The 10 best movies I saw at TIFF 2026

While I’m known as the “gaming guy” at MobileSyrup, my second great love is film. For me, there’s nothing as sacred as going into a theatre, silencing my phone, and locking into a cinematic journey for a couple of hours.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in many ways, is the purest distillation of that. With a bunch of the films having their world premieres at the event, there’s such a sense of discovery as you go in almost completely blind. Naturally, this can lead to you more than a few stinkers, but it can also be so exciting when you come across a real winner.

Now, I’ll confess that TIFF 2026 definitely felt softer compared to last year’s big fiftieth anniversary show, with many of the nearly 30 films I saw simply being mediocre at best. But if nothing else, that just made what did hit have all the more impact.

Here are my 10 favourite films from TIFF 2026.

10. Babies

Director: Lauren Miller Rogen
Release date: TBA 2027

People have always been very weird about Vancouver funnyman Seth Rogen and wife Lauren Miller’s openness about not wanting to have kids. (It’s a completely understandable choice and also totally not anyone else’s business either way!) And so, I greatly admire how Lauren Miller was inspired to write and direct this comedy-drama unpacking those very feelings. The film follows Annie (Anna Kendrick) and Aaron (Seth), a couple of 17 years that’s long been apprehensive about becoming parents, only for them to have to directly confront that dilemma when their recently separated friend Eliza (Kate Berlant) and her toddler move in with them.

Naturally, Babies mines this less-than-ideal situation for a lot of warm-hearted humour not only about the couple’s insecurities and awkwardness but also the unexpected happiness they experience as circumstances bring them closer to their friend and her kid. And through this, many valid points are raised on both sides of the “Should we have kids?” debate, with Lauren Miller’s snappy screenplay being more than fair as it meaningfully explores them all. Not all of the subplots with their larger group of friends and family work, mind you, but one focused on Annie’s family dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s is genuinely touching, no doubt due to this being another topic that’s near and dear to the Rogens’ hearts.

It’s those personal touches that make this such a delightful (and ever-timely) film.

9. The Beloved

Director: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Release date: TBA

I kept seeing TIFF ads pitching this as a “darker Sentimental Value,” which was my favourite movie from last year. In some ways, that pitch is accurate, but The Beloved is also a different beast entirely. In this Spanish-language drama, an acclaimed director attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter by casting her in his latest film, which is, admittedly, the same premise as Sentimental Value.

But I also appreciated how Javier Bardem’s Esteban Martínez does indeed have a darker side to him, taking out his insecurities on his daughter Emilia (Victoria Luengo) and the rest of the cast and crew in frightening ways that are reminiscent of J.K. Simmons’ Fletcher from Whiplash. It’s a rich exploration of the ripple effects of unresolved pain while also serving as a fine entry in the “movie about filmmaking” subgenre. All the while, Emilia makes for a compelling lead as she’s decidedly more emotionally guarded than Renate Reinsve’s Nora from Sentimental Value, giving her confrontations with Esteban a tense, powder-keg sort of feeling. This all culminates in a finale that is both deeply cathartic yet also open-ended in a believably human way.

It’s not quite on the level of Sentimental Value, but it’s a strong film nonetheless, led by Bardem and Luengo’s stirring performances.

8. How We Stand 🍁

Director: Marie Clements
Release date: TBA

Adapting her 2012 play Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, Vancouver-born Métis multi-hyphenate Marie Clements delivers a powerful tribute to the many Indigenous women who had to endure relocation and sterilization at the hands of the government. Following three sisters who were separated as kids after police killed her mother, the film meaningfully explores the various and often disparate paths that these women had to take, all while dealing with insidious forms of everyday racism.

I was particularly taken by the story of the sister who’s played by Fort McMurray-born Cree actress Alyssa Wapanatâhk (Peter Pan & Wendy), who masks her pain with a dry wit and flirtatiousness as she navigates the Hollywood system. Clements also brings a vivid visual language to the film, with rich, natural cinematography and some inspired heightened elements and scene transitions that lend a sense of spirituality that unites the sisters and their mother across time and space. The final scene, in particular, is genuinely moving.

A beautiful, crucial film.

7. Everytime

Director: Sandra Wollner
Release date: TBA

Given that so much media is about grief nowadays (honestly, fair), I respect Sandra Wollner for taking a much more methodical and subdued approach. Indeed, there are very few overtly emotional scenes despite the inherent tragedy at the centre of this German psychological drama, with Wollner instead relying on vivid, natural imagery captured in long, often listless takes. This mesmerizing, hypnotic sensation, as captured by Aftersun director of photography Gregory Oke, really helps convey the feeling that life simply goes on as people have to contend with their grief in different ways, even as that enduring pain can hit you especially hard at any given moment.

