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TIFF 2024

Exclaim! •

Amidst Modern Upheaval, Edward Berger's 'Conclave' Shows That "There's a Way Forward into the Future" │ Exclaim!

What goes on behind the Vatican's doors as Catholics around the world await a plume of white smoke to signal the successful selection of a new pope has been shrouded in secrecy since the first official papal conclave in 1276. Edward Berger's latest film, Conclave, envisions a fictionalized account of the isolated selection process, adapted from Robert Harris's 2016 novel of the same name."It is a really ancient process. The history of it is incredibly rich, and it's incredibly interesting how th...
Exclaim! •

A Toronto Sex Worker Brought "Truthful" Insight to 'Anora' │ Exclaim!

"I wouldn't want to be degraded," writer, producer and director Sean Baker remarks. "Just treated like a human with all the flaws that we all have."Whether it's a middle-aged retired adult film star or the impoverished inhabitants of a budget motel, Baker has made a career out of taking unfiltered and unadulterated glimpses into communities on the fringes of society. What results can be, at times, uncomfortable moments for his audiences to digest.During this year's Toronto International Film Fes...
Exclaim! •

Comedy "Doesn't Age Well," but Jason Reitman Celebrates the Culture Shift 'SNL' Inspired │ Exclaim!

"I feel like storytelling is a mix of trying to do something new and innovative, and also play[ing] with nostalgia," writer and director Jason Reitman tells Exclaim! in Toronto the day after the Canadian premiere of his latest film, Saturday Night, during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival."You're playing with what the audience knows, and then also you're trying to push them in directions they've never gone before," he continues.Reitman recalls having to tackle a similar equation when...
POV Magazine •

Living Together Is "A Polaroid of Our Time" - POV Magazine

When Halima Elkhatabi conceived the idea for Living Together (Cohabiter), she intended for the film to discuss the importance of housing, “[as] a place to feel peaceful and a place of shelter,” she explains to POV over Zoom while on vacation in the Laurentides region of Quebec. “Everything about housing was interesting to me, but I didn’t want to make a movie about the housing crisis. I wanted to talk about it, but not directly.”
To achieve this objective, Elkhatabi decided to film tenants inter...
The Asian Cut •

The Asian Cut’s Favourite Films of TIFF 2024 - The Asian Cut

Another year, another TIFF under our belts! This year Toronto saw a strong showing from South Korea and Japan alongside many Southeast Asian entries. Beyond national representation, though, the festival refreshingly programmed films across various genres and mediums, creating a diverse range of films for us to sink our teeth into.


Across our team, The Asian Cut was able to make a significant dent in TIFF’s offerings and we’re excited to share our favourite films of the festival!


A Frenchma...
CBC •

How will we remember TIFF 2024? | CBC Arts

After a couple years hindered by pandemic precautions and Hollywood strikes, TIFF was back in full force this year. But was the result perhaps a bit too intense as a festival experience?Today on Commotion, film critics Rachel Ho, Teri Hart and Rad Simonpillai join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack how it felt to be at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, the surprising people's choice award winner, and other controversies that defined the last two weeks.You can listen to the full di...
CBC Podcasts: Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud •

Highlights from the 2024 Emmys, and a surprising winner at TIFF

Shogun and The Bear were both big winners last night at the Emmys. Meanwhile, at the end of the Toronto International Film Festival, 'The Life of Chuck' was the surprising winner for the People's Choice Award. Today on the show, you're going to hear all the highlights of the Emmy Awards and everything you need to know, now that TIFF is over.
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00:00 Intro
00:26 The Emmys
10:55 TIFF People's Choice Award

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Exclaim! •

The Best and Worst Films We Saw at TIFF 2024 │ Exclaim!

