TAGGED AS: Audience Award, Film Festival, Must Watch Movies, Oscars, TIFF
It is festival time yet again, and we are headed north. The Toronto International Film Festival is back, and the stars will be on hand to preview some of the most talked about films of 2024, including several hoping to vie for the Oscars early next year. In a recovery year for TIFF and CEO Cameron Bailey, the glitz will be back in Downtown Toronto, sporting a new sponsor, increased funding from the Canadian government, and an inspiring new crop of films.
(Photo by JA/Everett Collection)
With nearly 300 films expected to premiere over the 10-day event, we’ve singled out the 13 premieres we are most excited about. There will also be secondary premieres of films that have already received great acclaim elsewhere, including Sean Baker’s and Anora, The Substance, Emilia Pérez, Maria, Babygirl, and The Room Next Door, along with a host of documentaries that folks are buzzing about but we’ll save those entries for a separate list. So, read on for our breakdown of the 13 must-watch titles premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival.
(Photo by TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
First, we have a romantic drama courtesy of Brett Goldstein and Imogene Poots in a near-futuristic romance. All of You is set in a world in the not-too-distant future in which your soulmate can be determined with a test — a test that is 100% foolproof but one that does not lead to any other romantic attachment. Brett Goldstein plays Simon, and Imogene Poots plays his best friend, Laura. They take the test together, assuming they might be a match, but they aren’t. They soon realize how much they care about each other and might not be willing to accept what some test tells them would be their perfect match — setting up an interesting dichotomy where these two people attempt to find love outside the current societal system. We are more than interested in seeing Brett Goldstein, who folks will remember from his Ted Lasso writing and acting duties, approach a more serious role. If you’ve seen his work behind the camera, then clearly you understand that Goldstein is an actor with pathos, and this will be an exciting turn for folks to see him in his first non-comedic performance.
Probably one of the most buzzed-about features of the festival, Jason Reitman is returning to TIFF with Saturday Night. His father, Ivan Reitman, worked closely with many Saturday Night Live alums and consulted on the project prior to his death in 2022. Though Lorne Michaels and the current SNL brass were not intimately involved in the production, we assume this will feel like an insider production. Ivan Reitman was intimately knowledgeable of the early days of Saturday Night Live, working on the feature films by SNL alum like Stripes and Ghostbusters. Just in time for the 50th anniversary, Saturday Night will take us inside the very first broadcast with an incredible ensemble of actors, led by Gabriel LaBelle. You’ll see familiar faces portray Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), John Belushi (Matt Wood), and Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), taking an inside peek into the early hours of an entertainment institution at a time when the show barely thought it was going to make it on air, let alone make it past the sensors.
(Photo by TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
Orlando Bloom’s resurgence continues fresh off his recent Nat Geo Show, where he pushed his body to the edge. This year, Bloom brings a new film to Toronto, which will also allows him to stretch the confines of his prior work on screen. Sean Ellis’ The Cut is a sports movie that is less about the competition and more about the process of getting it. The Cut dives deep into how elite athletes punish their bodies for the ultimate goal. Orlando Bloom plays a retired boxer doing everything he can to make it back into the ring, but only if he can make the weight. This pretty much assures us we will get some cinematic shots of Bloom showing off that peak athletic physique. If Rocky, Creed, and countless other entries have taught us anything, we love a good underdog boxer story — a shirtless Orlando Bloom is just a nice bonus.
Hugh Grant is venturing further into genre filmmaking, starring in Scott Beck and Brian Woods’ directorial debut, Heretic. Beck and Woods are the true minds behind the original screenplay for A Quiet Place, which was directed by John Krasinski and became a box office success. In a chance to further assert their horror pedigree, Beck and Woods’ Heretic casts Grant as Mr. Reed, a quiet and hospitable man who meets a pair of nuns while spreading the good news of the Mormon faith. Upon meeting Mr. Reed, the women find him a very enthusiastic fan of their faith, if maybe a slightly unsettling one. In their exploration and time there, they realize that everything is not as idyllic as it seems, and things quickly turn sinister if any attempt to leave.
(Photo by TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
Amy Adams is a depressed at-her-worst-moment housewife who assumes a dog’s identity. Need we say more? If we must let you know, Nightbitch is one of the most talked about films of 2024. Marielle Heller, after pulling acting duties on Queen’s Gambit, gets back in the director’s chair for Nightbitch. This strange phenomenon of very stressed suburban white women regressing into the mind of a dog is a recognized psychiatric phenomenon. Amy Adams will play one of these mothers for Heller, who is known for mixing comedy with severe and sometimes dark emotions and is pushing things even further with this high-concept feature. The Oscar buzz is high for Adams, who has yet to garner a win after six nominations. She expected to give a tour of a force performance as both the put-upon mother and the half-dog embodiment she becomes. It’s a premise just crazy enough to be brilliant, and we’re already signed up for this one and any hardware it can bring home.
(Photo by Amazon Content Services / courtesy TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
Rachel Morrison has the incredible, albeit tragic, honor of being the only female cinematographer nominated for an Academy Award. And she now embarks on more history with her directorial debut with a feature film about Olympic boxer Claressa Shields. Chronicling her humble days in Flint, Michigan, to her rise to the Olympics, this seems the perfect story for many of us still reeling from that post-Paris Olympics haze. In a familiar tale of triumph after tragedy, our lead, Claressa Shields, is played by Ryan Destiny and coached by her mentor, Jason Crutchfield, played by Brian Tyree Henry. Steels’ true life story is dramatized on real events, including her fight for pay quality and the incredible height she reached, striving to become an Olympic champion. Produced and written by Barry Jenkins, this one looks to be a heartwarming feature akin to Aaron Sorkin’s Moneyball, Rudy, or another famous Olympic film, Miracle.
