Tina Kakadelis
Once again, Film Obsessive heads to Canada for the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. Running from September 10 to 20, TIFF will screen a whopping 293 titles. On the ground for Film Obsessive will be News Editor Tina Kakadelis and Staff Writers James Y. Lee and Henry O’Brien. Check out some of the team’s most anticipated flicks from the festival!
River
Despite going to TIFF on a somewhat regular basis, last year was my first experience with the late-night Midnight Madness program. I had seen some of the selections during the day at their second or third screenings, but there is something chaotic and thrilling about being there as the clock strikes 11:59. 2026’s Midnight Madness opens with Joshua Giuliano’s River. This is his feature film debut after gaining critical acclaim with his 2018 short film, In Sound, We Live Forever. In that short, Giuliano played with and subverted the expectations of the slasher genre by having the sounds of the film’s violence occur before the images are seen. Hopefully, that ingenuity will carry over into River, a survival story of three siblings (Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe, and Max Mattern), whose motorboat stalls out along a rural waterway. What begins as familial tension grows into something more sinister when a man (Dane DiLiegro) appears along the shoreline. While on paper this sounds like a fairly run-of-the-mill story of survival amidst isolation, Giuliano’s previous work sets an expectation that this will take a series of expected, frightening, and subverting turns before all is said and done. — Tina Kakadelis
Possible Love
After eight long years since the release of 2018’s Burning—a zeitgeist-striking masterpiece firmly in the running for the greatest film of the 2010s—Lee Chang-dong has at last returned with Possible Love. Lee’s propensity for intimate stories that grow to thematically cosmic proportions seems to remain consistent here, with this new film telling the story of Ho-seok and Mi-ok, a couple attempting to recover from the former’s disastrous firing, and Ye-ji, a documentary filmmaker wanting to tell the couple’s story, along with her businessman husband, Sang-woo. Lee’s well-established prowess for weaving tales of class, status, and the agency people hold over their story makes Possible Love a major point of excitement, only made all the more apparent by his reunion here with actors that have previously lent his films legendary performances. With Seol Kyung-gu’s return after 2002’s Oasis, Jeon Do-yeon’s return after the Cannes-winning 2008’s Secret Sunshine, as well as appearances from Parasite’s Cho Yeo-jeong and Hope’s Zo In-sung, the expectation that Possible Love could be another revelatory outing from arguably South Korea’s greatest living director makes it one of this year’s most anticipated titles. — James Y. Lee
Tender Loving Care
In what Mike Leigh has described as “most likely” his last film, Tender Loving Care is making its Canadian debut at TIFF, and may have more premieres at other fall festivals. Leigh is bringing back regulars like Marion Bailey (Meantime, All or Nothing, Vera Drake, Mr. Turner and Peterloo), but also has the benefit of having a very recent television star. Kate O’Flynn, who made her feature film debut with Leigh in Happy-Go-Lucky, just recently earned an Emmy nomination for her performance on the Apple TV+ show Widow’s Bay. Fittingly, there’s very little description so far except for the film being an “uplifting story of family and how to deal with grief,” according to TIFF’s website. We’ll see if this is actually the case or if Leigh will shatter many souls as he did with his last film, Hard Truths. Either way, it will more likely than not be an emotional send-off for one of Britain’s titanic filmmakers. — Henry O’Brien
Voices
Certain story elements are an immediate “yes” for me when deciding which films to prioritize. I love a chamber movie where a group of people are trapped together in some setting. Maybe they know how they all came to this place, maybe they don’t. Another instant “yes” for me is a musical. Traditional, non-traditional, jukebox, classic, what have you, I just love to see people sing and dance. Now, when you combine those two elements and bill a movie as a “musical chamber thriller,” I am making my schedule around catching it. Deanté Gray’s Voices takes place in a Detroit motel room. It’s 1967, the height of Motown. A young bellhop at a motel dreams of making it big and sees an up-and-coming musical act who is staying at his work to be the ticket to stardom. The script comes from Sam Buckner III and Charlie T. Savage is described as “noir-ish” which adds another exciting wrinkle to this chamber piece of a musical. Any filmmaker who wants to take a swing with an original musical catches my eye. — Tina Kakadelis
Ken Russell’s The Devils