All the while, the film explores how technology preserves the essence of people in very particular moments and places before the much more abstract finale in the stunning Canary Island of Tenerife deliberately upends that sense of time and space. These scenes almost feel like they come out of nowhere but are nonetheless consistent with the themes of the movie, especially with respect to the seemingly opposed motifs of real, gorgeous nature and the cozy digital simulacrum with which the kids are obsessed.

Who’d have thought one of the standouts of TIFF would incorporate Minecraft in such a profound and poignant way?

6. La Bola Negra

Director: Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (known collectively as “Los Javis”)
Release date: Dec. 4, 2026 (Netflix)

An exquisitely well-made Spanish drama that tells a deeply touching story about queer repression that fascinatingly spans three distinct time periods. Discovering how they both thematically and narratively connect proves to be a compelling hook, although at close to three hours, it can feel overlong and choppy, especially in its drawn-out conclusion.

Still, it’s a lovely, poignant film, with a sense of timeless poeticism that weaves together the lives of our three leads. Notably, this Spanish drama took home the TIFF’s People’s Choice Award, which means that it was voted by audiences to be the best overall film of the festival while also signifying major Oscar potential. All of that success is well-deserved.

5. Fjord

Director: Cristian Mungiu
Release date: Oct. 9, 2026 (theatres)

A morally complex issue surrounding the parenting of a Romanian-Norwegian couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) paves the way for a thought-provoking examination of family values and cultural norms with salient critiques of those on various sides of the political spectrum. But rather than simply going for a lazy “both sides” stance, Fjord uses this framework to unpack how our many hypocrisies have led us to the divisive climate in which we find ourselves. There are shades of Justine Triet’s stellar Anatomy of a Fall in Mungiu’s approach to crafting nuanced courtroom drama, but he also employs a commendable level of restraint.

Indeed, Fjord is much more of a slow burn, ratcheting up the innate discomfort not through a riotous yet thematically relevant cover of a 50 Cent song or explosive performances by the leads, but rather by making everything more unsettling, in its own way, by showing how mundane it all is. This is the new normal: how casually we are all so quick to tear each other apart based on what we deem as “right.”

Eerily timely, tightly directed, sharply written and impeccably acted by Stan, Reinsve and co., Fjord is easily one of the best movies of the year.

4. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Director: Bassam Tariq
Release date: Oct. 9, 2026 (theatres)

People were describing this as “Muslim John Wick,” but I honestly think that does this a disservice. Instead, writer-director Bassam Tariq is far more interested in this being a beautifully spiritual family drama about hitman Latif (Mahershala Ali) trying to raise his kids after the loss of his wife. Having his core struggles centred around efforts to juggle his (tenuous) commitment to his Muslim faith with the increasingly desperate quest (inspired by Tariq’s own life) to simply find breast milk for his baby makes for such a refreshing and even soulful take on the classic “assassin action movie.”

Indeed, the scenes in which Latif simply talks with his kids and community feel so lovingly sincere, in no small part due to a sensational Ali, who conveys so much pain and inner strife in simple gazes. (Special shoutout as well to Adia, who is fantastic as Latif’s daughter who’s had to grow up so fast and become a surrogate mother within the family.)

And I adore how Tariq so thoughtfully explores religion — not only with the appropriate nuance associated with someone being a “Muslim hitman,” but also in the ways in which it can simultaneously be weaponized by fanatics like John Cho’s manic Hwan while also connecting us in the hands of someone more benevolent. In fact, one of YMYMYM’s most lovingly understated moments is when Latif and his family take refuge with a neighbouring Bible study group. A lesser film would have made this a source of conflict between two ideologies (or worse still, make this about how one is “better” than the other), but here, instead, it’s a touching reminder of what unites instead of divides us. (All the while, the film also manages to be surprisingly very funny, with a running joke about Latif grappling with the concept of furries, in particular, that had our screening hollering.)

And yes, we also get some action, and it’s snappily directed by Tariq. It’s not flashy or gratuitous, simply feeling raw, grounded and believably bloody, as befitting of a man who doesn’t relish in what he’s doing. But YMYMYM is very much at its best when it’s grounded in Latif’s familial woes, and thankfully, that makes up most of the runtime. I’m so glad that Ali and Tariq got to make something so deeply engrossing, personal and profound after Marvel so embarrassingly failed them with Blade.

3. Wild Horse Nine

Director: Martin McDonagh
Release date: Nov. 6, 2026

In Bruges is one of my all-time favourite movies, so I knew I had to see McDonagh’s spiritual successor to his 2008 classic. And certainly, Wild Horse Nine is conceptually and thematically very similar to In Bruges, following two trained killers as they reflect upon their sins in a paradisial setting while their demanding and cantankerous boss looms above them. But Wild Horse Nine makes some clever twists to that formula that really worked for me.

