TIFF has come and gone, and once again, the festival reminded me exactly why it has become one of my favorite film festivals to attend.
This was only my second year at the Toronto International Film Festival, but the opportunities and experiences that come with this incredible festival are nothing short of amazing. I had the chance to chat with so many incredible actors and filmmakers, cover red carpets, and meet tons of new people who share the same passion and love for film that I do.
Then there’s Toronto itself. Incredible food, incredible people, and, most importantly for what we’re talking about today, even better movies.
I watched 22 films during TIFF this year, and honestly, all but one are worthy of a watch. Sorry to any Zack Snyder fans, but The Last Photograph left me more disappointed than anything else. We’ll save that conversation for another time.
Right now, we’re here to celebrate the movies I loved. From devastating dramas and sprawling epics to blood-soaked Midnight Madness insanity, these are the ten must-see films from TIFF 2026.
And trust me, narrowing it down wasn’t easy.
1. Wild Horse Nine
My favorite film of TIFF 2026 was Wild Horse Nine, and I genuinely wasn’t prepared for what Martin McDonagh had in store for me.
Set in 1973, the film follows veteran agent Chris (John Malkovich) and his longtime partner Lee (Sam Rockwell), who are dispatched from Santiago, Chile, to Easter Island by their foul-mouthed bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi). But Wild Horse Nine is absolutely not the movie you think it’s going to be.
What unfolds is funny, heartfelt, devastating, and ultimately profoundly moving. McDonagh seamlessly blends humor, sadness, regret, and hope in a way that completely floored me. I laughed, I cried, and I walked out of the theater wanting to slow down and appreciate life just a little bit more.
John Malkovich delivers a tour-de-force performance, and his chemistry with Sam Rockwell is utterly perfect. You genuinely believe these are two men who have spent years of their lives together, and that friendship becomes the beating heart of the film. Rockwell is fantastic, Steve Buscemi is hilarious in a smaller role, and the entire cast helps turn what could have been a very different movie into something deeply human.
That’s what has stayed with me most. Beneath everything else, Wild Horse Nine is about how we choose to live our lives when we finally realize our time isn’t infinite. It’s about the regrets we carry, the moments we let pass us by, and learning that sometimes we need to slow down long enough to actually appreciate what’s right in front of us.
But it’s also about the people we choose to spend that time with. Our friendships can be just as important as any other relationship in our lives, especially when we start thinking about who will still be standing beside us at the end. When those final days eventually come, maybe what matters isn’t everything we accomplished or everything we wish we’d done differently. Maybe it’s who we spent our time with, the memories we made together, and knowing that we didn’t have to face the end alone.
Wild Horse Nine reminded me that life is short, but that doesn’t have to be a depressing thought. It can be a reason to live more fully, love the people around us a little harder, and stop taking the time we have with them for granted.
Movies that genuinely change the way you look at life don’t come around very often.
Wild Horse Nine did that for me.
This one is truly special and easily my favorite film of TIFF.
2. Josephine
I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted to reach through a movie screen and hug a character as badly as I did while watching Josephine.
The film follows eight-year-old Josephine after she accidentally witnesses a sexual assault in Golden Gate Park. Unable to fully understand or process what she has seen, she begins acting out as she desperately tries to regain some sense of safety and control while the adults around her struggle to figure out how to help.
This is not an easy movie to watch.
I haven’t felt this physically uncomfortable watching a film since If I Had Legs I’d Kick You or Uncut Gems. Josephinedoesn’t just punch you in the gut; it sits there and refuses to let you escape what this little girl is experiencing.
Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum give two of the best performances I’ve seen from either of them, but Mason Reeves absolutely floored me as Josephine. Her performance is quiet, nuanced, and heartbreaking, with so much of what Josephine is experiencing communicated without her ever having to explain it to us.
That’s what devastated me about the film. It isn’t simply about witnessing something horrific. It’s about what happens afterward: how trauma follows Josephine home, how desperately her parents want to protect their child from a world they can’t completely control, and how one event can reshape an entire family.