After a couple of pandemic years and last year's Hollywood strike, 2024 was the first year in a while when the Toronto International Film Festival truly felt like it was operating at full bandwidth.It was a TIFF full of unpredictable, exciting energy — from political protests to buzzy premieres to dramatic Q&A showdowns. Naturally, it brought some excellent films to Toronto, from prestige projects to star-studded awards bait to underground indie fare.We spent the past 10 days going to as many sc...
POV Magazine •

The Wolves Always Come at Night Review: Universality in Mongolia's Countryside - POV Magazine

The Wolves Always Come at Night
(Australia/Mongolia/Germany, 96 min.)
Dir. Gabrielle Brady
Programme: Platform (World Premiere)
 
Director Gabrielle Brady was in her 20s when she travelled to Mongolia, and by her own volition, she couldn’t quite connect to the country and its people in a meaningful way. When Brady returned some years later, she discovered her connection, but in a moment of upheaval and loss as those she had befriended were reluctantly leaving the countryside for the bright city...
CBC •

Feral mothers, aging showgirls and extreme beauty ruled at TIFF. But for women over 40, roles dry up | CBC News

Society's treatment of women as they age has emerged as a major theme at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), including a horror about an age-reversing beauty treatment and a dark comedy about a new mother who turns into a feral dog.But even as these films bring up age-old conversations about women in Hollywood, the numbers show women over 40 are still being left behind in big-budget films that do well at the box office. Amy Adams, who stars in Nightbitch, says she's happy the...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Relay' Drops the Baton Between Plot Twists │ Exclaim!

Relay begins on a high note and rides that wave for at least a third of its runtime. Unfortunately any goodwill accumulated becomes inconsequential as inane plot twists are trotted out like clowns exiting a car.Justin Piasecki's script sets up a truly clever premise: in a time where everyone can be tracked down by any teenager with an internet connection, a service to negotiate settlements between potential whistleblowers and corporations aims to keep people anonymous and safe. As one of these m...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Conclave' Explores the Modernity of a Middle Age Practice │ Exclaim!

The idea of the papal conclave began in the late 1200s following Pope Gregory X's decree in an attempt to shield the process of selecting a new pope from political interference. Over 800 years later, this practice continues, and I can only assume that politics plays just as much a role in today's selection as it did then.Edward Berger's Conclave takes us inside a fictional conclave led by Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes). Cardinals from all around the world congregate in Vatican City, with Ital...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Bring Them Down' Will Bring You Down — in the Best Way │ Exclaim!

Some people go to the movies to be whisked away by romance, others for laughter, many for an adrenaline rush. Me though, I like having my soul slightly destroyed, and movies like Bring Them Down are just the tonic for what ails me.Through Bring Them Down, Christopher Andrews spins a fable-like yarn putting the ugliest side of humanity on display. From the film's opening moments, anger takes over the frame where a young man drives while in a fit of rage, ignoring his mother and girlfriend's cries...
CBC Arts •

A new new wave of truly Canadian cinema is telling a different kind of story | CBC Arts

At the heart of the Toronto New Wave movement in the 1980s and '90s was a search for identity — specifically, finding our country's distinctive cinematic identity. Rather than playing Hollywood's game of commercial appeal, a group of filmmakers in the city began making films that would speak directly to Canadians.More than thirty years later, Canada finds itself in the midst of another cinematic shift that concerns itself with the same goal — that is, a desire to speak to Canadians. Only this ti...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Emilia Pérez' Wows TIFF with Fresh, Vibrant Performances │ Exclaim!

Musical crime comedy Emilia Pérez began to make waves after the film won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and its female ensemble were collectively collectively awarded Best Actress. Lined up across the street of the Canadian premiere at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre were mobs of fans — the majority buzzing at the prospect of viewing a glimpse of one of the film's stars, Selena Gomez.Gomez and Zoe Saldaña received the loudest and warmest reception at the beginning of the evening...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'The Mother and the Bear' Warms a Winnipeg Winter │ Exclaim!

On a cold Winnipeg evening, a rustling behind a dumpster in an alleyway startles a young woman, Sumi (Leere Park), who slips and falls on the snowy ground. After being hospitalized, her mother Sara (Kim Ho-jung) travels to Friendly Manitoba to be by her daughter's side as Sumi is placed under a medically induced coma.As Sumi rests, Sara investigates the life of her daughter, who hasn't returned a phone call in months. To occupy her time, Sara attempts to find Sumi a boyfriend after receiving ins...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Rumours' Brings a Uniquely Canadian Sensibility to Political Satire │ Exclaim!

