TIFF 50
TIFF 50: Hidden Gems, Bold Voices, and Breakout Visions
The Toronto International Film Festival turns 50 this year — a milestone moment for
one of the world’s most beloved film festivals. While most of the headlines belong to
star-studded premieres like these — The Smashing Machine, Frankenstein, Blue Moon,
and Hamnet — TIFF’s true power has always come from its discoveries: the quiet,
unassuming films that linger long after the red carpets roll up.
This year’s lineup reinforces that spirit of discovery. Across Discovery, Special
Presentations, Centrepiece, and TIFF Docs, filmmakers from every corner of the world
are telling stories that challenge form, feeling, and audience comfort. Here are six
World Premieres that exemplify why TIFF remains a launchpad for originality, emotion,
and fearless storytelling.
Steal Away
Director: Clement Virgo | Runtime: 113 mins | Program: Special Presentations
After his acclaimed feature Brother in 2022, Clement Virgo returns with Steal Away, a
dark, poetic descent into the blurred boundaries between fairy tale and psychological
drama. The film opens with the words “once upon a time” — but Virgo quickly
abandons fantasy conventions for something rawer, stranger, and more haunting.
Taking the lead are Angourie Rice and Mallori Johnson. The story follows two sisters.
The sisters navigate their fractured reality, which flickers between dreamscape and
what could be actual nightmares. What begins as a lush fantasy slowly morphs into a
meditation on control, identity, and the lies we tell ourselves to survive.
Virgo, known for his bold visual sensibility, creates the film Steal Away as a tapestry of
ornate costumes, gothic set pieces, and lyrical cinematography that feels more like
Guillermo del Toro. Yet, beneath the aesthetic splendour, the film wrestles with many
questions about love, memory, and the price of true freedom.
For those who admired Brother’s humanism and craft, Steal Away shows Virgo pushing
his artistry even further — into myth, madness, and cinematic enchantment.
Verdict: A hypnotic visual feast with real emotional weight — Steal Away proves Virgo
is Canada’s most daring visual storyteller.
The Son and the Sea
Director: Stroma Cairns | Runtime: 102 mins | Program: Discovery / TIFF Next
Wave Selects
The Son and the Sea is a tender, disarming exploration of young masculinity,
friendship, and loss. Director Stroma Cairns captures that liminal space between
adolescence and adulthood with a painter’s precision and a poet’s restraint.
Jonah (Jonah West) is a young Londoner adrift in a sea of late-night parties and
emotional stagnation. When he convinces his best friend Lee (Stanley Brock) to escape
the chaos and retreat to the Scottish coast, what begins as a getaway turns into an
emotional reckoning. There, they meet Charlie (Connor Tompkins), a Deaf local
grappling with guilt and loneliness after his twin brother’s criminal downfall.
Cairns resists the clichés of the “male coming-of-age” film. Instead, she observes —
gently, patiently — the unspoken tenderness between her characters. The film’s coastal
setting mirrors its emotional landscape: vast, unpredictable, and quietly devastating.
There’s something profoundly moving about watching three young men learn to
communicate — not through bravado, but through vulnerability. It’s the kind of
storytelling that doesn’t shout; it hums, softly and truthfully.
Verdict: A quietly stunning debut that redefines how we see young men onscreen —
not as archetypes, but as fragile, feeling humans.
Modern Whore
Director: Nicole Bazuin | Runtime: 80 mins | Program: TIFF Docs
Nicole Bazuin’s Modern Whore is brash, unapologetic, and impossible to ignore.
Expanding on the 2020 short film and book of the same name, Bazuin and co-writer
Andrea Werhun dive into Werhun’s real-life experiences as a sex worker in Toronto. The
result is a self-aware, darkly comic, and stylistically electric documentary that shatters
stereotypes while embracing discomfort.
Werhun is both subject and storyteller here. She narrates her journey through a blend
of re-enactments, interviews, and performance pieces that feel part confession, part
reclamation. The film’s fourth-wall-breaking energy channels Fleabag meets The Wolf of
Wall Street, but its purpose is more subversive — to make viewers confront their
assumptions about sex, power, and agency.
What elevates Modern Whore beyond shock value is its emotional honesty. It’s not
about glamorizing or condemning sex work — it’s about the messy, contradictory truth
of it. The moments of absurdity are balanced by piercing vulnerability.
Verdict: A wild, witty, and emotionally intelligent documentary that forces you to look
— and think — twice.
You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited into a Comedy
Revolution
Director: Nick Davis | Runtime: 98 mins | Program: Special Presentations
Nick Davis’s documentary of Godspell was such a joyful, affectionate time capsule for
true comedy lovers. You Had to Be There revisits the 1972 Toronto production of
Godspell — a musical that unexpectedly launched one of the most significant comedy
movements in North American history.
Through interviews, archival footage, and delightfully nostalgic recreations, Davis
connects Godspell’s cast and creative energy to a lineage that would ripple through
modern comedy — from SCTV and Saturday Night Live to today’s stand-up and sketch
icons.
Even if you’ve never heard of the production, Davis’s film makes you feel like you were
part of that creative explosion. It’s less about the musical itself and more about what
happens when artists collide at the right moment in time — when one stage in Toronto
became the birthplace of a revolution.
Verdict: A heartfelt tribute to Toronto’s comedic legacy — one that leaves you
grinning, inspired, and proud.
Noviembre
Director: Tomás Corredor | Runtime: 78 mins | Program: Discovery
Claustrophobic. Harrowing. Unforgettable. Tomás Corredor’s Noviembre transforms one
of Colombia’s darkest historical events — the 1985 Palace of Justice siege — into a
tightly wound, emotionally raw one-room thriller.
Set almost entirely in a bathroom where a handful of civilians and soldiers hide as chaos
erupts outside, Noviembre becomes a study in fear, morality, and human fragility.
Corredor’s direction is unrelenting: the sound of distant gunfire and muffled screams
becomes a suffocating heartbeat that drives the film.
Archival footage cuts through the fictional narrative, grounding it in reality and forcing
viewers to reckon with the real cost of violence. It’s not an easy watch — but it’s a vital
one.
Verdict: A masterclass in minimalist storytelling — Noviembre grips you by the throat
and doesn’t let go.
Wasteman
Director: Cal McMau | Runtime: 90 mins | Program: Centrepiece
With Wasteman, debut filmmaker Cal McMau strips the prison drama of its usual tropes
and exposes the emotional truth beneath. Set in a British penitentiary where violence
and vulnerability coexist uneasily, the film explores masculinity under pressure — both
literal and psychological.
Anchored by extraordinary performances from David Jonsson and Tom Blyth,
Wasteman balances moments of explosive brutality with aching tenderness. McMau’s
handheld camera captures every tremor, every flicker of doubt, every silent plea for
dignity.
It’s a film about survival — not just physical, but emotional about men trying to
remember their humanity in a place designed to erase it.
Verdict: Wasteman is intimate, raw, and gut-wrenching — a remarkable debut that
signals the arrival of a prominent new filmmaker.
Final Thoughts
TIFF 50 feels like both a celebration and a renewal — proof that storytelling is still
evolving, still surprising, still alive. Whether it’s the audacious world-building of Steal
Away, the quiet grace of The Son and the Sea, or the raw urgency of Noviembre and
Wasteman, this year’s discoveries remind us why we go to festivals in the first place.
Not just to see movies — but to find them.