There’s so much here about childhood, parenthood, safety, trauma, and the terrifying realization that sometimes the good guys don’t win. But the film also understands that trauma doesn’t have to be the only thing that defines us.
By the end, I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to hug Josephine. I wanted to protect her. And when the credits rolled, I honestly just wanted to go home and take a shower.
Josephine absolutely devastated me, and that’s also why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
3. Closing Night
One of the biggest surprises of TIFF for me was Cody Fern’s Closing Night.
Directed by Fern and co-written with Devon Bostick, the film stars Sarah Paulson as Broadway star Sandra Vale, who reunites with her estranged family on opening night while confronting a life-altering medical diagnosis. Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, Toby Wallace, and Odessa A’zion round out an absolutely stacked ensemble.
Talk about stressful. Closing Night had me on the edge of my seat, and by the end, I was a puddle of tears.
This family is dysfunctional.
Secrets, resentment, parenting failures, and buried trauma all begin bubbling to the surface over the course of the night. The deeper we get into this family, the more we learn about how our upbringing and the things our parents pass down to us can either break us or shape who we ultimately become.
A surprising number of films I saw at TIFF this year wrestled with parenthood: whether we’re ready for it, what we inherit from our parents, and what we pass on to our children. Few confronted what can happen when someone is completely unprepared for parenthood as directly as Closing Night.
There are moments where the screenplay ventures into familiar family-drama territory, but it’s the performances that bring this thing home. This is an acting tour de force from top to bottom, with Paulson delivering one of my favorite performances of her career. Every member of this ensemble gets an opportunity to peel back another layer of this deeply complicated family.
Closing Night stuck with me, and weeks later, I still haven’t stopped thinking about it.
4. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother may sound like an action movie on paper, but that’s not really what it is.
Mahershala Ali stars as Latif, a devoutly religious hitman who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children following the death of his wife. As forces from his past begin closing in, Latif’s faith, his identity as a father, and everything he believes about himself begin colliding.
Yes, there are some incredible action sequences — including one involving a sword that is guaranteed to put a smile on your face — but Tariq is far more interested in the man holding the weapon.
At its core, this is a character study about a single father trying desperately to protect his children. Faith, love, violence, and belief can all become weapons depending on who is wielding them, and the film constantly challenges Latif’s understanding of all four.
Ali is phenomenal, John Cho plays the villain perfectly, and the young actors playing Latif’s children, Kadir and Fatiha, bring an enormous amount of heart to the film.
And after seeing what Tariq accomplishes here, Kevin Feige should be punching the air right now over letting this filmmaker walk away.
For my complete thoughts on Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, head over to Mama’s Geeky and check out my full review.
5. Everybody Wants to F*ck Me
One of my most anticipated movies heading into TIFF was Jonathan Schey’s Everybody Wants to F*ck Me.
Man, did it deliver.
Taron Egerton plays Adam, a self-proclaimed modern “nice guy” who has seemingly figured out exactly how to make himself desirable. He knows what books to carry, what hobbies to have, when to appear vulnerable, and how to perform the perfect amount of enlightened masculinity.
Then he meets Sofia, played by Jessica Henwick, and suddenly everybody wants him. What initially sounds like Adam’s dream quickly becomes a nightmare as attraction transforms into obsession, stalking, and something genuinely frightening.
Schey somehow balances cringe comedy, dating satire, psychological horror, and genuine scares without losing control of the movie’s tone. Egerton gives one of the funniest performances of his career, Henwick is the perfect person to tear through Adam’s carefully constructed persona, and Charly Clive nearly steals the entire movie.
It’s hilarious, uncomfortable, increasingly intense, and one hell of a feature directorial debut.
I gave Everybody Wants to F*ck Me 4.5/5 Seths in my full review for Dread Central. For all my thoughts on Adam, modern dating, performative “nice guys,” and why this became one of my biggest surprises of TIFF, head over to Dread Central and check out my full review.
6. La Bola Negra
If there’s one movie on this list that I think we’re going to be talking about throughout awards season, it’s La Bola Negra.
Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi — collectively known as Los Javis — La Bola Negra is a sprawling epic about queer love, war, repression, identity, and art, inspired by the unfinished work of Federico García Lorca.
