First Impressions: Toronto International Film Festival 2024

Courtesy of TIFF

Thursday, September 5, the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival kicked off in Canada's largest city. Over the next 10 days, Toronto's Entertainment District will play host to industry officials, journalists, celebrities, and cinephiles from all corners of the globe, ready to commemorate nearly 300 of the newest films and television series before they make their way onto screens both big and small in the coming months. As always, Foremost Film is on the ground at TIFF, ready to share our first impressions of every title screened. Please keep reading to learn our thoughts on some of TIFF's hottest tickets from this year's edition.

All We Imagine as Light directed by Payal Kapadia — *Courtesy of TIFF*

‘All We Imagine as Light,’ dir. Payal Kapadia

With her Grand Prix-winning title from this year's Cannes Film Festival, Kapadia presents a captivating and tender portrait of three women navigating life in contemporary Mumbai. The director's background in documentary filmmaking aids in creating a palpable atmosphere, capturing the weather, sounds, and bustle that interweave to make the fabric of the city. When the three central characters escape their busy lives for a seaside retreat, they are finally able to exercise the autonomy they desire, which plays out with a delicate lyricism that could lull audiences into a gentle trance. Kapadia's screenplay showcases the longings of her female protagonists while never ignoring the social, cultural, and economic forces that battle to break them.

‘Anora,’ dir. Sean Baker

Believe the hype: Anora is a WILD ride, a working-class American fairytale that never takes its foot off the pedal until its gut-wrenching final shot. Mikey Madison's performance blazes from the jump, serving up a street-smart exotic dancer from Queens whose hustle becomes deluded when the fuckboy son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eidelstein) comes along and seems like a chance to go straight to the top. Anora's story unfolds in three main segments, the centerpiece being a wild goose chase akin to Baker's Tangerine. For the first time in his career, Baker turns away from real-life middle-class shooting locations in favor of mega-mansions and the Las Vegas Strip. While Anora might not be as heart-breakingly emotional as The Florida Project, it feels like a culmination of everything the director has explored in his work up to this point, solidifying his status as one of America's most ambitious and authentic filmmakers.

‘Collective Monologue,’ dir. Jessica Sarah Rinland

Shot over five years in a pair of Buenos Aires zoos, Rinland's latest documentary in the Wavelengths section is tactile, thoughtful, and profound. On its most emotional level, Collective Monologue explores the deep connections between a devoted animal keeper named Maca and the creatures in her care, which include anteaters, macaws, small monkeys, flamingos, and many more. Rinland's camera closely documents the non-verbal understanding between Maca and her animals, the genuine bonds created under her supervision. Through this zookeeper's experience, the documentary opens up to the struggles she and her coworkers have faced in battling for funding and resources under a faulty bureaucratic administration. Shot using CCTV footage and hypnotic 16mm film, Collective Monologue carries a type of peace that manifests in human relationships with the non-human world.

‘Emilia Pérez,’ dir. Jacques Audiard

Emilia Pérez takes huge swings that majorly miss. Audiard absolutely travels into an unknown territory of his filmmaking style, but it feels like he throws everything at the wall just to see what will stick. Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón impress in their Cannes Best Actress-winning roles, while Selena Gomez’s performance leaves her much fewer directions to take her character into. The musical numbers are bizarre, working well in early sequences but grow more grating as the film moves forward. The biggest problem with the film is its narrative, which feels so unfocused after the first hour and simply punishes its unredeemed characters by the finale. The movie’s depictions of women’s struggles in contemporary Mexico City resound through the performances, not the storytelling as a whole.

‘Flow,’ dir. Gints Zilbalodis

Flow is a knockout. Absolutely awe-inspiring from the first shot to the last. Just the second feature from Zilbalodis, Flow took the Latvian filmmaker nearly six years to complete, and the intricate, ambitious final product shows us exactly why. Simple but effective in its storytelling, Flow follows a black cat, capybara, heron-like bird, dog, and lemur––an unlikely company–– who seek shelter together on a decrepit sailboat when waters begin to rise and flood their world. The film presents an ambiguous fable that can be explored from many angles: an eco-parable, a meditation on the connection between living creatures. Stunning imagery combines with the film’s peculiar animation and dynamic score to create a true stunner. Flow is destined to become a festival favorite this fall, and Foremost Film will surely lead its fan club.

