Richardson and Jonatan Håstad, a.k.a. Yung Lean, contribute to the chaos.

Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet — the duo who gave you last year’s TIFF standout-slash-Oscar-nominated epic The Brutalist — are back with another collaboration, and this time it’s a musical about the Shakers! Both co-wrote the script, and this time, Fastvold is in the director’s seat and Corbet is co-producing; their dedication to period recreation, pushing actors out of their comfort zones, and making ambitious projects on modest budgets, however, remains intact. Amanda Seyfried is Ann Lee, a pious young woman who experiences an epiphany and kickstarts the religious movement that found spiritual release in dance and song. She will eventually be worshipped and vilified in equal measure, at the exact moment that America liberates itself from its colonial masters. Seyfried is already attracting a lot of attention in regards to her no-holds-barred performance. Also reaching for the heavens: Thomasin Mckenzie, Christopher Abbott, Tim Blake Nelson and Lewis Pullman costar.

A concert pianist (François Civil) returns to his hometown after an extended stay abroad, and is convinced by his mentor (Charlotte Rampling) to play a series of performances to commemorate a local venue. Despite his reluctance, the musician agrees — only to find himself in serious psychological distress after re-encountering an old flame (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) and, more worrisomely, someone who appears to be his double. Is he real? Is our hero cracking up? All we know is that this is the latest film from Arnaud Desplechin, the French cineaste who gave us Kings and Queen, A Christmas Story, and Ismael’s Ghosts, so we’re 100-percent there regardless.

Both of Rian Johnson’s previous outings starring Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, Southern-fried sleuth and world-class bon vivant, premiered at TIFF — so it was a given that the third in his wonderful detective-film franchise would bow at the festival as well. Blanc once again finds himself embroiled in a case with loads of suspects and a suspiciously high body count. The plot itself is a mystery, but we do know that Johnson has once again assembled a who’s-who for his whodunnit: Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Cailee Spaeny, Josh O’Connor, Mila Kunis and Thomas Haden Church, among others.

Vadim Baranov, the mover and shaker of post-Soviet Russia played by There Will Be Blood‘s Paul Dano, is a fictional amalgamation that serves as a tour guide for political histories in the latest by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Summer Hours, Personal Shopper). The man he helps transform into the nation’s divisive President, however, is not — and the word on the proverbial street is that Jude Law’s interpretation of Vladimir Putin is quite a thing to behold. Throw in Alicia Vikander and Jeffrey Wright, and you’ve got yourself quite the acting showcase.

The 1972 Toronto production of Godspell has become one of the most legendary theatrical runs ever, with a cast featuring Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, and Paul Shaffer (later, Dave Thomas and future 30 Rock director Don Scardino would join the ensemble). For many of them, it was their first professional job in show business. And though only brief rehearsal footage and a bootleg audio tape made by Short during a performance attest to this version’s brilliance, it’s still considered a Rosetta stone — you don’t get SNL, SCTV, Late Night with David Letterman or most modern comedy without it. Nick Davis’ doc interviews the surviving cast members, along with fans ranging from Mike Myers to Heidi Gardner, about the influence of the show and how it changed the lives of everyone involved.