The Toronto International Film Festival is celebrating 50 years and is featuring an absolutely packed lineup. Here are seven films to keep an eye on at TIFF 2025.
The buzz is in the air once again as the Toronto International Film Festival takes over Canada’s largest city. SHIFTER’s Chris Harrison previews seven films to keep an eye on when the festival opens on September 4th.
TIFF 2025 must see films
Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro
Longtime TIFF regular, Guillermo del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the most hotly anticipated films at this year’s festival. The acclaimed director holds the literary classic in great reverence and has called it the film he’s been “in training for 30 years to do.” There’s been even more buzz since the release of its visually arresting trailer.
Dr. Frankenstein’s infamous monster’s reveal will be one of the biggest movie events of the year and the cast is absolutely loaded, with Oscar Isaac in the lead role, and Christoph Waltz and Charles Dance in supporting roles.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Critics have raved about Rose Byrne’s performance in early reviews in what could be one of the finest performances of her career. In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Byrne plays an overworked and overstressed mother raising a child with medical issues, who has to deal with the mounting pressure of her own life in addition to external pressure in the form of her roof caving in and flooding her home.
Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky round out the cast as her therapist and the superintendent at the motel where she’s taken refuge as Byrne’s Linda feels more and more like her life is falling apart.
Hedda
Nia DaCosta, the director of the acclaimed Candyman, is back with an adaptation of the 19th century Norwegian play Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen. Emmy and BAFTA nominee, Tessa Thompson, plays the title role, as a woman who has grown bored of her life after marriage and throws a lavish party, only to enwrap her guests in an elaborate ruse.
The original play featured a woman in a leading role who upended the social norms of her time, and this adaptation is no different, even if the setting has changed.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson’s Agatha Christie-esque Knives Out series has garnered no shortage of acclaim, thanks to its blend of humor and mystery, and its propensity for playing with the audience’s expectations as its murder cases unfold.
Daniel Craig is back once again as Benoit Blanc, a sort of Cajun Hercule Poirot, and he’s having as much fun inhabiting that character (and speaking in his accent) as ever before. The case is loaded as always, with Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, and Glenn Close joining Craig in his latest crime caper.
True North
True North tells the story of the anti-racism protests at Montreal’s Concordia University in the late 1960s, as a group of young men and women challenged the prevailing notion that Canada was a land of tolerance, free of the racism that plagues their southern neighbors.
The documentary features never-before-seen footage and eyewitness accounts as it connects the Black struggle against colonialism throughout the western world.
Magellan
Magellan is a look at the life of the famed Portuguese explorer, the man who named the Pacific Ocean, and his descent into tyranny before meeting his end in battle while on a colonial mission for Spain in the Philippines. It’s a picture of the man we know so well from our textbooks as kids, seen through an anti-colonial lens, helmed by Filipino director, Lav Diaz.
It’s been a critical success so far, with Variety calling it a “stunningly mounted, politically rigorous work.”
For the TIFF 2025 schedule and ticket info, visit tiff.net.
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