In that regard, 2026 feels like a particularly rich edition of TIFF. Beyond the grand checklist of bedazzled Special Presentations and major galas, the programming has a fascinating ebb and flow. A handful of films already seem primed to vie for the People’s Choice Award — that coveted bellwether of awards season — or even be crowned new classics. Andrew Haigh’s aching queer period drama A Long Winter, Martin McDonagh’s ’70s-set buddy film-cum-winking political satire Wild Horse Nine, and Anton Corbijn’s chamber thriller involving a fictional Patricia Highsmith, A Talent for Murder, are among the early contenders. But beneath that enticing, glittery surface, other prevailing currents make this edition feel especially distinctive.

A bevy of veteran filmmakers are still working at the height of their powers; international auteurs are provocatively punching straight for the heart and gut; familiar faces are stepping behind the camera; and, in classic TIFF fashion, a wildly heartfelt and eccentric strain of Canadiana courses throughout the lineup. As such, here are the major currents, storylines, and must-watches dominating an electric edition of TIFF.

Perhaps the most compelling of these currents runs counter to TIFF’s perennial platform for new, invigorating voices: a hearty contingent of veteran filmmakers who, decades into their careers, remain as restless and observant as ever. Legendary British director Mike Leigh returns to the fold with Tender Loving Care, a film that not only continues his 50-plus-year obsession with working-class, kitchen-sink dramas that peel back the layers of aging, grief, and familial strife, but could also be his swan song after he announced that, due to illness, it will very likely be his last outing.

As Leigh looks to close out a seminal movie career, Lee Chang-dong returns with his first film since 2018’s Burning, the much-anticipated Possible Love. Entwining a deep sense of yearning, envy, and grief with biting social and class commentary, Lee’s tale of two couples — one the subject of the other’s documentary project — sees their increasingly entangled tensions and anxieties coalesce into something powerful, where the smallest revelations illuminate how social structures dictate human relationships.

In the same heartfelt vein, Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar returns to Spanish-language arthouse cinema with a self-reflexive treatise on love and the dangers of unbridled artistic licence in Bitter Christmas. Taking a page from the thematically related and deeply personal Pain and Glory, Almodóvar employs his sumptuous, trademark use of contrasting colours and melodramatic twists to craft an entrancing cavalcade of salacious sequences and shocking betrayals.

That same distinct, walloping sense of style pervades Takashi Miike’s blood-splattered crime fable Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo. The third contribution to the spiritually connected series, which includes Abel Ferrara’s cult classic Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Werner Herzog’s gonzo neo-noir Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans (2009), Miike’s tale of a corrupt, gambling-addicted Tokyo cop abounds in the filmmaker’s dynamic sense of bad taste and wanton sensationalism while forging its own bold identity within the loose thematic trilogy.

Those very eccentricities make the (in)famous Werner Herzog’s return to TIFF with Bucking Fastard that much more enticing. Telling the tale of sisters — played by real-life siblings Rooney and Kate Mara — who speak, dress, and dream alike and consequently fall in love with the same man, Herzog’s zany, idiosyncratic film frenetically traces the bloody fallout of their shared obsession as it descends into the uncanny. Like much of Herzog’s lauded canon, be prepared for one of the weirdest and boldest films of the fest.

While cinema’s old guard remains teeming with vigour and vitality, TIFF’s international slate is equally invigorating in the ways it provokes, beguiles, and unmoors audiences from their safe, comfortable viewing harbours. Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning Fjord stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a conservative Christian couple whose rigid religious beliefs land them in a storm of controversy in a quaint Norwegian town. Unfolding as a meticulous, gripping courtroom drama, Mungiu’s film immerses us in the profound moral quandaries of a private life exposed to public scrutiny.

Fellow Cannes darling All of a Sudden takes a less incendiary approach but still sees auteur Ryûsuke Hamaguchi patiently and poignantly traverse languages and ideas, dissecting everything from capitalism and caregiving to art itself in a film that unfolds as an extended, tender exchange between two women.

Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra transposes themes of repressed identity, love, and loss onto a grand, operatic triptych, following three men across distinct eras of Spain’s tumultuous history as they reckon with their burgeoning sexuality — amid the Spanish Civil War, the beginnings of Franco’s dictatorship, and the complicated aftermath of the regime’s end, where a buried family history begins to surface. These seamlessly interconnected storylines inform an epic that balances collective national memory with deeply fraught personal histories.

