57 must-see movies at TIFF 2024 according to its programmers

TIFF 2024 is around the corner, and the slate has been selected and film fans from around the city and around the world are busily selecting their film picks to screen over the 10 days of the festival from the hundreds of titles on offer.

As has become tradition around here, I asked those that know the flicks the best – the programming team at the Toronto International Film Festival – to let us know their own personal picks that give a sense of the variety of titles that comprise this year’s class of movies.

Here are the must-see films at TIFF 2024 according to this year’s slate of programmers.

Cameron Bailey – TIFF CEO

Better Man

“Let me entertain you!” Robbie Williams famously sang. From boy band euphoria to solo stadium tours, the UK pop star has lived large, loud, and right on the edge. No mere music biopic could do his highs and lows justice. And so Michael Gracey hit on an audacious, dazzling approach. Gather round and witness the life of Robbie Williams unfold in a rather unorthodox way, to say the least.

Hard Truths

The latest from seven-time Oscar-nominated auteur Mike Leigh is bracingly tough, darkly funny, and pierced with insight. Shifting between various members of an extended Black family in London, Hard Truths is a psychologically rich ensemble film as only Leigh can cultivate.

Meet The Barbarians

From her art house origins acting in films by Jean-Luc Godard and Krzysztof Kieślowski to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy to her own films as a director, one quality defines the work of Julie Delpy: truth. Delpy’s work serves up the uncomfortable and the undeniable in a single coup de grâce. In Meet the Barbarians, it’s a frequently hilarious pleasure to watch her cast that truthful gaze on small town France.

Anita Lee – Chief Programming Officer

Harbin

This gripping historical thriller from director Woo Min-ho (Inside Men) dramatizes pivotal events in the arduous struggle for Korean sovereignty. Starring Hyun Bin, Jeon Yeo-been, and Park Jeong-min (TIFF’ 22’s Decision to Leave), Harbin depicts the complexities of heroism in a time of merciless subjugation.

Love In The Big City

No one believes roommates Jae-hee and Heung-soo are just friends, but they’re used to being misunderstood. Kim Go-eun and Steve Sanghyun Noh star in this romance exploring how young adults live and love in the big city of Seoul. Directed by E.oni and Based on the novel of the same name by Park Sang-young — longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

Nightbitch

An overworked stay-at-home mom (Amy Adams) tries to catch a break, any break, while caring for her rambunctious toddler. Also, she might be turning into a dog. Director Marielle Heller has created a profoundly original exploration of motherhood and identity, destined to be one of the most talked-about films of the year.

Geoff Macnaughton – International Programmer

Disclaimer

Five-time Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón adapts Renée Knight’s novel into a seven-part psychological thriller about a journalist, played by Cate Blanchett, who is threatened with the exposure of her darkest secret.

The Listeners

Rebecca Hall (Resurrection, Christine) stars as Claire, a schoolteacher who begins to hear a sound that no one else around her seems to, in this enigmatic adaptation of author Jordan Tannahill’s novel of the same name, directed by Janicza Bravo (Zola).

Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal

Director Mike Downie assembles The Tragically Hip for an emotional look at the origin, impact, and legacy of the band that defined Canada, to the world and to itself.

Robyn Citizen – Director of Programming

Heretic

Starring Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East, this fiendishly irreverent chamber horror from writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (the celebrated scenarists behind A Quiet Place) considers how an innocent chat about theology can go terribly awry.

On Falling

Gorgeously empathetic debut by an emerging filmmaker supported by Ken Loach’s production company initiative. Investigates what human connection looks like in the landscape of gig economy, smartphones, and migrant labour. 

Winter in Sokcho

In this debut from filmmaker Koya Kamura, a young woman struggling to claim her identity and independence has her routine disrupted when a French artist checks into the small guesthouse in snowy Sokcho where she works.

Jane Schoettle – Senior Programmer

The Brutalist

Brady Corbet, actor-turned-director has created a film that is as much an event as it is a screening. Shot on 70mm, the film tells an epic story spanning 40 years, and it’s the best performance from Adrien Brody since his Oscar-winning turn in The Piano. The story is one of immigration, passion, capitalism, art and obsession.

Vermiglio

This film from Italy is by an enormously talented young director named Maura Delpero. The story takes place in 1943 in a remote mountain top village in Italy, and it’s about the tremendous impact on the villages of an outsider making a dramatic arrival.

The Last Showgirl

On the surface, it’s a story about ageism in that most facile of settings, Las Vegas, but if the viewer surrenders to Coppolla’s sly camera, it cracks open and themes around trauma, secrets, denial and autonomy come pouring out. Performances from Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista are unforgettably good.

Andréa Picard – Senior Curator

Grand Tour

The latest feature from Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes, which earned him the Best Director prize at Cannes, this is a delirious, romantic, wildly ambitious travelogue that toggles eras, cultures, and styles.

Dahomey

The Golden Bear winner at this year’s Berlinale, Mati Diop’s film traces the historic repatriation of 26 royal treasures from France to Benin, simultaneously forging a speculative and political reflection on cultural heritage, collective memory, and the implications of restitution.

