Amalie Atkins’ charming documentary captures the simple life of her nonagenarian aunt Agatha Bock and her Southern Manitoba farm, offering pearls of wisdom along the way.

In this charming and unassuming documentary, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Amalie Atkins captures rural life via the daily rituals of her 90-year-old aunt, Agatha Bock.

Shot beautifully on 16mm by cinematographer Rhayne Vermette (Levers, TIFF ’25, and her own Canada’s Top Ten 2021 selection, Ste. Anne), Agatha welcomes the all-women film crew into her home and garden in Southern Manitoba, revealing practicality and resourcefulness at every glance.

Amid carefully labelled boxes and the ubiquitous duct tape (a go-to fix-all for Agatha), her home is jumbled but well-loved. The majority of the doc, however, is dedicated to the clear focus of her life: her 64-acre farm. We see her tilling and sowing heirloom seeds, tending to and harvesting her crops of cucumber, watermelon, strawberries, and saskatoon berries, to name a few.

Throughout the film, Agatha shares her keen understanding of the natural world, dropping pearls of wisdom on how she has seen her crops adapt to the environment and ways to battle the pests that invade her garden, her never-ending enemies.

A gorgeously saturated colour palette alongside a varied soundscape — which includes phone calls reminding her niece to pick berries before it’s too late — gives Agatha’s Almanac a layered richness to a study of one woman’s routines on the prairies.

Even though the six-year-long project was completed in 2025, the look and feel of Agatha’s world feels reminiscent of 50 years ago, proving that fierce independence and inner strength are timeless.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Within a re-creation of childhood joys lies a more troubling story of a family’s growing crisis in Sophy Romvari’s affecting and intelligent feature debut.

Formally inventive and emotionally impactful, Sophy Romvari’s feature debut more than fulfills the potential the Toronto-based filmmaker displayed in her acclaimed series of short films.

Like many of those predecessors, Blue Heron is acutely personal. The graceful opening scenes depict a period of transition for a Hungarian-Canadian family of six as they adapt to a new home on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. Seen from the perspective of the youngest daughter Sasha (Eylul Guven), events range from the comfortably quotidian — family beach days and park outings, summer afternoon fun with trampolines and garden hoses — to those that take on a darker cast as the extent of the issues concerning one family member become clear. In sequences set years later, we witness an effort to grapple with this difficult past.

While expanding on ideas and themes introduced in Still Processing (TIFF ’20) — one of several films by the director to premiere in Short Cuts at the Festival — Romvari pushes further when it comes to matters of both content and form.

Fascinating and moving as a meditation on grief, memory, and love, Blue Heron sees the filmmaker blur the borders between fiction and documentary in ways that aren’t soon forgotten, thereby confirming Romvari’s status as one of Canada’s most exceptional emerging filmmakers.

JASON ANDERSON

Official Selection, TIFF ’25
Winner, Best Canadian Discovery Award, TIFF ’25

Content advisory: mature themes

Eric K. Boulianne’s raucous yet warm-hearted comedy about a couple exploring new sexual frontiers is as frank as it is funny.

A big-hearted look at the complexities of contemporary relationships, Eric K. Boulianne’s debut feature may also be the year’s most hilarious movie. It’s the rarest kind of farce, one that is frank and funny on the subject of sex, yet also extends a spirit of generosity to characters who are doing their best to figure out what it is they really want.

Boulianne and the equally fearless Catherine Chabot play François and Julie, a longtime couple living in Montreal with two kids. Feeling stagnant but still committed to each other and their family, they decide that opening up their relationship could lead to happier lives. But, as is so often the case with new possibilities and new partners, circumstances soon get more complicated than they expected, making it hard for François and Julie to abide by the rules they set for themselves.

The co-writer of such Festival features as Vincent Biron’s Prank (TIFF ’16) and Stéphane Lafleur’s Viking (TIFF ’22), Boulianne also demonstrated his skills as an actor and director in his short Faire un enfant (TIFF ’23), a prizewinner at the Locarno Film Festival and a selection for Short Cuts and Canada’s Top Ten. The energy he exudes on screen is more than matched by Chabot and other castmates who do whatever it takes to portray this exploration of new sexual frontiers, all without a trace of judgment or kink-shaming. Indeed, for all the bodies on display in all their many configurations, Boulianne’s film may be at its most revealing when sharing its insights about love, commitment, and what it takes to be truly honest.

JASON ANDERSON

Official Selection, TIFF ’25

Content advisory: coarse language, drug use, nudity, sexual content

I Like Movies director Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks is a bright romantic comedy starring Barbie Ferreira as Grace, a young music critic who moves to Montreal to figure out life and love.

Chandler Levack’s widely anticipated follow-up to her directorial debut, I Like Movies (TIFF ’22), stars Barbie Ferreira as a young music critic writing for a men-centric indie publication who takes a leap into adulthood, even though she is little prepared.

With shades of Almost Famous — both feature Jay Baruchel and follow a music journalist — Mile End Kicks, set in 2011 Montreal, instead offers a feminine point of view.

