What to expect at this year’s Toronto film festival

The spotlight at the 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival belongs to Rocky Balboa, K-pop superstar Lisa, the late disability rights pioneer Judy Heumann, and many more as North America’s largest film festival got under way on Thursday.

TIFF is so large and covers such a wide spectrum of movies that the chance to command attention can be fleeting. Most of this fall’s award contenders will be vying to stand out alongside movies hoping to catch a distributor’s eye.

Coming quickly on the heels of festivals in Venice and Telluride, TIFF will screen many of the films that have just premiered at those events, too. Toronto funnels a large percentage of the top fall movies into a 10-day traffic jam of premieres.

That includes starry debuts, midnight screenings and a lot of would-be Oscar contenders. Here are some of the storylines heading into this year’s TIFF.

Is there another ‘Obsession’ out there?

In all likelihood, there is not a US$1-million production waiting to be acquired and turned into a US$512-million blockbuster. But that’s exactly what happened at last year’s TIFF, where Curry Barker’s indie horror film premiered with modest fanfare and sold to Focus Features for US$15 million.

The hit that Obsession became will, no doubt, be a tantalising possibility for distributors shopping for the next hit at TIFF. Festival organisers have in recent years reoriented TIFF as a top movie market, with both finished films and packaged productions up for sale. More than 6,000 market delegates are expected this year, up from 1,000 last year.

Some of the top sales premieres at TIFF this year include Tim Blake Nelson’s The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, a prison drama with Amanda Seyfried; Susanne White’s Prima Facie, with Cynthia Erivo as a barrister defending a man accused of sexual assault; and, from the midnight section, Rogue Trooper, an animated science fiction by Moon director Duncan Jones. But there are many more, including a late-addition wildcard: The Last Photograph from Man of Steel filmmaker Zack Snyder.

How will the top premieres fare?

TIFF starts things off with its opening night premiere: Being Heumann. Siân Heder’s follow-up to her best picture-winning CODA. The film stars Ruth Madeley as Judy Heumann, the disability rights activist who died in 2023.

Chris Rock will debut Misty Green, which he wrote and directed. A character study about a hard-headed actor in Hollywood (Rosalind Eleazar), it’s poised to propel Eleazar ( Slow Horses) into the Oscar race.

Other top titles include Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring Mahershala Ali as a religious hitman; Rachel Morrison’s Love of Your Life, a romantic drama led by Margaret Qualley; and Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, starring Anthony Ippolito as a young Sylvester Stallone while making Rocky. Farrelly’s Green Book first launched at TIFF in 2018 before going on to win best picture at the Academy Awards.

Who will win the People’s Choice Award?

Other festivals have prestigious awards like the Golden Lion (Venice) or the Palme d’Or (Cannes). Toronto’s top award isn’t a juried selection, like those prizes, but the audience-voted People’s Choice Award. It’s an unusually good Oscar oracle, too. Since 2012, every winner, but one, has eventually been nominated for best picture at the Oscars. Last year, Hamnet won it.

That’s partly because aside from hosting its own world premieres, many of the standouts from Cannes ( Minotaur, Fatherland, Club Kid, All of a Sudden, La Bola Negra, Fjord), Venice ( Wild Horse Nine, Possible Love, Ink) and Telluride ( Elsinore, The Debut, Tender Loving Care, A Long Winter) will stop at TIFF, too. Whatever TIFF attendees like the most will have a major edge in the Oscar race.

Whatdocumentary will rock the hardest?

The flashiest music documentary heading to Toronto is, without a doubt, Always Lalisa, chronicling the solo turn of Lisa Manobal, the K-pop superstar of the group Blackpink.

But a wide range of music will be blaring off of TIFF screens. Pretenders profiles Chrissie Hynde and the seminal rock band she founded in 1978. In Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been the great vocalist of He’s a Rebel and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) looks back on her legendarily up-and-down career. Bleeding Hearts documents the rise of country newcomer Chaparelle. And Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple pays tribute to the Rush drummer.