40 Anticipated Films at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (Part 3)
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) kicks off in two weeks, with public ticket sales opening this coming Monday. Having previously introduced 27 titles across Parts 1 and 2, here is the final installment highlighting the remaining 13 films from this year's selection:
Musk
Production still of “Musk”
This documentary is directed by Oscar and Emmy winner Alex Gibney. Elon Musk has amassed so much power, he’s like a character in a Marvel comic book. A short recap of his handiwork: Tesla popularized electric vehicles; Starlink expanded the reach of the internet; Twitter bowed to his takeover; and DOGE radically transformed the US government. Musk has been at the centre of AI development and this past summer, the IPO for SpaceX made him the richest man in the world. His influence arguably touches everyone on the planet. Surely this is worth fresh scrutiny.
After nearly four years of work, Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney delivers his most ambitious and epic documentary, seeking to understand the history and motivations of the ultimate tech bro. When this film was first announced, Musk immediately denounced it on Twitter and refused to participate. But that didn’t impede Gibney, who draws upon countless hours of interviews that Musk has given over the years. Even more revealingly, Gibney conducts new interviews with figures who have known Musk up close and personal, including the mogul’s father, Errol Musk.
The news cycle moves so fast, it’s hard to remember that Musk was once at home among liberals, with his companies promoting clean energy and invoicing the Obama administration for hundreds of millions in tech contracts. What drove him into the world of Donald Trump?
Musk frequently invokes science fiction stories and has coyly wondered aloud if we’re living in a video game–like simulation. Playing off this idea, Gibney leans visually into an innovative graphic treatment throughout the film. But make no mistake: this is really happening.
My Wife Cries
This film is directed by Angela Schanelec, a two-time Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear Awards winner. Thomas (Vladimir Vulević) receives a midday summons to pick up his wife Carla (Agathe Bonitzer) from the hospital. He finds her weeping outside; she has survived a car crash in which the driver has died. As Carla attempts an aggrieved confession disguised as a plea for affection, Thomas recedes, and the pain of disloyalty shortly manifests itself physically. As the couple strives to make themselves understood — to each other and others — the confines of their love and grief become as straightforward as they do existential.
Possible Love
Directed by Lee Chang-dong, Venice Film Festival Silver Lion for Best Director winner for Oasis, the film stars Cannes Film Festival Best Actress winner Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine) and three-time Blue Dragon Film Award Best Actor winner Sul Kyung-gu (The Book of Fish) as a married couple, alongside Baeksang Arts Award Best Actor winner Zo In-sung (Something Happened in Bali) and Blue Dragon Film Award Best Actress winner Cho Yeo-jeong (Parasite) as another married couple. Additionally, Jung Jae-il, who won a Grand Bell Award for Parasite, serves as the film's music composer.
Every couple wants to find some sense of happiness. For Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) the hope is to move on from the trauma caused by the disastrous outcome of a labour dispute. When they are approached by young, ambitious documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) to take part in her latest project, they become intimately intertwined with her and her business mogul husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung).
Revelations of interpersonal suffering come to light — both in front of and behind the camera — as the documentary develops, and tensions between the couples start to rise. Questions are asked around who gets to tell whose story, who speaks for whom, and what responsibilities observers have when taking on the perspective of the disenfranchised. As the lives of Ye-ji, Mi-ok, Sang-woo, and Ho-seok become increasingly entangled, tensions mount.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
One afternoon in August 1972, at the behest of legendary, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves, a coterie of luminaries from the Harlem Renaissance gathered — with cameras rolling — for an intimate party in Duke Ellington’s townhouse. Fifty years later, completed by Greaves’ son David, Once Upon a Time in Harlem has emerged as a rapturous living archive of one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century and, posthumously, one of the most important works in the Greaves filmography.
A towering constellation of artists, poets, painters, musicians, scholars, and other notables appear throughout — among them Aaron Douglas, Arna Bontemps, Richard Bruce Nugent, James Van Der Zee, and Countee Cullen’s widow, Ida Mae Cullen. Free from any institutionalized gaze and structure, they congregate around a large punch bowl to drink, reminisce, banter, and passionately debate their legacy. The conversations we’re privy to flow naturally and candidly, marked variously by humour, fervour, reflexive insight, and not a bit of melancholy, as they take stock of their achievements in their older age.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Written and directed by Noah Segan (Looper), the film stars Cannes Best Actor winner John Turturro (Barton Fink, Severance), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad franchise), Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress winner Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Golden Globe Best Actor winner Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire), and Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis (Everything Everywhere All at Once).