For one, John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell are simply phenomenal here, and their relationship provides some glorious inversions on the one from In Bruges between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s world-weary gunmen. What’s more, Malkovich’s existential woes are given greater, more tangible weight by the film’s implication of him in many real-world assassinations, adding a rich political subtext to the film. Wild Horse Nine doesn’t absolve him of these CIA-sanctioned murders, but rather uses them to deepen the sense of nihilism he’s experiencing and, in turn, make his fleeting moments of optimism and compassion in his sweet relationship with Mariana di Girolamo‘s wide-eyed liberal Chilean all the more impactful.

And without spoiling anything, the film proves even more melancholic, in some ways, than In Bruges, with an early plot revelation hanging over the film like an ominous dark cloud. All of that works wonderfully with McDonagh’s usual blend of riotous black comedy, which is particularly sharp here. A worthy successor to In Bruges and a brilliant film in its own right.

2. Sunburn 🍁

Director: Serville Poblete
Release date: TBA

As anyone from Toronto will tell you, it can get real hot here in the summer. But as writer-director Serville Poblete so beautifully portrays in Sunburn, summers in the city are also so magical. As one of the most multicultural places in the world, the sense of community here is resolutely strong, transcending race and age and sexuality and affluence. And during the sweltering heat, you’ll see people from all of these disparate backgrounds coming together for street markets and concerts and comedy shows and strolls in the park and the like. Through the high-rise setting of St. James Town, Sunburn celebrates community in such a loving way that it genuinely moved me to tears. It’s all in the way that Poblete so artfully captures the goofy innocence and soulful yearning of this eclectic cast of kids, all written and acted in such a natural way that I felt like they were actually my own friends.

And Poblete uses their interactions for deeper, universal themes that hit particularly hard. Summer, of course, is also a period of transition, marking the end of one school year and ringing in the start of another, with all of the life changes that come with that. Moving away against your wishes, leaving behind that childhood friend. Choosing to move away to leave behind that childhood pain. Reflecting on the absence of a loved one taken far too soon.

There’s such an aching, youthful wistfulness underneath all of Sunburn that everyone can relate to here, and Poblete, exhibiting a masterful directorial hand, knows exactly when to let it wash over you through vivid, warm, soothing imagery and actors’ sincere, subdued expressions that say more than dialogue ever could. In these moments, I felt like I was right there with them, solemnly awaiting wherever life may take us next. But then you see all of the kids together, quietly taking in the fireworks with wide-eyed smiles on their faces, and you remember that’s what makes it all worthwhile.

The fact that Poblete accomplishes all of this in a lean 82 minutes is nothing short of remarkable. A hilarious and deeply moving tribute to community, adolescence and Toronto as a whole. What an unbelievably strong filmmaker voice, and he’s absolutely one I will be on the lookout for from here on out. Not only a TIFF highlight, but one of my favourite movies of the year and an all-timer Canadian film, to boot.

Also, shoutout to the Guyanese guy. Finally some representation besides George in Metal Gear Rising.

1. Josephine

Director: Beth de Araújo
Release date: Nov. 20, 2026

A devastating family drama about a child trying to make sense of a horrifying incident and her ill-equipped parents desperately trying to help her cope with it. It’s a poignant, sobering and deeply empathetic examination of how suddenly youthful innocence can be stripped away, no matter how much we may wish otherwise. Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan are sublime as the struggling father and mother who approach their daughter’s anguish in different yet equally understandable ways, as messy and flawed as they are. But newcomer Mason Reeves is the true star here, magnificently capturing the complicated swell of emotions of a child who’s tragically forced to grapple with something so sinister and traumatic. There are no easy answers here, no convenient playbook to follow, and this trio conveys that sense of heartbreaking exasperation so wonderfully.

Meanwhile, de Araújo, who also penned the tight, contemplative screenplay, exhibits such an astoundingly firm handle on the material, being explicit and even shocking where appropriate while knowing when to exhibit much more restraint and sensitivity. There are some particularly inspired moments in which the camera dizzyingly spins around the house during a pivotal conversation or ping-pongs between prosecutors in court, and they do a stellar job of putting you in the disorienting, frantic and frankly terrifying headspace of the family. All the while, Miles Ross’ sombre score deftly swings between subdued tones and almost operatic crescendos, making the weight of the story completely wash over you like the nearby San Francisco Bay waves.

An incredibly heavy but nonetheless profoundly moving film. Easily my favourite of the festival and one of my top films of 2026, period.

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For more on TIFF 2026, check out my review of the Elon Musk documentary and round-up of Canadian films I saw.

Header image credit: Tinygiant/Searchlight Pictures/Sumerian Pictures