The Movies Flying Under the Radar at TIFF 2025

The Toronto International Film Festival is a special film festival for many reasons. Sure, there’s the sheer number of screenings, given the festival operates at venues all around downtown Toronto (though there’s notably fewer venues than there were pre-COVID). There’s also the consistently questionable decisions of TIFF’s leadership (making it possible to resell movie tickets for over $500 is not very audience- or film-friendly). The crowds are among the film festival circuit’s best — even at an 11:59PM weeknight screening, you’re likely to be among a wildly energetic group of thousands of moviegoers. 

But my favorite part of TIFF is the films you’ve never heard of. While people tend to flock to the festival’s main Gala and Spotlight Presentations lineup, I much prefer the festival’s smaller lineups. The world-trotting “Centrepiece” lineup, their early filmmaker-spotlight “Discovery” slate or the festival’s competitive “Platform” section deliver some of the festival’s best and most slept-on films. While most films on the larger lineups have bigger names (and actual theatrical release dates) attached to them, these smaller films are still seeking a distributor to put them in U.S. movie theaters.

The Highlights

Those who have seen Jan Komasa’s 2019 Oscar-nominated Corpus Christi — which follows a formerly-incarcerated man who fakes being a priest — know that the director doesn’t shy away from bold, ‘WTF’ storytelling. This is certainly apparent in his latest feature, Good Boy. The film follows Tommy (Anson Boon), a 19-year-old who, after a night of partying in British nightclubs, wakes up chained by the neck to the wall of a family’s basement. The three-person family is hoping to heal Tommy of his destructive tendencies. What starts as a horrifying thriller slowly morphs into a dark, touching and uncomfortably funny meditation on the complexities of family. Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Graham (fresh from his dark, but massive, Adolescence), who play the family’s parents, are absolutely incredible; Boon is as well. 

Stroma Cairns’ The Son and the Sea is a charming, quiet and emotionally tender look at three young men trying to work out how they belong in the world. The Scottish film centers on two friends who travel to the north of Scotland to visit one of their elderly great aunts. While there, they strike a friendship with a local deaf young adult. While the film sometimes suffers from clashing tones and rushed plotlines — including a late-film twist that feels overly dramatic for a small story like this — the chemistry between the three leads feels believable, earned and hardly overdone. 

Good, But Not Great

Curry Barker’s Obsession is one of the scariest horror films I’ve seen in a while which is especially impressive given the few pop-out scares. Barker came to prominence by making “Milk & Serial” for $800, posting the lo-fi genre movie on YouTube and watching it go viral. Now he’s at TIFF where his character Bear (Michael Johnston) uses a gimmicky “make a wish” toy to make his longtime best friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) fall in love with him. Bear is astonished, though, when his wish quickly comes true. There is, he soon learns, a sinister reason behind her sudden change in behavior. While the film is action-packed and impossible to look away from, what’s perhaps most striking is how pathetic and morally repulsive Bear’s personality is (no spoilers). Navarrette is absolutely astonishing in this complex, frightening role, instantly cementing herself as an actor to watch. 

Lisa Barros D’Sa’s and Glenn Leyburn’s Saipan is as obsessed with Oasis Live ’25 as the rest of us are; the film opens with a perfect needle drop of their hit track “Acquiesce.” The rest of the film — which tracks the tensions between soccer superstar Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) and national Irish team manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) ahead of Keane’s departure from the team before the 2002 World Cup — keeps the energy and intensity dialed up. The film may feel over-directed at times and is likely to resonate more with hardcore soccer fans than casual audiences, but Paul Fraser’s sharp, whip-smart script and compelling performances (Hardwicke is incredible) are enough to elevate to excellence this potentially straightforward tale of clashing egos . 

The Disappointments

After his beautiful 2011 Monsieur Lazhar, my expectations were high for director Phillipe Falardeau’s Lovely Day — a film more straightforward in plot than in execution. The film follows Alain (Neil Elias), a man with Crohn’s disease who, on his wedding day, has to work through a lot of familial and friendship-based trauma. The film’s zig-zagging narrative — we skip the wedding ceremony early on in the film only to revisit it in the film’s final act — adds unnecessary narrative complexity to a film that doesn’t need it. Perhaps too focused on form rather than story, Falardeau’s film feels redundant and tiring with a conclusion that feels rushed, unbelievable and far-from-earned. 

I was eagerly anticipating Jamal Burger’s and Jukan Tateisi’s documentary Still Single, which follows Japanese sushi chef Masaki Saito (who runs Toronto’s only restaurant with two Michelin stars). Surprisingly, the film is less focused on the operations that make Sushi Masaki Saito possible. The sequences that do take place in the restaurant, though, are the film’s most compelling. Saito isn’t the most compelling protagonist, and his eccentric and egoistic personality makes it difficult to digest this 93-minute flick. In any case, the sushi looks great (given the omakase experience costs CA$680, I should hope it does).