September 15, 2025

Happy TIFFty! The 50^th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has officially come to a close following 11 days of star-studded cinema, and about a month of controversy. The golden anniversary was a TIFF to remember, and a welcome comeback after the COVID years and strike year lessened the fanfare.

The range of films was strong, too, and provided good reason to clap outside of the Varda café prompt that preceded each screening. In what’s now an annual tradition, we polled members of the Toronto Film Critics Association to learn their picks for the best films they saw at TIFF. After several years of spreading the love, however, we have a clear consensus favourite: Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which seems to be the critics’ choice in addition to the people’s. The only film to receive more votes, actually, was Zhao’s Nomadland in the 2020 poll.

The TFCA invited all members to submit their picks for the best films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. 10 films scored “best of the fest” picks based on what screened at Toronto.

Here are the TFCA members’ picks for the best films at TIFF 2025

Susan G. Cole: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – The slow unravelling of a mother trying to hold on to her sanity as her daughter might die sounds like harrowing viewing, and it is. But Rose Byrne’s ferocious performance as Linda makes it exhilarating at the same time. While her husband is away at work, Linda is on her own to care for her daughter, who has a mysterious illness. As she copes with a welter of anxieties, Linda sometimes seethes, sometimes rages, and at other times silently panics. Writer/director Mary Bronstein ratchets up the tension via, among other things, a catastrophic home disaster, an incompetent psychotherapist (a deft turn by Conan O’Brien), and constant phone calls from Linda’s hectoring husband (who shows zero empathy), and suggestions that Linda may give up living. But this is Byrne’s movie. It’ll be criminal if she doesn’t get an Oscar nom.

Alicia Fletcher: The Testament of Ann Lee – The most bizarre and beguiling film of the fest was the 70mm-shot, 18th-century set musical dedicated to the Shaker religious sect and the cult around its founder, the celibate prophet Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried). From the fevered brain of Norwegian director Mona Fastvold, co-writer of last year’s The Brutalist, The Testament of Ann Lee, which at the time of publication remains without distribution, is a big swing in an era where studios and streamers take few chances. It’s bloody and horrific in parts, and yet the enchanting hymns and Celia Rowlson-Hall’s experimental choreography lend gravity and allure to a speculative, historical narrative that feels surprisingly timely. Fastvold’s film is a remarkable achievement that transcends arthouse curio and stands as something more restorative–like a salve or potion to remedy an anemic state of cinemagoing. When credits rolled on that lavish 70mm print, I felt revived and was left wondering what other religious sects of yesteryear could benefit from such bold and innovative filmmaking.

Honorable Mentions: Below the Clouds; BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions

Marc Glassman: The Christophers – Viewing The Christophers provided me with the greatest delight at TIFF 2025. It does help if you love London and art and witty dialogue. You can argue that the film is about a bit more than that: what fundamentally transforms our lives; what validates us as creative individuals; what we choose to leave behind when we pass away. But that makes The Christophers sound more serious than it intends to be. The film offers the opportunity to view two wonderful talents offering performances of intensity and grand humour. It’s almost too easy to praise Ian McKellen for a role that suits him perfectly as a disreputable artist refusing to go gently into the good night. But Michaela Coel more than matches McKellen as a potential art forger and critic who forces him to re-examine what he has done with his life and work. This film is a tour de force, which deserves much more recognition than it received at the Festival.

Honourable mentions: BKLNWS

Jason Gorber: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert – Watching the crowd go absolutely wild for EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert was a delight, but even more so was the experience of seeing Baz Lurhrmann himself jump to the fray and dance in the aisles as “Suspicious Minds” blared from the massive sound system at the Princess of Wales theatre. For those few moments, the world’s (and the festival’s) problems faded, and there was nothing but the joyful, communal cinematic experience of an audience gathered together in the sanctity of that room to experience the joys of the film together bathed in the light from the brilliant images being projected for our pleasure.

Honourable mentions: You Had to Be There, The Last Viking, Wake Up Dead Man, Tuner, most of the Cannes titles that played here and those that didn’t

Rachel Ho: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert — Some may call watching the same film five times during a festival as varied as TIFF obsessive, maybe even a misguided use of time, I say it’s dutiful due diligence. In many ways, Elvis Presley defies understanding: his ascent to astronomical fame from nothing defined the improbable American Dream and his legacy nearly 50 years after his death remains hotly debated and discussed. But for 96 minutes, Baz Luhrmann reminds us that beyond the image and the caricature he became, Elvis was an electrifying performer who captivated a crowd with nothing more than his voice, some sweaty gyrations, and all the musicality Vegas could muster. With gratitude to Luhrmann and Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post, we’re able to witness the Memphis Flash in all his IMAX glory — the way cinema intended.