(Photo by TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
The Coppola family will make their way through Toronto with a couple of films. Yes, it was announced that Francis Ford Coppola’s much-beleaguered Metropolis will have a Canadian premiere, hoping to find some opinions contrary to those that panned the film after its premiere in Cannes. But his granddaughter, Gia, will also be on hand in Toronto premiering her latest. The Last Showgirl, which serves as Pamela Anderson’s first film in years atop the call sheet. Set around the dying vibrance of the Las Vegas Strip, The Last Showgirl casts Anderson as Shelly, an aging Vegas showgirl who’s been working for over 30 years in one of the feather and jewel-encrusted staples of the Las Vegas Strip. The stage show’s (run by Dave Bautista) future looks very much in doubt as this community and the way of life that supported it will end. After its closing is announced, Shelly decides it’s time to plan her future, maybe reconnect with her daughter, whom she hardly knows. In the same way that Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler was an incredibly emotional sendoff for the world of low-budget professional wrestling, The Last Showgirl attempts to do the same for Anderson both in reception and accolades.
Another title that folks have been buzzing about, along with its fresh trailer, is A24’s We Live in Time. Directed by John Crowley, We Live in Time will likely be one of the festival’s hottest tickets as it features two of our most captivating young stars, Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. We can’t wait for just the chance to watch these two fall in love and experience tragedy in what promises to be a good old-fashioned tear-jerker. We follow our leads as they fall in love under the most unlikely circumstances: one part romance, one part heartbreak. Then, soon after, a sobering medical diagnosis puts their love affair to a close, and they try to find a way to navigate what to do with the time they have left, including how they capture life to the fullest and pay tribute to their love story even if it gets cut short.
(Photo by Jasin Boland / courtesy TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
Ron Howard returns to TIFF with a new historical thriller starring Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby. Dramatizing The Galapagos Affair documentary and the real-life story of Dr. Friedrich Ritter and his partner Dora Starch. Eden delves into a 1940 scandal that made global headlines. When Friedrich and Dora’s scandalous affair was discovered, they fled their native Germany for the Galapagos to try to start a homestead and return to nature. Dora does it to cure her multiple sclerosis through meditation and writing. Friedrich looks to establish an ethos that will inspire the world. Through his writings and his rejection of all modern comforts, Ritter sought to proselytize the world against industrialization. Posting about their evangelical tale throughout the world, they find that the solitude they have boasted has made them a target for joiners, the first of which is Margaret and Hines Whitmer, who come to the island and become settlers. The subsequent joiners are led by the eccentric baroness played by Alma de Armas. All three groups settle on the tiny island of Floreana and their very different aims come into quick conflict, leading to a dramatic and thrilling end in which many, if not all, may have to exit from paradise.
(Photo by TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
The Midnight Madness section will also be returning to TIFF, and one of the features we’re most excited about is Joseph Kahn‘s fast-paced sci-fi horror satire, Ick, in which Brandon Routh from Superman plays a high school teacher who wages war against an alien entity that wreaks havoc on his small town. Kahn is a dynamic film director who brings video game and music video-styled elements into genre filmmaking in a way that blends the two seamlessly. Joined by a newcomer cast, this one looks to be an exciting slasher horror film that hearkens back to the old ’60s with features like The Blob and The Day the Earth Stood Still.
(Photo by Fabio Zayed / courtesy TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival)
Who doesn’t love an update to a Greek Epic? We know we do, particularly one that stars Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. The Return gives us a peek into Homer’s Odessy’s less frequently adapted pages as it picks up after Odysseus has been to war, returned, and precisely what happens once he comes home. These are some of the more exciting but less televised portions of The Odyssey, which are filled with romance and palace intrigue. The Return picks up right as Odysseus washes onto the shore, and he finds his way back to his throne and the bed of his lady love, played by Juliette Binoche.
Another Ralph Fiennes-led effort, Conclave delves into the ultra-secret process to find the next pope. There is backstabbing, long-held secrets revealed, and enough drama for a season of RuPaul’s Drag Race — oh, and cardinals may be more caddy than the queens. Fiennes plays one of the quiet voices of reason when all the drama starts. He is joined by Johnathan Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini in Edward Berger‘s first feature after his Academy Award-winning feature, All Quiet on the Western Front. A best-selling adaptation of the eponymous Robert Harris novel, this one is best to go into knowing as little as possible and enjoy the thrills until the credits roll.
The most anticipated and buzzed-about animated film of the festival, Chris Sanders’s Wild Robot, based on the bestselling novel, will premiere at TIFF and bring its all-star cast. The DreamWorks animation has high hopes for next year’s Oscar season and boasts an impressive voice cast led by Lupita Nyong’o, Catherine O’Hara, Pedro Pascal, and Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Stephanie Hsu. The story centers on Roz, an orphaned robot on a wild planet. She is forced to adapt and perhaps discover the humanity within her circuitry and resist the orders she was given. Out in the wild, she learns more about community and develops an appreciation of the vibrant, beautiful world she explores and the incredible beings that inhabit it.
The Toronto International Film Festival will take place from September 5 to September 15, 2024.
