This year’s TIFF is the best in years. Keep up with all the Star’s coverage here

TIFF runs from Sept. 5 to Sept. 15. We’ll be highlighting the best of the Star’s coverage below:
It’s always a good sign when it feels as if a film festival is ending too soon.
Even though movie critic Peter Howell saw dozens of the features at the 49th Toronto International Film Festival, there are still more he wants to see, among them Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” (which took top prize at the Venice fest), Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” and Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”
Deadlines don’t always sync with screening times, so his list of 10 favourites from TIFF is necessarily more a series of snapshots from a very good fest, the best since 2019.
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Marielle Heller didn’t have to look farther than her own living room to find inspiration for her screen adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 feminist fable, “Nightbitch.”
The struggles of Amy Adams’ character Mother (aka Nightbitch), who fears she’s turning into a dog due to the stress of almost single-handedly raising a rambunctious two-year-old son, rang true to Heller.
“I put so much of my own life into this movie,” the ebullient actor and filmmaker said over a late breakfast last Sunday, hours after her film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
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The Toronto International Film Festival said Wednesday that it won’t pull “Russians At War,” a documentary about Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, from its schedule, despite protests from Ukrainian officials and the Ukrainian-Canadian community.
“This documentary is an official Canada-France co-production with funding from several Canadian agencies, at both the federal and provincial level,” TIFF said in a statement.
“Our understanding is that it was made without the knowledge or participation of any Russian government agencies. In our view, in no way should this film be considered Russian propaganda.”
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David Cronenberg knows a lot about psychoanalysis. His 2011 movie “A Dangerous Method” ripped open the rivalry between early practitioners Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
This doesn’t mean, however, the Toronto filmmaker is inclined to put himself on the couch, even though his new film, “The Shrouds,” which is having its North American premiere this week at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, digs into his life and mind more deeply than any previous work.
He doesn’t want his graveyard-set creation, born out of the grief he experienced over the 2017 loss of his wife, Carolyn, to be seen as personal catharsis or closure.
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When Geoff Macnaughton first saw the Tragically Hip docuseries “No Dress Rehearsal,” he knew it had to be a part of the Toronto International Film Festival.
“The roller-coaster of emotions that I went through watching — it’s one of the first things I watched, I think in February — and I knew instantly we have to do something special on this,” the TIFF programmer said.
When you think of TIFF, which continues until Sunday, you think of movies, naturally. But Primetime is the fest’s small but proudly presented television section, which this year features eight TV series, five of them world premieres.
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An Israeli judge has rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to block the screening of a documentary set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday evening. 
The American documentary, titled “The Bibi Files,” details the corruption cases that have plagued Netanyahu for years, and which resulted in his indictment for charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud in 2019.
Directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, “The Bibi Files” features unseen police interrogation footage of Netanyahu that took place between 2016 and 2018. According to Variety, the recordings were leaked to Gibney, and feature extensive interviews with Netanyahu, his family, friends and associates.
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Readers of Rachel Yoder’s acclaimed first novel “Nightbitch” have wondered since its 2021 publication how it would survive its inevitable movie adaptation.
This feminist fable of a stressed-out suburban mom who believes she’s turning into a dog is filled with eye-popping images of a woman running wild at night in her neighbourhood.
She’s frequently nude, caked in mud and blood, leading a pack of local hounds as they hunt smaller animals for food and sport. There’s a least one graphic scene in the book that, had it been shown on the big screen, would likely have provoked pet lovers to angrily exit the theatre.
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“Oscar nominee Pamela Anderson.”
Stranger things have happened.
During a frenzied Toronto International Film Festival — the biggest, most electric TIFF in some time — few subplots have been tastier than the real-life one involving dearest Pam. The one-time “Baywatch” starlet and tabloid fixture, who kept the gossip mills fed for years (but whose vulnerability always had that endearing X-factor), has been on a redemptive path in recent years, as some might remember from her Netflix doc last year. Upping the ante further? Debuting “The Last Showgirl” in Toronto the other day.
Directed by Gia Coppola, no less (Francis Ford’s granddaughter), the gauzy, Vegas-set indie is like a Cassavetes film meets a feather-and-rhinestones “Rocky.” Yes, really. Taking the stage after the screening at the Princess of Wales Theatre, where co-star Jamie Lee Curtis not so quietly sobbed beside her, Anderson matter-of-factly said this about getting into the character of Shelley, a 57-year-old down-on-her-luck showgirl: “I’ve been getting ready for this role in my life.”
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We first meet Catherine Ravenscroft, the lead played by Cate Blanchett in the miniseries “Disclaimer,” when she is on a personal high, as she receives an award for her investigative journalism work.
Her husband is adoringly by her side, popping open vintage wine to celebrate. But the seven-part psychological thriller — which will screen weekly beginning Oct. 11 on Apple TV Plus and makes its Canadian premiere Monday at the Toronto International Film Festival — then plunges into the precipitous downfall of Ravenscroft as dark secrets unearthed from her past threaten her family and career.