Its interconnected story stretches across multiple eras, following men separated by generations but connected by desire, pain, love, and the stories history tried to bury. Calling La Bola Negra ambitious almost feels like an understatement.
This movie is gorgeous. The cinematography is breathtaking, the performances are incredible, and Los Javis somehow make something enormous in scope feel incredibly intimate. Guitarricadelafuente is especially remarkable in his feature acting debut, delivering a performance that makes it almost impossible to believe this is his first time doing this.
But what makes the film special isn’t simply its scale; it’s the humanity underneath it. These aren’t just stories separated by decades. They’re lives connected by longing, love, repression, and the consequences of what happens when people are forced to bury who they are.
History may try to erase those stories.
La Bola Negra digs them back up.
We all know this is ultimately heading to Netflix, but with a theatrical run first, do not wait to watch this one at home.This is a magnificent piece of art that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, and I truly believe La Bola Negra is going to be one to watch throughout awards season.
7. River
Now we’re entering Midnight Madness territory.
Joshua Giuliano’s feature directorial debut River is the slasher I’ve been waiting for.
The film follows three siblings who find themselves stranded on a boat along a remote river and hunted by a faceless killer. Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe, and Max Mattern lead the cast, and what Giuliano unleashes from that simple premise is 86 minutes of pure slasher mayhem.
Imagine Wrong Turn meets The Strangers with a little Friday the 13th thrown in.
Yeah. It fucking rules.
What makes River work so well is how simple Giuliano keeps everything. This isn’t a slasher bogged down by mythology or desperate to reinvent the genre. It understands that sometimes all you need is a great location, characters you actually want to survive, a terrifying killer, and some absolutely brutal kills.
The river itself becomes the perfect hunting ground. There’s something incredibly effective about watching these characters constantly moving while never feeling like they’re actually getting away. They’re surrounded by open space, yet completely isolated, and Giuliano uses that contradiction to make the entire movie feel increasingly claustrophobic.
And don’t get it twisted: this thing is mean.
Once the violence starts, River isn’t afraid to hurt its characters. It’s bloody, nasty, and genuinely unpredictable in a way that reminded me of the unapologetic 2000s slashers I grew up loving. At only 86 minutes, it has absolutely no interest in wasting your time. It gets you onto that river, introduces the threat, and starts tightening the noose.
It certainly helps that Jessica Rothe and Jane Levy are essentially horror cheat codes at this point. Both are quintessential final girls, but for completely different reasons. Rothe brings the humor, physicality, and charisma that made her so damn good in Happy Death Day, while Levy once again proves that nobody gets put through hell quite like she does.
River lets both of them be brutal, funny, vulnerable, and completely game for everything Giuliano throws at them. Max Mattern rounds out the central trio and gives the film a sibling dynamic that makes the carnage actually mean something beyond simply waiting to see who gets killed next.
Then there’s Dane DiLiegro, who is already in the middle of what could become a generational creature-performance run. Seeing him unleashed as a human serial killer is something else entirely. The same physicality that has made him such an incredible creature performer makes him absolutely terrifying here. He doesn’t need layers of prosthetics or some elaborate monster design; his size, movement, and presence do all the work.
His turn here is a sight to behold.
I also happened to see River under what might have been the perfect circumstances: its TIFF Midnight Madness premiere. Jason Blum was sitting directly in front of us, and by the time the Q&A started, he was already heading out of the theater. The next morning, news broke that Blumhouse had acquired the film.
After watching that crowd lose its mind for 86 minutes, I wasn’t exactly surprised.
River is lean, brutal, bloody, and refreshingly uninterested in being anything other than a kick-ass slasher. Giuliano knows the genre, knows exactly what audiences want from it, and still finds enough personality within that familiar framework to make his debut stand out.
River hits theaters January 15, and slasher fans should put this one on their radar now.
8. Kick On
If River gave me the slasher I wanted from Midnight Madness, Nick Kozakis’ Kick On gave me absolute chaos.