With similar transportive power, Marine Atlan’s intimate and beguiling coming-of-age film La Gradiva follows a group of messy, hormone-fuelled teenagers on a trip to Pompeii as they navigate their passions, problems, and the class tensions that shape their social realities against the ruins of the ancient past. As Atlan’s contemporary lens sifts through historical settings, the film forms a stirring treatise on both fleeting adolescence and the timelessness of societal angst.

Though TIFF is defined by the sheer star power that descends on Toronto each year, the 51st edition is as much about the stars on screen as the familiar faces who’ve decided to step behind the camera. From established performers making another leap into the auteur sphere to unexpected personalities taking the director’s chair, 2026 offers the peculiar pleasure of watching household names we think we know suddenly become something else.

That feeling is practically personified by writer-director Chris Rock’s Misty Green. A scathing satire of the racism, misogyny, and bigotry at the heart of the Hollywood dream machine, the film sees its titular washed-up actress, played by Oscar hopeful Rosalind Eleazar, attempt to change the narrative around herself by mounting a career comeback, all while dodging her looming eviction, keeping her bipolar brother out of trouble, and navigating a ludicrous offer from her former flame, played by Adam Driver.

Such plights of the thespian are similarly echoed in Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut. Following up his luminescent A Real Pain, Eisenberg’s film stars Julianne Moore as Mona, a dissatisfied suburban housewife who, to her surprise, lands a spot in a production at her local community theatre company. Despite the relatively low stakes, the hard-headed director, played by Paul Giamatti, sees an artistic spark in Mona and pushes the limits of what she can bring to the role. What ensues is not only a darkly comic endeavour but an odyssey of odd-couple camaraderie and self-discovery that’s primed to be one of the festival’s breakout hits.

A similarly tumultuous yet heartfelt relationship sits at the heart of Jordan Firstman’s debut feature, Club Kid. Hot off raucous, salacious turns in I Love LA and Rotting in the Sun, Firstman’s film unfolds as a touching riff on Big Daddy (1999), following a promoter in the queer New York City club scene whose life is disrupted by the unexpected responsibility of raising a ten-year-old son he never knew he had — the product of a half-forgotten hookup. A sensation at Cannes, Firstman’s film looks poised to cement itself as a vibrant, lived-in character study that doubles as a cathartic crowd-pleaser.

With ambitions of becoming its own fiery conversation piece, Courteney Cox’s second foray behind the camera, Evil Genius, sees her deliriously dramatize the eerie, darkly comic web of stories that make up the infamous 2003 “pizza bomber” incident. Starring David Harbour and Patricia Arquette in an ever-shifting tale involving a mysterious murder, a bumbling bank heist, psychopathic personalities, and an explosive pizza delivery, Cox channels the Coen brothers to craft a new kind of bonkers murder mystery.

For a festival defined by starry international energy and Hollywood wattage, TIFF remains, at its core, a distinctly Canadian affair, with this year’s homegrown contingent basking in unruly eccentricity and rowdy national pride to craft a vital, idiosyncratic assortment of feature-length “Heritage Minutes.”

Look no further than Michael Dowse’s ’70s-set The Stunt Driver, starring Jay Baruchel as a seasoned Canadian stuntman who plans to jump the mile-wide expanse of the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. Wearing its gonzo plot like a badge of national pride, Dowse’s film uses its anarchic energy to craft a wild ode to the kind of reckless determination that sits at the heart of Canadian perseverance and identity.

In contrast, Sean Menard’s intimate and inspiring portrait of Terry Fox and his enduring Marathon of Hope, Run Terry Run, draws on never-before-seen footage to illuminate both the long, arduous journey to raise awareness and money for cancer research and the making of a cherished Canadian icon. Much like Dowse’s film, Menard crafts an ode to unfettered commitment and determination, making vital, mythic use of long-held personal footage.

The same intimate edge can be found in Ashley Duong’s Ba’s Book, a hybrid documentary retelling that takes her father’s personal memoir — which traces his life during the Vietnam War and a brief sojourn in Iran — and stages a recreation of it in Vietnam alongside her family. What ensues is a heartfelt dissection of memory, legacy, and emotional trauma that unfolds as a key reflection of Canada’s dense, layered multicultural fabric.

Exploding through the frame, meanwhile, is Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, an episodic remix of strobe effects, VHS filters, and hallucinatory archival footage that astutely tracks the political machinations of the 1976 Conservative leadership convention and the events that ultimately paved the way for Brian Mulroney’s ascent to prime minister in the 1980s. Part political acid trip and part biting examination of the historical record, Rankin’s film could very well be the most radically farcical and surreal film of the fest.

The 2026 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 10–20.