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It’s right there in the name: Toronto International Film Festival. Movies from all over the world will be celebrated from Sept. 5 to 15. In particular, we’d like to celebrate these four: “All That We Imagine as Light,” “Caught by the Tides,” “Dahomey” and “Misericordia.”
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The Toronto International Film Festival has long been the launching pad for many a young director’s career. And while its name stresses “International,” one of TIFF’s missions is to celebrate emerging Canadian talent. It’s one of ours too.
Among this year’s pack, these six stand out: R.T. Thorne, Ryan Cooper, Eva Thomas, Amar Wala, Arianna Martinez and Kaniehtiio Horn.
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Imagine if “All About Eve” or “Sunset Boulevard” were set in the near future and fading Hollywood stars Margo Channing and Norma Desmond were desperately cloning themselves to fend off aging and irrelevance.
No imagining is necessary with “The Substance,” the Midnight Madness program opener at TIFF 2024. This body-swap shocker is sure to be one of the most talked-about films at the festival, as it was at its Cannes premiere last spring when it won that fest’s screenplay award.
French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, previously at TIFF with the 2017 rape-payback thriller “Revenge,” salutes and then exceeds David Cronenberg’s body horror gross-outs with her transformative second feature.
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The finery and the frenzy. The volleys of flattery.
That time of year — and what a year it is looking like. With a party ecosystem firmly back in play for the Toronto International Film Festival, it is stacked. It ranges from the fabulous tried-and-true, like the annual Chanel dinner (co-hosted with Variety in celebration of female filmmakers) to British bandwagons like the Great Tea, co-hosted by BAFTA, to an intriguing new Road to the Golden Globes party, co-hosted with Robb Report (and happening at the Four Seasons!! Yorkville is back!).
From Tilda to Jude, Tucci to Kidman, the boldface brigade is on. 
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Mike Downie’s labour of love was also his toughest assignment.
As the director and producer of the superb four-hour-plus documentary “The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal” that premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday, Downie has done an admirable job of chronicling the history and cementing the legacy of the extraordinary rock band. Since forming in Kingston, Ont., in 1984, the group has sold more than 12 million albums in Canada, another three million in the rest of the world, and filled bars, theatres, arenas and stadiums coast to coast as a must-see live act for the majority of their existence.
It’s an even more impressive feat considering that, along with telling the story of the band, Mike also had to relive the cancer diagnosis and Oct. 17, 2017 passing of his younger brother, singer Gord Downie.
“It wasn’t uncommon for me to have a good cry,” admitted Mike.
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An interview with the multidisciplinary artist Sook-Yin Lee and the cartoonist Chester Brown must begin with a few definitions, since the Toronto duo defy easy categorization.
Lee’s sexually charged new movie, “Paying for It,” which she directed and co-wrote and which is world premiering Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, is based on Brown’s bestselling 2011 graphic novel of the same name.
The abundantly bewhiskered Brown is the best friend of the raven-haired Lee, who’s also an actor, musician, broadcaster and former MuchMusic VJ.
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Sook-Yin Lee’s movie explores her unconventional relationship with artist Chester Brown with intimacy and humour, writes Peter Howell.
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The 49th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival boasts the fest’s best lineup in years as it returns to the relative normalcy of life without a pandemic or Hollywood strikes to contend with.
The selections are so strong for the show, which runs Thursday to Sept. 15, the task of assembling a top 10 list is harder than ever. Please forgive me for overlooking any masterpieces.
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The whiff of fall. The whisk of discovery.
The time of the year when premieres and parties take over, and the city becomes a kind of dialysis for celebrity-dom. Who’s up? Who’s down? Who is pivoting and who’s just entering the cradle of fame? With another Toronto International Film Festival on the horizon, I take a look at the personalities, the dish and the talking points expected to cast a spell. An A to Z of film fest buzz.
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There’s a distinct Canadian flavour to our 24th annual “Chasing the Buzz” poll of movie experts headed to the Toronto International Film Festival (running today through Sept. 15).
Two of the top three flicks making antennae twitch are by Canuck directors: R.T. Thorne’s postapocalyptic thriller “40 Acres” and Karen Chapman’s family grief drama “Village Keeper.”
A U.S. film by a TIFF veteran is also exciting the hive: Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch,” starring Amy Adams in the possibly horrific tale of an overworked mom who may be turning into a dog.
Our 33 panellists each named the TIFF-bound movie that most excites them, with a brief explanation. They also each named a wild-card film, no explanation given, to expand the selection and your minds. Let the buzzing begin.
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For 10 days in September, Toronto’s raccoons gracefully surrender the city to a class of mammals that, refreshingly, don’t have a taste for garbage. While these rare species can be easily confused by King Street bystanders during TIFF, when you know what to look for, they’re as different as Andrew Garfield and regular Garfield. Before foraging into the festival fray, educate yourself about some of the common types of species you might be lucky enough to spot.
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