After a night of partying, four friends decide to KICK ON at the extravagant, drug-fueled lair of a mobster’s reckless son. This turns out to be a spectacularly bad decision.
What follows is an escalating nightmare of paranoia, violence, betrayal, and some absolutely insane practical effects. The easiest comparison I can make?
Green Room on steroids.
Kick On takes the idea of one catastrophically bad night and keeps finding new ways to make it worse. Kozakis creates an incredible pressure cooker where every terrible decision compounds the one before it, and once things start spiraling, there is almost no opportunity to catch your breath.
But what makes all of that chaos work is that you actually give a shit about these characters, especially Markella Kavenagh as Eden. Kavenagh is fantastic, bringing a toughness and survival instinct to Eden that reminded me of Sharni Vinson’s Erin in You’re Next. The more impossible the situation becomes, the harder Eden fights back, and Kavenagh completely sells that transformation. You’re not just waiting around for the next insane kill; you genuinely want to see her survive.
And trust me, this thing gets nasty.
The practical effects are incredible, and Kozakis isn’t afraid to let you sit with the damage. Bodies get destroyed, people get hurt, and the violence has a physicality that had the Midnight Madness crowd screaming, laughing, cringing, and losing their minds simultaneously.
But it’s not just the gore that makes Kick On work. The cast, score, filmmaking, and effects all come together to turn one catastrophically bad night into an increasingly deranged pressure cooker. Every time you think Kozakis might finally take his foot off the gas, he finds another way to make things worse.
KICK ON absolutely lit up the Midnight Madness crowd, injecting the theater with pure adrenaline, blood, and brutality.
Then you learn the entire thing was self-funded, and what Kozakis accomplished becomes even more impressive. Nothing about Kick On feels small, and if this is what he can pull off independently, I desperately want to see what happens when someone gives him an even bigger sandbox to play in.
Nick Kozakis has a very bright future ahead of him, and I would be shocked if Kick On doesn’t find a home sooner rather than later.
The cast. The score. The effects. The absolute fucking chaos.
All absolutely killer.
9. Ink
Danny Boyle has done it again.
Ink is an absolute adrenaline rush of a movie, taking us back to 1969 and the rise of The Sun under Rupert Murdoch and editor Larry Lamb. Adapted by James Graham from his own stage play, this could have easily been a fairly straightforward story about the birth of modern tabloid journalism.
Instead, Boyle makes it feel like somebody did a line of cocaine and decided to make The Wolf of Wall Street inside a newsroom.
And I mean that as the highest compliment because this thing moves.
Jack O’Connell plays Larry Lamb like a man possessed, completely consumed by the idea of turning The Sun into a success no matter what it takes. O’Connell continues an absolutely incredible run of performances and brings an obsessive energy to Lamb that makes it almost impossible to look away.
Then you have Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch, bringing the commanding presence we’ve come to expect from him, while Claire Foy rounds out the central trio as Jules Davies and becomes a desperately needed voice of reason amid all the insanity. All three are fantastic, but this is also unmistakably a Danny Boyle movie.
The cinematography, editing, movement, and energy make you feel like you’re trapped inside the newsroom with these people as they chase the next headline and the next sales milestone. Boyle somehow turns newspaper circulation into something genuinely thrilling.
There’s obviously been plenty of conversation surrounding the film’s brief use of generative AI. I understand why that’s going to be a dealbreaker for some people, and I’m certainly not here to defend the use of AI in filmmaking. But speaking strictly about my experience watching Ink, it didn’t take away from just how exhilarating I found the movie itself.
Ink is one of the most propulsive films I’ve seen all year: loud, chaotic, stylish, morally messy, and completely relentless.
Basically, it’s Danny Boyle firing on all cylinders.
10. All of a Sudden
Finally, we have All of a Sudden, which was one hell of a movie to start TIFF with bright and early at 9:30 in the morning.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest clocks in at a massive three hours and 17 minutes, but here’s the crazy part: I never felt it.
