ALL OF A SUDDEN (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
North American Premiere

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi continues to be a cinematic magician, conjuring structurally inventive yet plainspoken dramas that exude effervescent wisdom for hours on end. Any surface description would convince you that this film should be deadeningly dull, but it overflows with enrapturing humanity through its nearly 200 minute running time.

Objectively about humane memory care in a former metal asylum on the outskirts of Paris, it follows two women who find themselves at the precise here/now to form an instantaneous yet fleetingly potent bond. From its scenes depicting staff meetings among administrators, nurses, and caregivers to long takes following walks along the Seine in deep conversation it gently challenges our sensibilities. In a callback to Drive My Car, there’s even a mid-film theater piece that expands frame to include historical context and artistic interpretation.

The depictions of the residents and workers at the facility feel more real, alive, and compassionately observed than a documentary could ever achieve. In one calm unhurried scene after another their dialogues, training sessions, principled arguments, and clear minded explanations are supremely compelling about a need for transformation without ever resorting to polemic. From the two enchanting leads (Virginie Efira as the facility’s practical if idealistic director; Tao Okamoto as the perceptive experimental theater director) to every extra in the cast, everyone who graces the screen is vibrantly alive. Be it the four core pillars of a new type of interaction for caring for people with dementia, the financial obstacles that prevent them from being widely adopted, or the ease by which the women bond, everything flows in perfectly compelling order. Spectacular and riveting.

(Or: I, too, cried at the three-hour movie with an extended whiteboard dissection of the ingrained failures of capitalism. Everyone does, it’s the law.)

POSSIBLE LOVE (Lee Chang-dong)
North American Premiere

Lee Chang-Dong anchors a simmering excavation of the seismic personal consequences of the rapid erosion of Korean labor among two couples forming a glancing friendship across a growing economic gulf. Inspired by real events in the wake of the conglomeration of factories that created a middle-class, sense of pride, and identity the film unfolds via a novelistic approach.

When we laid-off worker Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), the “something nice” they’re dressed up for is a funeral for one of his former colleagues, who we later learn has committed suicide. An independent (of capital) documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) is interested in telling the story of the crushing blow to unionized workers. Mi-ok is an eager participant; Ho-seok is deeply reticent to speak about his suppressed trauma in therapy, let alone to a filmmakers. A seeming camaraderie between the wives forms, bringing her bemused financier husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) along for the ride.

As the project moves forward and the couples spend more time together — be it over dinner or on a weekend getaway — the uneven power dynamics become increasingly evident. Through flashbacks to the working-class couple’s youth and in private moments between the wealthy couple and culminating with an explosive finale at a beachfront estate, this richly layered portrait holds walloping reveals of deep personal and societal wounds.

THE LIBERATION (Guy Nattiv)
North American Premiere

An incandescent (as always) Carrie Coon outclasses everyone around her in this sensational story of a New Jersey mother who disappeared from her family and job with Holocaust reparations into a PNW cult in the 1980s. Inspired by the true story of director Guy Nattiv’s grandmother, the film is effectively structured across two timelines that provide reflections and reveals as the plot unfolds.

In the first, we see the home and worklife of an unfulfilled but not unhappy mother. The other finds her daughters seeking her out in the woods of Washington, astonished by the changes since her departure. Bella Ramsey is a bit overmatched as the skeptical daughter linking past and present. Still, a lot of the nature and self-affirmation vibes check out. Lily James is suitably chilling as the scheming sorceress whose belief in her own mix of witchcraft and affirmation preys on middle aged ladies and their yearning for psychedelic sapphic self-discovery. It’s a fascinating tragedy even if some of the notes occasionally feel routine.

BUCKING FASTARD (Werner Herzog)
Canadian Premiere

Werner Herzog’s oddball story of synchronized shut-in sisters opens with an unconventional opening courtroom scene in which they’re being sued for a restraining order, we learn that the siblings played by Rooney and Kata Mara speak with one voice and do absolutely everything together (including, but not limited to being cuddly cowgirls who “ride their neighbor well” in the garden shed). Dedicated to David Lynch and with an eerie and dedicated performance from the Maras, the resulting film is dreamlike in the truest sense: threeways with Orlando Bloom (in exceptional louche form), unexpectedly crashing a stranger’s wedding, surprising extra real estate, emerging from tunnels. Also, there’s a fox.

No matter how wide into the Irish countryside or deep into mysterious caves the film’s canvas expands, its puzzling series of loosely connected incidents of longing, revenge, and desire are on their surface mostly banal, yet remain strangely memorable and lodged in the waking psyche nonetheless.