A craftsman pickpocket from the old school, Harry (John Turturro) adheres to a routine, operates alone, and doesn’t own a smartphone. He works mainly on public transport, sells his spoils to his pawnbroker pal Ben (Steve Buscemi), and goes home to his Bronx apartment every night to look after his ailing spouse. But hubris gets the best of Harry: he winds up stealing from Dylan (Will Price), the insufferable scion of a connected crime family, and must traverse the city in an attempt to crawl out of a potentially deadly bind before the day is through.
Onwards and Sideways
Production still of “Onwards and Sideways”
Directed by John Madden, Academy Award-winning director of Shakespeare in Love, the film stars three-time Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress winner Laura Linney (The Big C), BAFTA TV Award Best Actor winner Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon), BAFTA Award winner Monica Dolan, and Olivier Award winner Rory Kinnear (The Diplomat).
Tony (Rhys Ifans) is a schoolteacher. Emma (Laura Linney) is a composer and piano teacher. Both lead busy lives in their charming East Anglia village — and both find their status quo shattered upon learning they have Parkinson disease. They meet, minutes after hearing the news, in the health clinic lounge, and immediately start to compare symptoms and strategies: Emma suffers a tremor — she dubs herself “Emma with the tremma” — while Tony does not. Emma resolves to raise awareness while Tony prefers to keep his condition on the down low, so as not to endanger his employment. But as time passes — those “five good years” their neurologist prognosed — their lives increasingly intersect, most especially at the Parkinson ballet class, where they find community — and each other.
Rehearsals for a Revolution
Production still of “Rehearsals for a Revolution”
This documentary is directed by Pegah Ahangarani. Ahangarani’s debut feature is grounded in the Iranian concept of yād — mining memory — through an essayistic form, weaving together home movies, family photographs, and news broadcasts to construct a vivid portrait of Iran’s modern history in the four decades since the revolution.
Balancing the personal with the political, the film unfolds in five chapters, each devoted to a figure who shaped Ahangarani’s life: her revolutionary filmmaker father, Jamshid Ahangarani; her beloved teacher, Shermin Sarra; her uncle, Rashid; her close friend, Amir; with the final section dedicated to her young daughter, Lily. Each chapter confronts seismic turning points in Iranian history — moments when hope and the promise of change were palpable — from the 1997 election of Mohammad Khatami and the 2009 protests to the persistent oppression of the current regime and the ongoing destruction from U.S. and Israeli missiles.
Tangles
Production still of “Tangles”
Directed by Leah Nelson, the voice cast includes seven-time Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep), Abbi Jacobson (No Good Deed), four-time Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actor winner Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Beanie Feldstein (American Crime Story Season 3), Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actor winner Seth Rogen (The Studio), Emmy Award winner Samira Wiley (The Handmaid's Tale), Pamela Adlon (Bumblebee), Sarah Silverman (Battle of the Sexes), and Bowen Yang (Wicked).
Set in San Francisco in the ’90s, Tangles follows the story of Sarah, a young woman whose life is just beginning to tip into the stuff her dreams are made of — new opportunities to illustrate, a new romance with a bad-ass motorcycle-riding girlfriend named Donimo — when the pull of responsibility calls for her. Sarah’s lively mother Midge is battling Alzheimer’s disease, and the rest of the family is struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis.
Tender Loving Care
Production still of “Tender Loving Care”
Written and directed by BAFTA-winning director Mike Leigh, who won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion for Vera Drake, this film has been noted by Leigh as likely being the final feature of his directing career. The film stars Marion Bailey (The Crown Seasons 3–4), Kate O'Flynn (Widow's Bay), and Paul Jesson (Mr. Turner).
Amy (Kate O’Flynn) is a devoted social service worker who puts her heart and soul into her job to care for those in need. At home, however, she finds herself confronting new challenges as her beloved father begins to have issues, and she and her mother must begin to make peace with their new reality. Through it all, Amy finds comfort, perspective, and plenty of laughter through sips of wine with her lifelong friend Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), whose warmth and wit become a vital anchor as both women navigate the shifting rhythms of approaching middle age.