Originally released in 1971, Ken Russell’s The Devils created an urgent firestorm of heated controversy upon its release, stirring up the divisive rage of censoring detractors and zealous advocates. Even then, it was an unapologetically hysterical and flagrantly sacrilegious portrayal of the Loudun possessions of 1634 in France, ultimately X-rated and banned in countless countries for its immensely graphic violent and sexual content. Decades later, Russell’s original vision for The Devils has finally been restored and rearranged, notably receiving an NC-17 rated theatrical run in the United States thanks to Clockwork, Warner Bros.’ indie outlet. And via a co-presentation with Midnight Madness, Ken Russell’s The Devils is now making its way to TIFF, promising an even more unfettered, unstoppable version of Russell’s destructively anti-authoritarian hysteria — an event sure to rile up the filmgoing world further in a modern world so thoroughly consumed by religious and institutional oppression. — James Y. Lee
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Although William Greaves passed away just over 12 years ago to the day, he and his son David had a secret documentary that had been in the works for over half a century. Filmed in 1972 during a dinner party hosted by Greaves, Once Upon a Time in Harlem depicts the then-living members of the Harlem Renaissance. After it was a critical darling at its Sundance debut, Neon swooped in to pick up distribution rights. It’s thrilling that a documentary from the man behind Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is getting the festival/distribution treatment. And although it’s a shame that Greaves is no longer with us to actually see the fruits of his labor, having one more documentary from a metatextual master like himself should make any cinephile ecstatic. — Henry O’Brien
Stuffed
Another musical, another interesting premise. Though Theo Rhys’ Stuffed is more macabre than Voices. Starring the inimitable Jodie Comer and fearlessly weird Henry Melling, Stuffed is about Araminta (Comer), a woman with a strange desire. As a lonely mortician and taxidermist, Araminta dreams of doing something that would be looked down on by the rest of society. Araminta wants to stuff a human being. She’s done her fair share of taxidermed animals and embalmed her fair share of humans, but the stuffed human eludes her. Araminta meets her match in Bernie (Melling), a fellow loner who is afraid of being forgotten. So afraid in fact, that he volunteers to be Araminta’s specimen. Stuffed is Rhys’ feature debut, but this is a concept he has been working on for quite some time. Originally conceived as a short film that was nominated for a BAFTA Award and won the Midnight Jury and Audience Awards at SXSW Festival in 2021, this feature really allows for him to expand this musically macabre world. — Tina Kakadelis
Club Kid
Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid made waves at this year’s Cannes by garnering some of the festival’s most enthusiastic raves—in more than one sense of that word. In the face of a somewhat underwhelming Competition section, it was Firstman’s film and Sandra Wollner’s Everytime that most impressed critics and filmgoers visiting Cannes’s Un Certain Regard, and now, the longtime actor’s buzzy debut feature has made its way to the beating heart of the fall festival circuit. Club Kid tells the story of Peter (Firstman himself), a party promoter in New York’s queer club scene who’s suddenly made to care for Arlo (Reggie Absolom), his 10-year-old son from a hookup he’d forgotten entirely about, and whose mother has unexpectedly passed away. Seemingly at once a love letter to New York’s queer communities that also provides a potent portrayal of unexpected fatherhood, Club Kid’s audience is bound to grow at TIFF, where its immediate wide impact is sure to leave a mark at a festival that’s long been home to some all-time crowd-pleasers. — James Y. Lee
Musk
If there’s anything you can accuse documentarian Alex Gibney of, it’s probably being too prolific. To put it simply, the man just keeps producing middle-of-the-road documentary figures about some of the most interesting artists or most scandalous figures in tech or finance. Gibney has profiled Silicon Valley figures before, like Steve Jobs or the fraudster Elizabeth Holmes. Now, he’s taking on Elon Musk, the man who will undoubtedly go down in history, along with Mark Zuckerberg, as a symbol of the evils, excesses and cruelty that lie at the heart of Silicon Valley. I don’t necessarily expect Gibney’s Musk to be an excellent picture, more like an effortful one, especially considering the nearly four-hour runtime. Maybe Gibney will examine the myth of genius and how Musk went through a so-called downfall, even though what would be better is showing how deeply stupid and racist he really is. Still, it’s pointless to speculate on what the movie is about, but it is certainly giving TIFF the shield of saying they care about “taking a stand.” Gibney’s movie feels like it may have been made to either get a reaction out of Musk or just so the TIFF Docs chiefs could proudly say to Variety that the festival is not afraid of the world’s richest man. Whatever the result may be, Musk could serve as a perfect reflection of a film festival circuit that wants to believe it could inform or genuinely make a difference. — Henry O’Brien
