TIFF23 Schedule

The Royal Hotel

Director Kitty Green and actor Julia Garner (The Assistant) reunite in this story of two friends who run out of cash while backpacking in Australia and must take jobs in an exploitative pub to fund their trip home.

Monster

Acclaimed Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to his homeland with a powerful yet delicate story of love and humanity, a moral tale about school bullying, scored by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Evil Does Not Exist

A place of bucolic serenity is threatened by cynical urban developers, in this exquisite slow burn from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car, TIFF ’21) that reveals the hidden potential for transformation on both sides of its fraught power dynamic.

The Queen of My Dreams

Fawzia Mirza’s stylish feature debut mashes up the textures of Indian cinema and a Canadian coming-of-age picture, tracing key moments in the lives of a mother and daughter born three decades apart.

Expats

The World Premiere of “Central”, the stunning feature length, penultimate episode of Lulu Wang’s six-part limited series Expats starring Nicole Kidman, Brian Tee, Sarayu Blue, Jack Huston, and Ji-young Yoo.

The Contestant

This true story of a Japanese reality TV star left naked in a room for more than a year, tasked with filling out magazine sweepstakes to earn food and clothing, prompts innumerable questions about our culture of oversharing.

Quiz Lady

From Oscar winner Jessica Yu comes a comedy starring Awkwafina and Sandra Oh as two very different sisters who are forced to pay off their mother’s gambling debts by concocting a scheme to go on a quiz show.

Dear Jassi

With his first film set in India, Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (The Fall, TIFF ’06) returns to the big screen to tell the shocking true-life tale of a young couple desperate to be together.

Bria Mack Gets A Life

This comedy series from Sasha Leigh Henry shows what adulthood is like for a smart young Black woman reluctantly entering the workforce.

Next Goal Wins

Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, and Oscar Kightley star in Taika Waititi’s comedy about the American Samoa soccer team’s attempt to make a World Cup — 12 years after their infamous 31-0 loss in a 2002 World Cup qualifying match.

Rustin

George C. Wolfe brings Bayard Rustin’s story to life, with a joyous performance by Colman Domingo as the activist who organized the 1963 March on Washington while being forced into the background because of his sexuality.

The Holdovers

Paul Giamatti stars in Alexander Payne’s latest about the bond that forms between a strict professor and a belligerent student he’s stuck supervising over the winter holiday at an elite boarding school.

Hit Man

The latest from Richard Linklater reunites the prolific indie auteur with Everybody Wants Some!!’s Glen Powell for a sorta-true crime comedy thriller about role-play, romance, and the precarious pursuit of self-knowledge.

The Pigeon Tunnel

David Cornwell, a.k.a. spy novelist John le Carré, opens up to Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris for the author’s final interview, reflecting on the influences he took away from his father’s life as a con man.

Boy Kills World

Bill Skarsgård commits bloody martial-arts mayhem as a deaf warrior trained by a mysterious shaman (The Raid’s Yayan Ruhian) to topple a far-flung dystopia in Moritz Mohr’s loony debut feature.

Dream Scenario

This satirical swipe at celebrity and groupthink from writer-director Kristoffer Borgli and co-producer Ari Aster stars Nicolas Cage as an inconspicuous academic who is thrust into the limelight after he starts inexplicably appearing in people’s dreams.

Poolman

Chris Pine makes his directorial debut with a kinetic noir comedy where he plays an anxious pool cleaner who uncovers a curious conspiracy in the city of Los Angeles.

Origin

Ava DuVernay directs an inspired adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s life, as she digs into the nuance of discrimination while writing what would become her New York Times bestselling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

KILL

In Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s relentless martial arts thriller, a passenger train bound for New Delhi becomes a bloody battleground of brutal close-quarters combat as a pair of commandos square off against a 40-strong army of invading bandits.

Fingernails

Starring Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and Jeremy Allen White, Greek director Christos Nikou’s English-language debut weaves an allegory about our desire for certainty, reliance on technology, and the price we pay for losing the connection to our most primal instincts.

Banel & Adama

Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s tragic romance follows two lovers on a quest for self-possession in the face of tradition and against the terrestrial majesty of the Sahel.

Mountains

Monica Sorelle’s narrative feature debut is a slice-of-life portrait of an immigrant worker and family man gradually contending with his class aspirations and housing insecurities in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood.

When Evil Lurks

In this shocking supernatural chiller from Argentine master of horror Demián Rugna (Terrified), two brothers race to prevent the spawning of evil incarnate as an epidemic of demonic possessions spreads through their rural community.

A Normal Family

In the latest from Korean filmmaker Hur Jin-ho, adapted from Herman Koch’s international bestseller The Dinner, tragedy strikes when two brothers who do not share the same beliefs accidentally discover a dreadful secret.

Youth (Spring)

Wang Bing, one of our greatest contemporary filmmakers, follows the daunting daily labour of young textile workers in Zhili, capturing the unseen realities of China’s out-of-the-ordinary local economy.

The Movie Emperor

Andy Lau is perfectly, cheekily cast as a movie star seeking relevance via a film festival–baiting art-house role in director Ning Hao’s sharp satire of movie industry pretension.

Sisterhood

Three teenage girls, inseparable friends, struggle with the aftermath of a pivotal incident that brings to light their differences in race, social class, and cultural privilege, threatening their seemingly invincible bond.

The Boy and the Heron

Already acclaimed as a masterpiece in Japan, Hayao Miyazaki’s new film begins as a simple story of loss and love, and rises to become a staggering work of imagination.

Smugglers

Ryoo Seung-wan, the mastermind behind box office hits The Unjust, The Berlin File, and Veteran, returns with a star-studded cast for an aquatic crime-action epic.

Unicorns

Unicorns stars Ben Hardy and Jason Patel as two people with a undeniable connection despite their very different lives.

Shoshana

Set in British Mandatory Palestine, this tense historical thriller from Michael Winterbottom weaves a story of star-crossed love with one of political radicalization.