COWARD (Lukas Dhont)
North American Premiere

More than a century has passed, but after all these years, what a time for twunks in the trenches. On the dire Belgian front of World War I and inspired by real letters and photographs, Lukas Dhont conjures a period-appropriate retelling of the makeshift drag shows performed by enlisted men. Led by soldiers, the theatrical productions served as a surprising respite from the brutality of war, with its perpetual performance of strict masculinity by terrified youth far from home, and their daily soul-deadening drudgery bringing bombs to the trenches and hauling mangled bodies to mass graves. As the value of these performances become recognized by higher-ups, they serve as a safe enclave by which the magnetic young leads played by Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne discover themselves (and side-play). As the film goes on the costumes grow more inventive with each passing act, the music is thoroughly gorgeous as their performances and relationship blossom. The runtime, though, stretches nearly as long as the Great War.

BITTER CHRISTMAS (Pedro Almodóvar)
North American Premiere

Writers writing about writers who write about writing? Tedious to most, but catnip to film directors!

Pedro Almodóvar is mostly unapologetic in his self-confrontation of the necessarily vampiric nature of autofiction. With little interest in self-disguise, his protagonist is a Spanish filmmaker who’s reached the career stage of regular tributes from LGBTQIA+ organizations, offers of ludicrous appearance fees from Emirate film festivals, and the existence of legions of fans still grateful for minor works or streaming deals. Much of the action features Leonardo Sbaraglia’s Raul at his laptop’s keyboard as he revisits a time in his life (after the death of his mother, of course) when he became plagued by panic attacks. In his film-within-the film, the lead is played by Bárbara Lennie as Elsa (also a film director who’s working on a film). Both characters steal liberally from their friends, agents, and lovers to a near-comic degree.

Some degree welcome self-critique arrives by the end (better late than never), but until then it’s very tough to get invested in an imagined film-within-a-film as more than a dollhouse for working through creative choices. Per usual, though, everyone & everything in his cinematic toybox remains gorgeous and impeccably art directed.

Oh, to live in a world where everyone’s rich, younger hotter firefighter boyfriends do stripteases on the side for spare cash, beach towels perfectly arrange on black sand beaches, and everyone’s sweaters match their couches. Maybe it’s worth sacrificing your own lived experiences for the benefit of others?

EVEREST: THE OTHER SIDE (Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)
Canadian Premiere

Too often, glossy adventure documentaries allow us to imagine the protagonists live charmed lives, lulling audiences into complacency about the superhuman feats on screen. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s pulse-pounding account of an insane North Face ascent and unprecedented descent, however, foregrounds the tragic fragility of these expeditions and the community nature of their achievements. Years in the making, the account of ski-mountaineering couple Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison’s quest to summit and ski down the rarely conquered face of Mount Everest is utterly devastating, especially as presented here at TIFF in all its stunning IMAX glory.

The scenery of soaring peaks is of course every bit as breathtaking as we’ve come to expect from this directing duo and their incredibly accomplished team of cinematographers (who also make appearances on screen as participants in the adventure). As we witness tragedies of protagonists and the grueling efforts of the support teams (refreshingly the Sherpas are given a much-deserved spotlight), viewers, participants, and filmmakers alike are forced to make their own judgements about whether these extreme experiences are worth the correspondingly extreme risk. At one point, you can feel the balance between filmmakers shifting (or a gulf emerging) when Vasarhelyi asks Chin to count the number of fellow adventurers who’ve sat at their dinner table and since died. They lose track before finishing the list. Alternately immersive and encompassing, it’s the union of human and mountain-scale footage from body-worn, handheld, telephoto, and drone cameras that combine to almost convey the unbelievable highs — and ghosts — that these people are chasing into the perilously thin air.

I’m not sure if I feel glad that they went through with it, have any sense of truly understanding, or even feel complicit in watching, but their wearily triumphant documentary is the first fully great movie of my very rocky TIFF. I was confounded, emotionally wrecked, and utterly astounded over and over.

TENDER LOVING CARE (Mike Leigh)
Canadian Premiere

It’s all right there in the title of Mike Leigh’s wondrously kind film about the essential role of hot tea and white wine in binding the British social fabric. With remarkable performances from Kate O’Flynn and Alice Bailey Johnson as heroic social workers who maintain a sense of lightness amid dedication to service and Paul Jesson and Marion Bailey as a sweet couple in the twilight of a long marriage, the film feels like a corollary to Hard Truths. Gently exploring networks of support among friends, family, and the general public alike, the film hits like a warm dollop of honey.