Honorable Mention: Nino, for somehow making a cancer not depressing

Peter Howell: Hamnet – A film of whispers and symbols, magic and anguish, drawn by Chloé Zhao from Shakespearean legend, Maggie O’Farrell’s celebrated novel and astute observations of life. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal anchor a strong cast as Agnes and William, who are as volcanic in love as they are in grief. Jacobi Jupe is terrific as Hamnet, the young son whose tragic loss unleashes torrents but also art. Max Richter’s score is one of the year’s best, empathetic and engaging. Altogether magnificent.

Kim Hughes: Sirât – A film of exceptional (sometimes devastating) emotional range, director Oliver Laxe’s French-Spanish co-production is a reminder that the lives we lead are at once precarious, precious, and completely unpredictable. Despite an absence of backstories, viewers are fully engaged with Sirât’s characters, most played by non-professional actors, giving the story real authenticity. And stunning cinematography captures the perennially sunlit moonscape of the Moroccan desert.

Honourable Mentions: Tuner, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, The Tale of Silyan.

Brian D. Johnson: Hamnet – Although Sentimental Value was the most exquisitely perfect film among those I saw, my vote has to go to the one that utterly blew me away at its world premiere. Director Chloé Zhao introduced Hamnet by inviting the audience to close our eyes and submit to a “somatic breathing exercise.” Which may explain why I was a bit sleepy for the first hour of watching Mr. & Mrs. Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, Jesse Buckley) navigate their rickety art-life balance. But then the floodgates broke with a family horror so wrenching you feel the film’s emotional payload was fully spent—disarming us for the real catharsis, where the tragedy is transmuted into Hamlet’s premiere performance at the Globe Theatre. I never thought the words of Shakespeare, especially that play, could make me weep. But there I was, out in public, crying a river to iambic pentameter. Then, by a feat of stage magic, tears of grief morphed into tears of joy. The mirroring between Globe audience and the one in Roy Thompson Hall produced a collective rush of exhilaration quite unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a movie. An experience no amount of critical second thought can betray. And aside from the sentimental value, on TIFF’s 50th it proved that the festival’s beating heart still lies in the irreplaceable thrill of live cinema.

Honourable mentions: Sentimental Value, Frankenstein, Tuner, Sirat, Mile End Kicks, Nirvanna: the Band – the Show – the Movie, and the Godspell doc with the interminable title.

Chris Knight: Hamnet — It’s always nice to see the People’s Choice winner before it is crowned, and to recognize its greatness. I was miffed when filmmaker Chloé Zhao, fresh off the Oscar-winning Nomadland, got sucked into the Marvel universe a few years ago with Eternals. But all is forgiven thanks to Hamnet, an examination of parenthood, grief and creativity through no less a lens than the Shakespeares, William (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley). They had three children, one of whom, Hamnet, died at age 11, a few years before Shakespeare wrote the similarly titled tragedy. There is no winking at the Bard’s future in this grounded and emotional production, though I liked the notion that Agnes inadvertently coined a phrase for the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, when she tells her husband that she sees “undiscovered countries” in him. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, this is a story worthy of its lauded subject.

Honourable mentions: Train Dreams, Sentimental Value, The Last Viking.

Pat Mullen: Hamnet – Is it satisfying or disappointing when one’s most anticipated film of the festival lands as the runaway winner of TIFF 2025? That’s the case for me with Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s extraordinary adaptation of the loss that inspired Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy. Seen through the eyes of the Bard’s wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley, outdoing herself yet again), his immortalization of their late son into the fabled prince of Denmark invites a stirring exploration of the messy catharsis entailed in drawing from life in the service of one’s art. There’s a moment late in the film—a spur of the moment directorial shift that wasn’t in the script—when Agnes reaches her hand up to the actor (Noah Jupe) through whom young Hamnet seems destined to live forever. The audience at the Globe Theatre feels her catharsis. The patrons in turn extend their hands towards the stage. There’s a pause as their hands remain suspended in the air and the crowd takes in what they’ve collectively witnessed. There’s a great doubling as the crowd onstage blurs with the crowd in the theatre. Zhao invites us to share that breath, that pause, and that release. The rest is silence, they say, save for the collective ugly cry rippling throughout any theatre screening Hamnet. Can this film continue the People’s Choice Award’s track record for repeating its success at the Oscars? Perchance to dream.

