Three Canadian Films from Toronto International Film Festival 2025

The 50th Toronto International Film Festival came with a general atmosphere of celebration. From the “TIFTY” commercial to the Varda Cafe clapping, the pre-showing rituals at TIFF have a religious feel. Inbetween these semi-religious rituals and screenings, the current political context will unavoidably inform the fest: several geopolitical wars, a genocide, the murder of Charlie Kirk, and the anniversary of September 11th, amongst other events and concerns. This inevitably informed the festival in diverse ways. Timely political films become more integral to the moment. Earnestly mediocre films with good politics likely earn more praise than formally superior films with worse politics.

Some of the political context didn’t need to be spoken since it’s in perpetual discourse, in part because of the loud bully in the Oval Office to the south. Many films, like Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, documented the rise of a dictatorship in a familiar way. A Made / Nous commercial, which aired at about a third of the public screenings I attended, was narrated by Canadian TV personality George Stroumboulopoulos and set a tone of Canadian patriotism to go with the festival this year. Many of the most interesting titles to play were Canadian too.

As a historically audience-driven festival and one of two major festivals labeled “non-competitive” by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF), TIFF is put in a difficult place with the decline of Hollywood and other Western film industries. It was, in many cases, Canadian film and Canadian talent that rose to the occasion. From the disturbing necrophilic smut of Dead Lover and the powerfully personal interrogation of family trees and abuse in a Korean-Canadian documentary There Are No Words to remakes of classic hockey films, it was fitting for Canada to take the spotlight at this year’s TIFF.

The films also paint—perhaps intentionally so—a diverse image of Canada. With immigrant stories (100 Sunset and There Are No Words), small-town stories (Little Lorraine), First Nation titles (Sk+te'kmujue'katik and Bloodlines), sexually progressive and queer subjects (Follies, Modern Whore, and Bloodlines), and films documenting social change relevant to Canadian and broader North American history (True North), the Canada presented at TIFF 50 is proudly pluralistic.

Read my dispatch featuring reviews of Youngblood (2025), 100 Sunset, and Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery in the latest issue of Offscreen.