‘Nightbitch,’ dir. Marielle Heller

Being a stay-at-home wife and mom is for the dogs in Heller's long-anticipated film adaptation of the 2021 novel. At the movie's core, Mother—played by Amy Adams—struggles to maintain her identity as she is thrown into the unspoken rules and regulations of motherhood. Once a working artist, Mother's everyday life is now dictated by the needs of her child, which she nearly singlehandedly serves as her husband is away for work most of the time and unhelpful when he is actually around. Something about Nightbitch feels a little too accessible, a little too obvious in its depictions of the hardships of raising children and the impossible social expectations that women are held to. The film's conclusion is wrapped in a conventional bow that is frustratingly reductive. As always, Adams delivers an impressively dynamic performance that constantly evolves, literally and metaphorically. Nightbitch is full of laughs and plays well for a public audience, but it seems ill-fated to be a critical hit.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl Rungano Nyoni — *Courtesy of TIFF*

‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,’ dir. Rungano Nyoni

Oscillating between deep anguish and black humor, Nyoni's long-awaited follow-up to 2017's I Am Not a Witch certainly does not disappoint and shows the creative progression of the Welsh-Zambian filmmaker's vision. Susan Chardy stars in the film as Shula, a thriving young woman who finds her uncle dead on the side of the road shortly after returning to her hometown in Zambia. As intensive traditions take over the funeral ceremony, Shula must reckon with her uncle's wrongdoings and the unacknowledged effects they have had on her family. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl speaks powerfully to the push and pull between tradition and modernity, family trauma, and gender inequity, building upon Nyoni's sensibilities from her early work and further laying her foundation as a compelling filmmaker. Please, A24, do not mess up the release strategy on this fantastic film; people need to see it.

‘On Swift Horses’ dir. Daniel Minahan

Better known for his work in television, Minahan's TIFF world-premiering On Swift Horses flaunts a brilliant young cast and moving ideas. Set in 1950s America—mainly California and Las Vegas—the film centers around the parallel journeys of Muriel (Daisy Edgar Jones) and Julius (Jacob Elordi), a brother and sister-in-law who struggle to understand their own self-desire in a world restricted by convention. Word on the Street described the film as a bisexual love triangle, which oversimplifies the intricate storytelling Minahan pulls off almost wholly successfully. Special shoutout to the cast's entire ensemble, which includes Will Poulter, Diego Calva, and Sasha Calle. On Swift Horses works as a complex and emotional vision that detours from the idealized memories from the post-war era in America.

‘Queer,’ dir. Luca Guadagnino

Queer feels like a brilliantly deviant turn for Guadagnino after the commercial success earned by Challengers earlier this year. Adapted by Justin Kuritzkes from the unfinished William S. Burroughs novella of the same name, Daniel Craig stars as Lee, a stand-in for Burroughs himself, with newcomer Drew Starkey appearing as Lee’s youthful, unrequited lover. With hypnotic central performances–– particularly Craig in a tragic mode we have never seen before–– Queer’s first half is unhurriedly paced in Mexico City, transforming into the Italian director’s most unorthodox work to date when it relocates to the jungles of South America for its latter portion. Queer communicates deep anguish, the lunacy that love can drive one to, the universality of heartbreak. Oh, and there is also a lot of sex.

‘The Brutalist,’ dir. Brady Corbet

With his first two feature films—and now The Brutalist—Corbet proves to be one of American cinema’s most bold and visionary voices. “The Brutalist” himself is László Toth, played by Adrian Brody, a once iconic Hungarian architect whose life is ripped apart by the Holocaust. Separated from his wife and niece (Felicity Jones and Raffey Cassidy, minuscule roles in comparison) during the war, Toth heads to America, where he hopes to rebuild his life. When his previous fame as an architect is uncovered, Toth is hired by a mega-wealthy businessman to build a monumental community center outside of Philidelphia. Over time, this unprecedented project threatens to decimate everything Toth hoped to gain in the land of the free. Nearly four hours in length, including a fifteen-minute intermission, The Brutalist is just as enormous in scope as the building Toth toils over, presenting a time-spanning narrative filled with highs, lows, and everything in between. Somehow shot in just thirty-three days, Corbet’s film stays entirely engrossing in performance, storytelling, and craft until the audience is served with a relatively sudden finale with a peculiar connection with everything preceding (still parsing through this conclusion). Shot using VistaVision and projected on 70mm at the TIFF Lightbox, The Brutalist indeed made for a cinematic experience that will not quickly be forgotten.

‘The Damned,’ dir. Roberto Minervini

After winning the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Minervini brings his latest to TIFF, where The Damned is part of the festival's Wavelengths program. Circa-1862, The Damned follows a small group of Union soldiers who head to the Western perimeters of the United States to protect its borders from the (unseen) enemy: the Confederates. Disregarding traditional narrative, Minervini is much more interested in the collective process of building The Damned with his collaborators and exploring the earliest features of the U.S. relationships between conflict and economic progress. Challenging in form and ravishingly brutal with its wintery Montana shooting locations, The Damned is another intriguing exploration of America from Minervini.