Wild Horse Nine
This highly anticipated film is written and directed by Martin McDonagh, the two-time Golden Globe winner and creative force behind Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin. Keeping with his preference for remote and atmospheric locations, McDonagh filmed this project on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Chile. The film features an ensemble cast, including several of McDonagh's frequent collaborators: Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich), Parker Posey (The White Lotus Season 3), Golden Globe Best Actor winner Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire), Tom Waits (Licorice Pizza), and Mariana di Girolamo. Oscar winner Mikkel E. G. Nielsen (Sound of Metal) serves as the editor while Creative Emmy winner Carter Burwell (Mildred Pierce) serves as the composer of this film.
Like any excellent buddy film, contrasting personalities are key. Chris (John Malkovich) is an aging, eccentric officer in charge of mentoring Lee (Sam Rockwell), the brash, foul-mouthed protégé who just wants to enjoy the exquisite scenery. Conspiracies abound, paranoia ensues, and their trust in one another is pushed to the limits by their handler MJ (Steve Buscemi).
Along the way, the duo cross paths with two rebellious young women and the encounter spurs the ailing Chris to look back on his actions as a spy, unsettling Lee and threatening to derail the assignment. What was supposed to be a typical case of foreign intervention begins to spiral out of control.
Wild Wild East
Production still of “Wild Wild East”
Directed by Jan Holoubek, Polish Film Award winner for Best Director and director of two-time Polish Film Award-winning series The Mire and High Water, the film stars Itay Tiran and European Film Award Best Actress winner Joanna Kulig (Cold War).
Occupied Poland, winter 1943. Almost two years have passed since the Third Reich’s attack on the USSR and German forces are suffering heavy losses while the extermination of European Jews is at its height.
Enter Martin Wolff (Itay Tiran), a German official sent to a remote village to investigate the disappearance of a lawyer believed to be safeguarding a stockpile of gold belonging to a wealthy Jewish family. Wolff’s reputation proceeds him, and his arrival to a village of traumatized inhabitants, who include Kuliś (Piotr Trojan), his scrappy wife (Joanna Kulig), Kaim (Robert Więckiewicz), and his wife (Magdalena Różczka), sends ripples through a community ripe with impoverished locals, corrupt collaborators, and gruesome — albeit paranoid — Nazi authorities.
Moreover, whispers of the hidden fortune have spread and people are getting desperate. As the gritty web of betrayal and greed is revealed, Wolff’s presence unearths more than meets the eye, revealing a landscape where the past and present refuse to be buried and where everything comes with a price.
Union Town
Production still of “Union Town”
This documentary is directed by two-time Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film winner Barbara Kopple. Union Town is an invigorating look at three crucial labour battles as they unfold in New York City during the past three years. They involve the workers of UPS, Amazon, and the deliveristas for the food apps DoorDash and GrubHub. Each group has slightly different battles, but by winding their stories together, we see a shared struggle. “This is going to be the most important battle for the next 25 years,” says Vinnie Perrone, President of the Teamsters Local 804 as he rallies UPS workers to brace themselves for a possible strike.
In Union Town, Barbara Kopple captures indelible portraits among the delivery workers who transport 2.4 million packages and 300,000 meals every day in New York City — no matter if the weather is blizzarding or blazing. Over the course of several years, Kopple follows three campaigns for better pay and conditions. Lined up in opposition are corporations that spend millions to bully and undermine the union efforts. The intimidation is fierce, but as one organizer reminds her comrades, “We shouldn’t be fearful of demanding what we deserve.” This film is a testament to their courage.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Written and directed by Bassam Tariq, the film stars two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book), John Cho (Star Trek franchise), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad franchise), Abubakr Ali, Emmy Award winner Tramell Tillman (Severance), and Tiffany Boone (Nine Perfect Strangers).
Latif (Mahershala Ali) is a devout Muslim and a loving family man who also happens to be a contract killer. He has a strict code: he never uses guns and he only accepts targets the world would be better off without.
After his beloved wife dies, Latif resolves to end his criminal career and focus on caring for his three children — but his longtime employer Mike (Laith Nakli) has other plans. Latif is having a hard enough time finding breast milk for his baby girl and wants no part in Mike and cowboy Haun Yoon’s (John Cho) rapidly escalating feud but, as his bloodstained past comes back to haunt him, he may have no choice in the matter.
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Photo and Source: TIFF