Virginie Efira stars as Marie-Lou, who runs a nursing home near Paris and strives to create a more humane way of caring for the elderly. Her life becomes intertwined with Mari, played by Tao Okamoto, a Japanese theatre director confronting a terminal cancer diagnosis. From there, Hamaguchi creates something much larger than simply a story about illness.
All of a Sudden is about living. It’s about how we care for people when they become elderly or sick, the dignity we afford them, the friendships we make, and how we confront death when we know it’s coming. Most importantly, it’s about the time we have left and what we choose to do with it.
The friendship between Marie-Lou and Mari is so beautifully realized that it eventually feels like you’re watching an entire lifetime unfold between these two women. Hamaguchi allows their relationship to develop with incredible patience, and that time is what makes their connection feel so genuine.
For me, Mari’s story also hit especially hard. Having lost my mom to cancer, stories dealing with terminal illness can be difficult for me, but Hamaguchi approaches the subject with such tenderness that I didn’t walk away simply thinking about death. I walked away thinking about life.
There is sadness here — of course there is — but there is also kindness, humor, friendship, and hope. Hamaguchi reminds us that even when we know where someone’s journey will ultimately end, there can still be extraordinary beauty in everything that happens before we get there.
At over three hours, All of a Sudden asks you to spend a significant amount of time with these characters, but by the end, I didn’t want that time back.
I wanted more.
And that’s about the highest compliment I can give it.
But We Need to Talk About Crystal Lake…
Okay, I know this is technically a list of movies, but there is absolutely no way I can talk about the best things I saw at TIFF without mentioning Crystal Lake.
We were only able to see the first two episodes, and I can’t give you my full thoughts just yet, but I can tell you this:
If Crystal Lake counted, it would easily be in my Top 3 of the entire festival.
These first two episodes are bloody, intense, and unlike anything we’ve seen from Friday the 13th in quite some time. Obviously, two episodes aren’t enough to judge an entire season, but what I saw shows a TON of promise. More importantly, it feels like the people behind this series understand what makes Friday the 13th special while still finding a completely different way into a story and characters we’ve known for decades.
The entire cast is magnificent, but one of the biggest surprises for me was getting to see Jason Voorhees at such a young age. Callum Vinson is unbelievable as young Jason, bringing an innocence and vulnerability to the character that completely changes the way we look at someone we’ve known as a horror icon for decades.
Seriously, I will die for that little kid.
But make no mistake: this is Pamela Voorhees’ show.
Linda Cardellini was born to play Mrs. Voorhees. The moment she puts on that sweater, it just feels right. She’s fierce, complicated, emotional, and already adding layers to Pamela that have me dying to see where this story takes her. We’ve spent decades knowing Pamela Voorhees as the grieving mother whose pain ultimately turned Camp Crystal Lake into a bloodbath.
Crystal Lake now has the opportunity to show us the woman and the son who existed before they became horror legends. That is what has me most excited about this series. We already know where the Voorhees story eventually leads. The fascinating part is finally getting to understand the people at the center of it before everything goes horribly, horribly wrong.
After these first two episodes?
I am all fucking in.
Until Next Year, TIFF
Twenty-two movies later, TIFF 2026 gave me everything I could have asked for.
I laughed. I cried. I was horrified, uncomfortable, emotionally destroyed, and thanks to Midnight Madness, subjected to enough blood and practical gore to last me until next year’s festival.
But that’s exactly why I love TIFF.
You can walk into one theater and discover a tiny movie you knew almost nothing about, then walk into another and see some of the biggest actors and filmmakers in the world. You can spend one night screaming with a Midnight Madness crowd and the next morning find yourself watching something that completely changes the way you think about life.
That’s what film festivals are all about.
Of the 22 movies I watched this year, these ten are the ones that followed me home from Toronto. Some made me laugh. Some made me uncomfortable. Some completely devastated me.
And then there was Wild Horse Nine, a movie that reminded me why I fell in love with movies in the first place.
Two years into covering TIFF, Toronto has quickly become one of my favorite places to celebrate movies, meet fellow movie lovers, discover new filmmakers, and remind myself why I love doing this in the first place.
The movies were incredible. The people were even better.
And if year two was this special, I can’t wait to see what year three has in store.