Ferreira shines as Grace Pine, a driven though easily distracted 23-year-old. She leaves her quirky parents’ home for a shared apartment found on Craigslist to devote herself to writing the next great book in the 33 1/3 album exploration series. Hers will be on the iconic Alanis Morissette opus Jagged Little Pill.

Loft parties introduce Grace to two paramours. Unfortunately, they are members of the same rock band, Bone Patrol. And instead of sequestering herself away to complete her draft, she uses her music industry know-how to get in with the band as their publicist.

Through wine-fuelled poetry readings and other ill-advised choices, Grace is in the trenches of self-discovery. Mistakes are made and rent is owed, but along the way Mile End Kicks gives audiences a new romantic comedy to fall in love with.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’25
TIFF Next Wave Pick, 2025

Content advisory: sexual assault, sexual content, crude content, nudity, coarse language, drug use, mature themes

They were never in time to book a gig at the Rivoli, then one day… they weren’t in their time at all. From Matt Johnson (BlackBerry) and Jay McCarrol’s cult comedy series comes an adventure 17 years in the making.

For the uninitiated, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s Nirvanna the Band the Show was a cult web series where its two creators portrayed hyperactive, hap-witted versions of themselves as a musical duo desperately failing to book a gig at the storied Toronto venue the Rivoli. Their hilarious misadventures continued a decade later across two seasons of a Spike Jonze–produced television series, and both iterations brilliantly blended Matt and Jay’s fictional exploits with hysterically incredible real-world public interactions. Every episode further contained a potpourri of irreverent pop-culture references and nebulous copyright violations, but always culminated in a sweet-hearted expression of friendship and creative perseverance.

Now in a critically acclaimed major motion picture that harmonizes with the series but stands alone, “Nirvanna the Band” are older, but none the wiser. When Matt presses Jay to partake in their most death-defying publicity stunt yet, it goes spectacularly sideways, and the fallout inspires Jay to strike out on his own. But thanks to Matt’s inadvertent intervention with a short-lived Canadian novelty beverage (remember Orbitz?), the boys find themselves travelling through time where they risk compromising their very own origin story.

Utilizing meticulous visual effects, costuming, and the judicious integration of archival footage to recreate Toronto’s not-so-distant past, Johnson and his collaborators polish a satirically sobering and riotously funny cultural mirror that reflects just how much (and how little) things have changed, all the while celebrating the infectious joy of living for your dreams… with a little help from your friends.

PETER KUPLOWSKY

Official Selection, TIFF ’25
Winner, People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, TIFF ’25

Content advisory: strobing effects, explicit violence, homophobic language, sexual content, coarse language

This genre-bending otherworldly drama follows two brothers’ journey to avenge the spirits that haunt them from their childhood.

Directed by L’nu filmmaker Bretten Hannam (Wildhood, TIFF ’21), Sk+te'kmujue'katik (At the Place of Ghosts) is an eerie thriller focusing on two Mi’kmaw brothers confronting their past trauma.

Mise’l (Blake Alec Miranda) and Antle (Forrest Goodluck) are siblings who have drifted apart after experiencing unimaginable horrors in their shared past. But when Mise’l returns to their home community following an unexpected visit by a malicious spirit, the pair must put their estrangement aside in order to rid themselves of the ghosts that haunt them. In order to do so, they will have to journey through Sk+te'kmujue'katik, a forest where time collapses on itself.

In these woods, their past is unveiled before them as they encounter ancestors they’ve never met, younger versions of themselves, and future iterations of their loved ones. Through it all, they must return to — and unravel — a critical moment in their lives.

For their third feature, Hannam has created a work that is not only a ghost story, but an interweaving of Mi’kmaw culture and the colonial history of the East Coast. With a gorgeously haunting score from Polaris Music Prize and Juno Award–winning musician Jeremy Dutcher, and beautifully shot by Guy Godfree (Sharp Corner, TIFF ’24; Brother, TIFF ’22), Sk+te'kmujue'katik (At the Place of Ghosts) is a genre-bending, otherworldly drama.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’25

Content advisory: coarse language, violence, frightening scenes, mature themes

Directed and scored by Kid Koala and based on his graphic novel, Space Cadet is a poignant animated feature with original songs by Karen O and Digable Planets’ Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira.

Based on acclaimed Canadian musician and deejay Kid Koala’s award-winning graphic novel of the same name, Space Cadet is a dialogue-free animated film that portrays the tender story of a young girl, Celeste, and the first-generation Guardianbot she loves.

Celeste is in an astronaut academy and, while her mom is in space, Robot takes care of her. They form a familial bond. When Celeste grows older and is able to go on her own adventure, she leaves Robot behind. As we see Celeste find samples of life on the planet she’s on, and the joy she gets in outer space, Robot is struggling with loneliness. He revisits all of his memories with Celeste, but his technical systems begin to shut down.

Kid Koala scored the film, which also includes original songs by Karen O and Digable Planets’ Mariana “Ladybug” Vieira.

Beautifully animated by a fully Canadian team with 2D designs from Toronto-based animator and illustrator Lillian Chan and 3D modelling from Montreal’s Gilles Renault (How to Train Your Dragon), Space Cadet is a story for the whole family.