Bona

Exquisitely restored and newly available, this essential Filipino film from 1980 about the perils of obsession soars on the dynamic collaboration between visionary filmmaker Lino Brocka and superstar Nora Aunor, while serving as both a social critique and a remarkable work of feminism.

Giovanna Fulvi – Senior International Programmer

Caught by the Tides

A transformative exploration of two decades of his cinema and a valentine to Zhao Tao, Caught by the Tides stands as Jia Zhang-Ke’s latest masterpiece, offering a poignant portrait of contemporary China.

Happyend

This beautifully crafted fiction feature debut from director Neo Sora transports us to a near-future Tokyo, a city on high alert for cataclysmic earthquakes and moving dangerously close to applying total surveillance to its public spaces. An ode to youth’s stubborn insistence of dreaming of a better future.

Cloud

A suspenseful thriller in which a young internet reseller, Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) ignites a cyber-fueled storm of malice. Blurring digital and physical threats, it’s a chilling dive into the dark side of modern connectivity.

Thom Powers – Lead Programmer

Vice Is Broke

Filmmaker Eddie Huang explores the phenomenal success of Vice, once valued at $5.7 billion, and then its spiral into bankruptcy that alienated its former stars including himself. The revelations are alternately hilarious and appalling in how the company’s disrupters altered the media landscape.

Mistress Dispeller

Set in China, the film follows the work of a woman who specializes in helping to end extra marital affairs. Filmmaker Elizabeth Lo pulls off an astonishing feat of intimate observation in a work with universal themes about love and long term relationships.

Patrice: The Movie

This film immediately captured my heart for its portrait of a disability rights activist Patrice Jetter as she fights against government bureaucracy. Patrice leads her efforts with great creativity and joy that are deeply inspiring to experience.

Jason Anderson – International Programmer

Loser Baby

Making an indelible impression with her wickedly smart and funny directorial debut, Dakota Johnson shines a spotlight on writer and performer Talia Bernstein, who stars as a queer woman whose friends’ expanding conceptions about their relationships gets her wondering about the state of her own.

The Quiet Ones

Lean and mean but meticulous, too. That last quality is of course an essential one for any criminals hoping to pull off the largest robbery ever on Danish soil. It’s of a similarly high value for viewers who appreciate the rigour that Jules Dassin, William Friedkin, and Michael Mann.

Julie Keeps Quiet

Belgium’s Leonardo van Dijl applies great care and skill to this enthralling and empathetic portrait of a talented teenager who finds herself at the centre of a tennis academy’s emerging scandal.

Kelly Boutsalis – International Programmer 

Seeds

Imparting lessons of Kanienʼkehá:ka food sovereignty within a campy revenge thriller, Kaniehtiio Horn’s feature directorial debut takes viewers on a ride unlike any other.

Sweet Angel Baby

People in a bucolic coastal town turn quickly on their own when the status quo is inadvertently challenged. Eliza is an unassuming and beloved member of a small fishing community in Newfoundland who sees all of her relationships put in jeopardy after her secret social media persona is exposed.

Young Werther

Inspired by the popular 1770s novella The Sorrows of Young Werther, this modernization stars Douglas Booth and Alison Pill in a fast-paced and bright romantic comedy, set in Toronto.

Diana Cadavid –  International Programmer

Pedro Páramo

Based on one of the most important novels in Latin American literature, Pedro Páramo unfolds in a seemingly abandoned Mexican town where past and present beguilingly coexist. The feature directorial debut of legendary cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Killers of the Flower Moon) is a mesmerizing story of desire, corruption, and inheritance.

Linda

The directorial debut of Argentinian filmmaker Mariana Wainstein, the film follows Linda. a self-assured, mysterious, and captivating woman who agrees to work at an affluent home in Buenos Aires. Her charm sparks strong sexual attraction among all members of the family, exposing how fragile their externally happy veneer really is.

Carnival is Over

This sleek, dark, and funny neo-noir film marks the Festival return of Brazilian writer-director Fernando Coimbra (A Wolf at the Door, TIFF ’13). In this story Regina and Valerio are a happy couple seeking a way out of their criminal family business but their efforts push them deeper into the pit they hoped to escape.

Natleah Hunter-Young – International Programmer

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Seven years after her widely acclaimed BAFTA-winning debut I Am Not a Witch (TIFF ’17), celebrated Zambian Welsh writer-director Rungano Nyoni returns with her gripping second feature, a surrealist drama about the secrets families keep.

To a Land Unknown

An intuitive thriller about displaced cousins who will stop at nothing for a reliable path out of purgatory.

Front Row

In his 19th feature film, prolific Algerian movie maestro Merzak Allouache opts for a chaotic family dramedy about feuding matriarchs behaving badly at the beach.

Peter Kuplowsky – International Programmer

The Substance

Demi Moore portrays a fading Hollywood star feuding with the manifestation of her younger self (Margaret Qualley) in this award-winning body-horror satire from writer-director Coralie Fargeat (Revenge).