Still, as much as people celebrate the refreshing and rare realism of Leigh’s work, he never lets you forget that the angels on Earth depicted here are also extraordinary and hardly universal or guaranteed. If this is indeed his last, he’s ending his run extremely strong.

MISTY GREEN (Chris Rock)
World Premiere

A self-sabotaging actress gets a rude awakening when she’s given seven days to get out of her long-dead ex-lover’s posh Santa Monica apartment. High on talent, but low on funds, the ultimatum sets up a narratively friendly countdown structure by which she’s got to score a role or secure the bag. Amid a splashy cast Rosalind Eleazar’s almost too good in Chris Rock’s unevenly executed fable of the trials and capitulations of Hollywood insiders. 

Adam Driver slithers in as a mephistophelean fuck-buddy with an indecent proposal; Topher Grace phones in more reasonable offers as an overextended agent; Daniel Kaluuya is in an entirely different film. Amid keen observations about racist tropes in the entertainment industry and monologues that would fit into a stand-up special, Rock gives his own failing film director character a line about he’s so bad at it that he’s not allowed to be involved in casting choices, and it really makes you wonder if it’s self-deprecation or awareness.

(As Anna Kendrick’s actress convincing herself to settle for a trust fund husband might ask: Can’t it be both?)

RAPINOE (Rebeca Huntt)
World Premiere

Although it hits many of the inevitable sports documentary beats, the known facts of her title subject’s final match in the spotlight of extra time of round of sixteen in the New Zealand Women’s World Cup (which bookends the doc) grant Rebeca Huntt’s documentary a shape ever so slightly more reflective than triumphal. Gifted with ample home videos from the era of grainy youth soccer and with the participation of Megan Rapinoe’s family (including a twin sister) sitting down for their 16mm film close-ups, the film equally celebrates her many victories victories in soccer alongside major strides for representation, a commitment to social justice, and unprecedented advances in economic equality. Delving into the psychology behind an unconventional career, Huntt captures an inspirational woman just as she’s out of one phase in the spotlight and entering a new chapter of self-discovery.

GIRL GROUP (Rebel Wilson)
World Premiere

Rebel Wilson’s approach is enthusiastic about overstuffing the screen with song and dance covers of pop icons from the last three decades that she kinda forgot about the need for a compelling plot, developed characters, credibility of continuity, or even successfully landing more than a few jokes. The story envisions Wilson as loosely disguised Spice Girls adjacent diva who quit the band for a solo career that crashed and burned into a haze of drugs and alcohol. Exiled from her own band’s nostalgia tour, she finds herself stuck repairing her reputation through the community service of supervising a group of would-be teen stars through a star making talent competition. The septet of newcomers also happen to be a girl group that are signed to Wilson’s new record label in the real world, which at least explains the existence of this film (if not its flashy premiere slot here at Toronto). To call this feel good fiasco one-note feels both generous and an insult to the power of sustained tones.

Definitely a movie that played TIFF! Everyone in it at least seemed to have had a good time rocking out to the hits of yesteryear and today. Good for them, I guess!

BEING HEUMANN (Siân Héder)
World Premiere

With admirably diverse casting and continual recognition of the possibilities of joy amid the grueling struggles of civil resistance, Siân Héder spotlights an under-recognized yet foundational victory of the disability rights movement. Through the lens of Judith Heumann — who relied on a wheelchair and assistants for mobility for most of her life due to a Polio infection in infancy — the film brings us inside one of the longest sit-ins in history. Set in 1977, we meet a broad coalition of burgeoning activists and their allies occupied a San Francisco outpost of the U.S. Health, Education, and Welfare offices to force the Carter administration to finally sign a new set of accessibility and anti-discrimination measures into effect. A story that should inspire action from the next generation, Heder’s adaptation brings a wealth of earnest dedication to the self-evident cause, though, in attempting to capture the breadth of the people involved often sacrifices a deeper dive into the depths of their personalies, tactics, and motivation.

Do you even need to ask whether this Apple Studios production deploys a certain Ramones needle drop at a key moment? No, you do not.

CLOSING NIGHT (Cody Fern)
World Premiere

Old patterns and toxic sibling rivalries re-ignite when long-estranged sisters — one a brittle narcissistic hairdresser, the other a successful Holywood actress — reunite in the wake of a Broadway premiere and shocking medical diagnosis. After decades of separation, long-simmering secrets boil over onto the next generation while the perpetually pickled matriarch grumbles about the foibles of her “fucking kids”. Deeply melodramatic, it does have it occasionally effective moments in large part due to the core trio of actresses and their inability not to turn in memorable performances. To call Cody Fern’s material overwrought would be an understatement, but Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, and Dianne Wiest are more than capable of making a feast of it.