‘The End,’ dir. Joshua Oppenheimer

The End is a kooky and audacious venture into fiction filmmaking for Oppenheimer that carries on the director's interests in exploring collective trauma and culpability, found in works like The Act of Killing. Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, and Michael Shannon star in the post-apocalyptic musical, which exists in a world where capitalism has ruined the earth and forced an uber-wealthy family underground, where they have explored (but mostly denied) their responsibility in the destruction. The End is filled with fascinating oddities: the zany musical numbers, the desolate subterranean salt mines where the family lives, and the individual moral journeys of its characters. However, the movie's most exciting elements are balanced by a frustrating runtime and an ethical opacity at its finale that feels disjointed from everything that comes before.

The GIrl with the Needle film directed by Magnus Von Horn — *Courtesy of TIFF*

‘The Girl With the Needle,’ dir. Magnus Von Horn

Loosely inspired by the real-life crimes of Dagmar Overby circa World War I, The Girl with the Needle is a formal feat if not an incredibly unsettling creation. Shot in black and white by Michael Dymek (shout out to his work on 2022's EO), the director never falls victim to making lush period images, instead configuring early 20th century Copenhagen as a sludgy, windswept hellscape where women's lives are regarded as frivolity and war heroes are transformed into circus freaks. Unrelentless in its freezing-cold depictions of the disenfranchisement of working-class women, The Girl with the Needle only finds respite when its female characters can lean on one another, even if it leads them into violent and unsolicited conundrums.

'The Last Showgirl,' dir. Gia Coppola

As Shelley, Pamela Anderson IS The Last Showgirl. This film wonderfully captures the authenticity of Anderson's spirit as she redefines her celebrity, one that has been unjustly constructed within the confines of misogyny since her turn in Baywatch over thirty years ago. Fifty-something Shelley has starred in Le Razzle Dazzle on the Vegas Strip for many decades, but when the glamorous, old-fashioned show announces that it is closing its doors forever, she must rediscover her place in the world. Coppola's latest works within a conventional narrative framework and places much emphasis on a familiarly gauzy visual language that does not surprise. However, the movie's shortcomings are fully forgiven through Anderson's performance and those from the rest of its stacked cast.

‘The Room Next Door,’ dir. Pedro Almodóvar

The Room Next Door has all of the pieces of a standard Almodóvar film: fantastic lead performances, exquisite style, and emotional storytelling. Yet, in ways, this Golden Lion winner feels the most removed from the Spanish auteur's oeuvre, though not in a bad way. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore star in what is essentially a two-hander about a pair of longtime friends who reignite their friendship when one of them becomes terminally ill. The movie focuses on the dialogue between the women and their discussions of memory, death, and the world's future. Rather buttoned up in comparison to some of Almodóvar's other films, there is something too elegant, too restrained in this first English language effort. Nevertheless, The Room Next Door is effectively moving in its contemplations of mortality.

‘The Wolves Always Come at Night,’ dir. Gabrielle Brady

Brady heads to the Gobi desert of Mongolia to shoot The Wolves Always Come at Night, which made its world premiere in TIFF's Platform section. Combining narrative storytelling with real-life subjects, this film was an impressive surprise that communicates powerfully with the contemporary. Shot with breathtaking naturalism, the movie revolves around Daava and Zaya, a picturesque family of sheepherders from a long tradition of living off the land. When a violent storm kills off most of their herd, the two are forced to pack up their lives and head for the city to seek work. With a gentle but decisive touch, The Wolves Always Come at Night warns of how climate change has a higher influence over cultures most connected with the natural world. This is precisely the type of impactful world cinema we love to discover at TIFF.

Univeral Language film directed by Matthew Rankin — *Courtesy of TIFF*

‘Universal Language,’ dir. Matthew Rankin

Recently announced as Canada's official entry for Best International Film at the 2025 Oscars, Universal Language is another bonkers feat for Rankin, but one possessing much more heart than his earlier work. Through his reimagining of a Canada where the official languages are French and Persian, Rankin's latest is a kooky, uproarious meditation on the meaning of home and the power of community. Traveling from Montreal to Winnipeg, Rankin fabricates a snowy, lonely Canada filled with charismatic turkeys, crocuses, and wood-paneled Tim Hortons. If that is not enough to pique your interest, then...