Canadian humour exists on a unique plane from the rest of the world. It's a type of comedy that's hard to describe — not quite British, not quite American, but easily identifiable and vastly enjoyable. In Rumours, co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson apply a Canadian sensibility to today's political climate, resulting in almost everything we'd expect — for the better, of course.In a fictionalized G7 summit, German Chancellor Hilda Orlmann (Cate Blanchett) hosts her diplomatic...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Young Werther' Puts a Fresh Toronto Twist on a Classic │ Exclaim!

Based on the 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Young Werther follows the time-honoured tradition of modern-day cinematic adaptations of old texts. The film revolves around Werther (Douglas Booth), a young man from Montreal travelling into Toronto on  family business to retrieve an heirloom from his aunt for his mother.During his travels, our young Werther meets Charlotte (Alison Pill) on her birthday, striking up an easy-going connection that has Werther abso...
POV Magazine •

Drama 1882 Review: The Urabi Revolution in Eight Movements - POV Magazine

Drama 1882
(Egypt, 45 min.)
Dir. Wael Shawky
Programme: Wavelengths (North American premiere)
 
Representing Egypt at the Venice Biennale, Wael Shawky presented an exhibition depicting the Urabi Revolution, a nationalist uprising led by Egyptian Colonel Ahmed Urabi and his army against the Egyptian monarch. The conflict persisted from 1879 until 1882 following the Anglo-Egyptian War, marking the beginning of Britain’s 72-year occupation of Egypt. The exhibition included sculptures, paintings, dr...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Shook' Tells a Different Sort of Scarborough Story │ Exclaim!

Movies set in Scarborough tend to show the beauty of the area through its grit and the trauma that follows. While there's certainly a need for those stories, it's refreshing when the communities and neighbourhoods that makeup the east end of the city exist in a movie simply to exist. In his narrative feature directorial debut, Amar Wala tells the story of Ashish (Saamer Usmani), a 20-something struggling professionally and personally.Struggling to accept his parent's recent divorce, with particu...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'We Live in Time' Offers a 365-Degree Look at Love │ Exclaim!

Often, love stories caught on film present an account of either the beginning of a relationship (concluding with a loving embrace and the promise of happily ever after) or the end, courtesy of a heartbreaking betrayal, a tragic death or simply, two people growing apart. Rarely, though, are we given an opportunity to view the full lifespan of a relationship.By jumping across timelines, director John Crowley's We Live in Time grants audiences a full 365-degree perspective of Tobias (Andrew Garfiel...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2024: 'Presence' Is an Unexpected Fake-Out │ Exclaim!

More often than not, Steven Soderbergh's career is spoken of as this kind of Soderbergh movie or that kind of Soderbergh movie. His filmography is made up of distinct groupings of types of movies the filmmaker likes to create, and his latest, Presence, is firmly in the "this" camp.Presence is a haunted house story told from the view point of the ghost who inhabits the gorgeous home. The opening moments of the film bring us around the different rooms and floors of the house, which serves as a cle...
POV Magazine •

Alison McAlpine Finds the Humanity in Donkeys and Telescopes - POV Magazine

In her short film  perfectly a strangeness, Alison McAlpine wanted to explore “what a story could be without dialogue, just sound and music.”
Beginning with the gentle clippity-clops of three mild-mannered donkeys, Palaye, Ruperto, and Palomo, perfectly a strangeness seemingly captures a day in the life of La Silla Observatory in Chile. McAlpine and her director of photography, Nicolas Canniccioni, quietly observe these equine as they mill about. The film team focuses their lens on the direction...
The Asian Cut •

The Asian Cut's Most Anticipated Movies for TIFF 2024 - The Asian Cut

Gird your loins! The Toronto International Film Festival is back for another installment and it looks to be one for the ages. Following recent installments affected by the remnants of the pandemic and labour strikes, which severely scaled back the festivities, TIFF24 feels like the first proper edition in recent memory. As in previous years, TIFF’s catalogue contains a healthy dose of films from across the Asian continent, and we’re happy to say that the diaspora has showed out with a number of...
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