That’s a Wrap on Toronto 2025

11 days later, my TIFF experience has come to a close. It’s difficult to reacclimate after spending so many hours in dim movie theater lighting or frantically running from one screening to the next because my schedule was too tight. Of the 33 films I watched, I hit the normal curve for a film festival: a few films I loved, many films I broadly liked and quite a few I despised. 

Somehow, though, I caught most of my favorite films during the festival’s final few days. In true film festival balance, I also saw some of my least favorite films during those days, too.

The Highlights

My favorite film of the festival, Toronto-based Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron, is a stunning, lyrical and smart look at a family of six slowly tearing itself apart. Told through the perspective of the family’s youngest child, Sasha (Eylul Guven), the film’s first half relays Sasha’s childhood experiences after her family moves to Vancouver Island — beach days, making new friends, etc. Beneath these seemingly happy moments, we notice the ever-expanding fracture between the rest of her family and her oldest brother, Jeremy (Erik Beddoes). Without spoiling too much, the film’s second half deconstructs this complex story even more, fusing documentary and narrative filmmaking in a way that Abbas Kiarostami would be proud of. Blue Heron almost feels like a mix of Kiarostami’s Close-Up (1990) and Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun (2022), but Romvari’s storytelling approach, vision and visual eye are fully unique. 

Another film that dives into the complexities of familial relationships, Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow is a stunning, beautifully shot tale about the connection between an estranged father and his two sons. Set in 1993 Nigeria, the year of the country’s election crisis, the film’s plot is simple: Father Florin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) picks up his young sons, 11-year-old Remi (Chibuike Marvelous Egbo) and eight-year-old Akin (Godwin Chiemerie Egbo), and takes them to Lagos for the day. As their journey progresses, we learn more about the complexities of the family, in tandem with the complexities of their country. It’s a stunning mix of the personal and political, brought to life by Jermaine Canute Edwards’ soft, tender 16mm cinematography. It’s no surprise this received a Caméra d’Or Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival; it’s one of the strongest debuts I’ve seen all year. 

Silent Friend explores a different kind of relationship: that between humans and plants. Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi’s latest film is a triptych. The stories are set in 1908, 1972 and 2020; they’re connected through setting, all taking place in a German university town near the same hulking Ginkgo biloba tree (a species that can live over 1,000 years). The film oscillates between its narratives in no particular order, and each story explores a different way that humans connect with both one another and the world around them. It’s a striking meditation on how we interact with (and treat) nature. It’s also a film that’s so easy to mess up, on account of how slowly it unfurls and how little transpires during its 152-minute runtime. Enyedi’s perspective and patience definitely pay off; days later, I still can’t stop thinking about this film. 

Good, But Not Great

Out of the many, many coming-of-age movies I caught at the festival, Chie Hayakawa’s transcendent Renoir stands out as one of the finest. The film follows Fuki (Yui Suzuki), an 11-year-old girl living in Tokyo who’s consistently alone and lonely (her mother is a workaholic, and her dad is hospitalized with a terminal illness). Hayakawa’s work is quiet and complex, moving so quickly from one situation to another that it’s hard to digest everything in the moment. This sense of haphazardness is the film’s strongest element, though, expertly capturing the difficulties of having to grapple with larger-than-life topics for the first time (without any help or parental assistance). A coming-of-age story is only as relatable as its lead; thankfully, Fuki’s perspectives on life, death and isolation feel very universal. 

I wasn’t able to catch that many comedies during the festival, but there’s one joke in Anders Thomas Jensen’s The Last Viking that made up for my festival slate’s lack of humor (it might be the funniest one-liner I’ve heard all year). The Danish black comedy follows two brothers: Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a bank robber just released from prison after 15 years, and Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen), a dissociative personality disorder patient who believes he’s John Lennon. The driving narrative: Anker has a briefcase full of cash from his bank robbery that he gave to Manfred before he got arrested, but only Manfred (and not John Lennon) knows where it is. Despite the absurd nature of the story and its extremely dark humor, Jensen impressively ties comedy and tragedy together, making this a unexpectedly profound and emotional exploration of childhood trauma and the bond of familial love. 

The Disappointments

Maybe it’s my fault for expecting anything from F**k My Son!, independent exploitation filmmaker Todd Rohal’s X-rated film whose wild plot should make for the perfect 11:59pm screening experience. Unfortunately, this is an insufferable disaster, offensive in all the wrong ways and genuinely uninteresting. The film’s plot, following a mother who kidnaps and coerces a woman into sleeping with her mutant son, is already horrible and disgusting to watch (unsurprisingly, I walked out). Rohal’s commitment to shocking the audience is obvious, but the film’s sensationalism isn’t earned, thoughtful or developed. The audience seemed to feel the same. Cheers during the advertisements before the film were much louder than during the film itself. (At most Midnight Madness screenings, continuous silence during the film might as well be worse than boos and heckles.)