It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This

Indie filmmakers Nick Toti and Rachel Kempf live and breathe horror movies. So when the couple begin to observe that the dilapidated duplex they just bought exhibits all the telltale signs of having a haunted history, they can barely believe their luck.          

Escape from the 21st Century

Three high-schoolers gain the ability to sneeze themselves 20 years into the future in this maximalist martial-arts time-travel caper from writer-director Yang Li (Lee’s Adventure).

Dorota Lech –  International Programmer

Under the Volcano

A Ukrainian family of four on vacation in the Canary Islands become refugees overnight when Russia’s ongoing occupation of Ukraine turns into a full-scale invasion, in Damien Kocur’s tense and timely sophomore feature.

U Are the Universe       

Written and filmed during Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Pavlo Ostrikov’s debut feature is a true wonder and a prescient reminder how important it is to connect with someone who understands during the darkest of times.

Seven Days

Ali Samadi Ahadi’s latest explores an agonizing struggle. When imprisoned human rights activist Maryam is granted a rare medical leave, she has the chance to escape Iran but at the expense of her battle for equality and democracy.

Norm Wilner – Senior International Programmer

40 Acres 

A variation on the dystopian survival thriller that features terrific performances and adrenalized action sequences — and an impossible-to-miss subtext about Black and Indigenous people fighting to keep their people and land safe from those who would take it for themselves.

Really Happy Someday 

A rising musical-theatre star before his transition, Z (Breton Lalama) has to figure out how to sing in his new register in order to return to the thing he loves most – and, in the process, integrate his past and present selves. J Stevens’ film takes the metaphor of building a new self and makes it literal.

Do I Know You From Somewhere?

Over the course of a weekend, a happy couple realize they’re being erased from one another’s lives. Built around an absolutely incandescent performance from first-time film actor Caroline Bell, Fredericton filmmaker Arianna Martinez’ first feature is a multiverse picture without a single special effect. Unless you count the actors.

Jason Ryle – International Programmer

Went Up the Hill

Dacre Montgomery and Vicky Krieps deliver haunting performances in Samuel Van Grinsven’s atmospheric ghost story that explores the legacy of loss and dark family secrets.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

A wonderfully raw, darkly comedic road trip through the Outback, starring Sherry-Lee Watson and Will McDonald on the run from Australian stars Miranda Otto and Noah Taylor.

The Wolves Always Come at Night

Born to generations of herders in Mongolia’s immense Bayankhongor region, young couple Daava (Davaasuren Dagvasuren) and Zaya (Otgonzaya Dashzeveg) are raising their four children with an intimate connection to the land and the animals they share their lives with.

Meenakshi Shedde – Senior Programme Advisor

All We Imagine As Light

Writer-director Payal Kapadia’s fiction feature debut follows two women at turning points. Moving from urban bustle to seaside idyll, the film locates dreamlike reverie in emotional shifts and everyday experiences.

Boong

A delightful debut feature by Lakshmipriya Devi in India’s North East. About Boong, a kid whose best friends are Raju, an ‘outsider,’ and his feisty ‘single’ mom, Mandakini. He looks for his missing dad, so he can ‘gift’ him to his mom—who hilariously snubs the patriarchy.

Santosh

Filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s searing narrative debut follows a young housewife (Shahana Goswami) widowed when her police constable husband is killed on the job. Through a government initiative, she is trained to take his place in an overwhelmingly male police station in rural Northern India.

June Kim – Associate International Programmer

 

The Paradise of Thorns

In a remote, mountainous Thai village, there is a durian orchard, a paradise Thongkam and Sek have built for themselves from the ground up. While hand-pollinating the flowers to bear fruit, the two men promise an eternity together.

Crocodile Tears

In this slow-burning suspense thriller from debut filmmaker Tumpal Tampubolon, a young man and his overbearing mother’s lives on their isolated crocodile farm are turned upside down with the appearance of a young woman.

Viet and Nam

Beautifully shot on 16mm by filmmaker Trương Minh Quý, the film is set amidst the darkness 1,000 metres underground. An intimate romance sparks in this mystical story of two young miners in search of a brighter future.

Jesse Cumming – Associate Curator

 

Drama 1882

Wael Shawky’s film (re)stages a colonial conflict laden with treason and exploitation as a libretto across eight chapters and 45 hypnotic minutes, invoking questions of colonialism, collaboration, resistance, narrative, history, and, of course, drama

The Sojourn

At once a treatise on landscape, translation, and indigeneity, The Sojourn, by recent Baloise Art Prize winner Tiffany Sia, responds to the work of wuxia legend King Hu by way of his collaborators and the misty mountain panoramas of rural Taiwan. 

Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya|

Forming part of a film constellation that stretches from Chile across the Pacific, in which Malena Szlam trains her camera on far-flung volcanic landscapes, the dazzling in-camera multiple exposures evoke the layered histories in eastern Australia’s Beerwah region.