Honourable mentions: The Tale of Silyan, Cover-Up, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, Below the Clouds, The Voice of Hind Rajab, The Secret Agent, Love+War, Levers, A Simple Soldier, Blue Heron, Sentimental Value, and Nina Hoss in Hedda.

Andrew Parker: The Voice of Hind Rajab – No film left me more moved and shaken than Kaouther Ben Hania’s taut, masterful, and heartbreaking The Voice of Hind Rajab. Effortlessly blending documentary realism with dramatically potent recreations of events, Hania’s follow-up to her Oscar nominated non-fiction effort Four Daughters follows workers at a first responder call centre as they scramble to get aid to a six year old girl in Gaza who’s stuck in a car, surrounded by the Israeli military, and alone amidst the bodies of her dead family members. Hania doesn’t re-create what the young girl is going through, but she does employ the actual emergency call, which the actors (all of whom are phenomenal) play off of. Not just a pointed example of a needlessly avoidable tragedy, but an insightful look at the frustrations and battles first responders face in the region every day, The Voice of Hind Rajab is a timely ticking clock thriller that never lets go of the viewer and breaks down the horrors of war in a granular, unforgettable, and wholly empathetic manner. I don’t often feel the need to decompress after watching a film, but I had to after this one.

Honourable mentions (in no particular order): Blue Heron, Hamnet, It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, The Tale of Silyan, No Other Choice, The Fence, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, Dead Man’s Wire, The Testament of Ann Lee, The Cost of Heaven, Train Dreams.

Johanna Schneller: Tuner – Director Daniel Rohrer already has an Oscar, for the documentary Navalny, so this film is not your average narrative feature debut. But man, it’s impressive. Niki (Leo Woodall, in a star-making turn), a former piano prodigy turned piano tuner, has super-sensitive hearing, a beloved mentor (Dustin Hoffman), and a new love interest (Havana Rose Liu). Then he discovers he can crack safes, and things take a turn. The characters are original, the dialogue is clever, the set-up and stakes are totally believable, and the acting is first-rate. Most impressively, this film has style. It’s sleek, handsome — it hums along. It feels like an instant classic, the kind of mid-budget, adult-oriented, romance/crime caper Steven Soderbergh used to make.

Honourable mentions: Train Dreams, Hamnet

Most joyous TIFF screening, and most deserving of a theatrical release: Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery

Gilbert Seah: Steve – In a recent interview with Sight and Sound magazine, Cillian Murphy says that in his role as Steve, he has very little interest in the lighter side of storytelling. Director Tim Mielants shoots everything for Steve sequentially, which makes it very liberating, as everyone knows where they are headed, and everybody knows the emotional arc. Reminiscent of Laurent Cantet’s 2008 The Class, Steve is the story of a head teacher in a reform school of violent kids trying to make sense while doing his best to help them. Engrossing, emotional, and inspiring in an unconventional way, Steve is a wonder of a film.

Dave Voigt: Hamnet – There’s a part of me that feels like I am breaking my sacred oath as a critic agreeing with the masses, but we all know the old saying about the “broken clock.” People’s Choice Award winner Hamnet is a sumptuous affair that actually manages to (almost) erase an entire Marvel movie from existence. Co-writer and director Chloé Zhao gives us a unique portrait of love, loss and grief that allows us into the headspace of the creation of one of the greatest stories ever told. While Paul Mescal is absolutely vibrant in the role of William Shakespeare, it’s Jessie Buckley who shines here as a mother having to cope with her love for her family, her grief for her lost son and the way we process it all. With Zhao’s deliberate and careful direction combined with the lush cinematography from Lukasz Zal, Hamnet is the kind of emotional cinematic experience that will engulf you as you watch it.

Honorable Mention: The Fence, Orwell 2+2=5, While The Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts

Rachel West: The Last Viking – No film had as much heart, laughs, and mayhem as Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen’s The Last Viking. True to his oeuvre of oddball characters, he once again knocks it out of the park with his frequent collaborators Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in a tale of brotherly love, mental illness, and The Beatles. Mikkelsen’s turn as Manfred, a man who believes himself to be John Lennon, lets the actor flex his physical comedy skills in delightful ways. Seamlessly shifting between absurd comedy, family drama, and crime thriller, for all its strangeness The Last Viking is incredibly tender and uplifting. Out of the 50 films I saw at TIFF, it’s the one I keep thinking about the most.

Honourable Mentions: Sirat, The Tale of Silyan, Dust Bunny, Frankenstein, Bad Apples