It’s a film about discovery and memories, loneliness and connections, anchored by a smart, independent girl obsessed with outer space. And the music? Out of this world.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’25

Undone by his mother’s death, a professor convinces his gardener to enact revenge in Alireza Khatami’s surreal Hitchcockian psychological thriller.

Though The Things You Kill is bold in so many regards, the most startling quality of Alireza Khatami’s third feature may be its ability to subvert all of cinema’s usual rules of engagement as it subtly slips between styles, modes, and genres. With his enigmatic merging of fraught family drama, dread-filled mystery, and piercing study of imperilled masculinity, Khatami exerts a powerful hold on his viewers, leading them somewhere they could never expect.

The man at the centre of this turbulence, Ali (Ekin Koç), is equally unsuspecting of what lies ahead. A literature professor who’s returned home to Turkey with his veterinarian wife Hazar (Hazar Ergüçlü), Ali is already wracked with uncertainties when he is rocked by a family crisis and a further revelation about his domineering father Hamit (Ercan Kesal). He forges a fateful connection when he meets Reza (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil), an itinerant man hired to help out at his property in the countryside. The two men’s intensifying bond will have profound ramifications for Ali, whose formidable array of external and internal pressures soon causes fissures and fractures not only within himself but throughout the increasingly unpredictable reality that surrounds him.

This portrait of one man’s disintegration demonstrates the director’s own growing prowess and confidence after scoring major Festival successes with Oblivion Verses (TIFF ’17) and Terrestrial Verses (TIFF ’23), co-directed with Ali Asgari. Canada’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, The Things You Kill establishes Khatami as one of the country’s most distinctive and uncompromising filmmakers.

JASON ANDERSON

Canada’s Oscars entry, 2025

Content advisory: sexually suggestive scenes, violence, coarse language

Documentarian Daniel Roher dazzles with his narrative debut, a whip-smart thriller about an unusual safecracker (Leo Woodall). Co-starring Dustin Hoffman and Havana Rose Liu.

Having acutely sensitive hearing is both a blessing and a curse for Niki White as played by Leo Woodall in Daniel Roher’s first narrative feature. Though his auditory condition ended a promising musical career, it’s been a boon for his job as a piano tuner. Together with his genial mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), he spends his days travelling back and forth across New York, tending to instruments that require his special skills. These duties also compel the typically taciturn Niki to come out of his protective shell and interact with such people as Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a music composition student with whom he feels a spark. But when shady individuals discover that Niki’s talents could be just as useful on locked safes as they are on old Steinways, events take a dangerous turn, one that adds the thrills of watching a heist flick to a film that’s already remarkably fleet-footed as a drama and a romance.

Indeed, Tuner marks a confident shift toward narrative filmmaking for Roher, whose previous efforts include the documentaries Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, which opened the Festival in 2019, and Navalny, for which the director won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film in 2023.

Written by Roher and Robert Ramsey, the whip-smart script also serves as a convincing demonstration of Woodall’s leading-man mettle. The chemistry he develops with Liu becomes one of the film’s great pleasures, as do the equally terrific turns by the cast’s screen veterans, with Hoffman, Tovah Feldshuh, and Jean Reno all helping ensure Roher’s thriller maintains its perfect pitch.

JASON ANDERSON

Official Selection, TIFF ’25

Content advisory: coarse language, bullying, sexual innuendo, strobing effects, violence

A strange death, village upheavals, and swarming suitors lead to a love story gone awry in acclaimed Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s latest enthralling imagining of ancient Inuit stories.

After a series of plagues and wars leaves society in ruins, the Freemans are surviving — even thriving — on a farm in the middle of nowhere... so long as they repel the occasional raiding party.

Celebrated Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk returns to the Festival with his latest offering, a captivating, epic, historical drama about an arranged marriage, set 4,000 years ago. Seamlessly blending the supernatural with verité realism, Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) follows a boy, Sapa (Haiden Angutimarik), and a girl, Kaujak (Theresia Kappianaq), whose union in marriage is promised by their families from birth.

In their village, time passes as they hunt and prepare food, eventually becoming known as “future husband” and “future wife.” Their peaceful existence, however, is soon to be disrupted. Vivid dreams foretell a battle, and an ominous troll-like creature lurks by the waterfront, attempting to pull someone from the village away.

Long-gone elements of Inuit culture, like arranged marriages, sit alongside enduring components like shamanism and drum dancing. Nicknames and namesakes are a large part of Uiksaringitara — there’s a “Wifeless Buddy” in the film, and Kaujuk calls her mother “Younger Sister” because it’s an inherited name — and the importance of naming continues in Inuit culture today.

With arresting imagery, his trademark humour, and a cast of mostly non-professional actors, Kunuk has again created a world that not only builds upon Inuit stories and legends to enthrall audiences but works to preserve these reimagined stories for generations to come. Born from oral traditions, and committed to authenticity, Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) is a unique feat of both cultural conservation and engrossing cinema.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’25
Winner, Best Canadian Feature Film Award, TIFF ’25
Winner, Special Tribute Award (Zacharias Kunuk), TIFF ’25