April 4, 2026

Welcome to the TFCA weekly, a round-up of reviews and coverage by members of the Toronto Film Critics Association.

In Release this Week

Agatha’s Almanac (dir. Amalie Atkins)

“As pristine as Agatha’s lifestyle, the film is also a very pleasant and easy watch in which one can sit back and ease [into] the doc,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Agatha lives a lifestyle of the past, she belongs to one of the old religious groups, the Mennonites, and she is self-sufficient and also self-sufficiently happy.”

“The film’s centrepiece serves a slice of pure joy when Agatha rolls a luscious watermelon into her kitchen,” writes Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “Then she plops it onto the table and attacks it heartily with a knife. The camera nearly drools as the juices flow. Simple pleasures yield significant moments in Agatha’s Almanac as Atkins’ portrait encourages audiences to reflect upon her aunt’s way of life. On one hand, Agatha’s world seems like a bygone era with its vintage bric-a-brac, chipped china cups, and carefully coloured garden tools.”

The Blue Trail (dir. Gabriel Mascaro)

“It’s an interesting, sometimes humorous meditation on elderly independence, with some lovely visuals, but I did yearn for a little more background detail about the world it conjures. One senses the budget was stretched as far as it could go, and any depiction of the colony of elders wasn’t in the cards,” notes Chris Knight at Original Cin. “And I’ve seen reviews referring to Weinberg’s performance as ‘nuanced’ and ‘winning,’ but I found it a little flat at times. Maybe a casting mistake, or a directing choice, but there could have been more done to connect viewers to the protagonist’s plight. The trail runs a little cold.”

“Veteran theatre actress Denise Weinberg is brilliant as Tereza, who refuses to be sent to an old age colony somewhere deep in Brazil’s interior, where chillingly no one ever returns, not even for a visit,” writes Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Mascaro has set Tereza’s tale in the not-to-distant future, where an increasingly authoritarian government uses the Orwellian slogan “The Future is For Everyone” to justify the removal of all older people from society.”

“This is a very funny and timely film and one of the best films about seniors in a long time, and I am not talking Cocoon here,” advises Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The stunning cinematography of the rivers in the Amazon is simply breathtaking.”

The Drama (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)

“How far can we hold a person’s past state of mind to current account? How harshly should we judge the actions of a person in the midst of trauma? Is it morally acceptable to turn ongoing real-world horror into provocative auteur fiction?” asks Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “There are no easy answers to these questions, which makes The Drama a film worth pondering and discussing, although it loses some potency in its drawn-out third act and tends to explore Charlie’s distress at the expense of Emma’s.”

“Great comedy and dread are extracted from Charlie’s sudden, shattering uncertainty about Emma and whether a future with her is desirable or even possible,” writes Kim Hughes at Original Cin. “Ditto Emma’s apparent late-stage regret. It’s marvellously squishy and unnerving to watch, especially since everyone around the couple has an opinion. Meanwhile, Emma’s past offence triggers new bad behaviours among those ostensibly on higher ground. Ethics, it seems, can be slippery.”

“[I]t may have kept the secret too well. Because even though The Drama blossoms into an incredibly interesting and subversive investigation into the terminal limits of empathy and redemption, that may not even matter. All that will matter instead is the bewildered disappointment theatre-goers will feel walking out of a film they expected to be like Sleepless in Seattle, but that instead feels closer in spirit to Midsommar,” writes Jackson Weaver at CBC. “Assuming The Drama picks up the kind of attention Pattinson and Zendaya — who also both star in two other gigantic projects, Dune: Part Three and The Odyssey, later this year — typically command, it’s certain to inspire a slew of think pieces.”

“The set piece, as one would expect, is at the expensive formal wedding,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Things go increasing wrong, with most of the attention remaining on Pattinson, not Emma, who almost retreats into the background. It’s Charlie’s anxiety that’s the focus and we watch as everything comes apart, rather spectacularly. The Drama is cringe comedy taken to an extreme. If you love that sort of humour, it works extremely well. If not, you won’t be laughing at all.”

“For all the boundary pushing and creativity, director Kristoffer Borgli opts out for a tacked-on, cop-out, clichéd happy ending, which goes against the flow of this otherwise original and fresh romantic comedy drama,” argues Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Spoiler alert:  (Though one can argue that the ending is an open one that the two attempt to start again, and not that they have agreed to part or stay together, the latter is implied from the fact that Emma sits down with Charlie at the end.)”

“The Drama forces intensely uncomfortable conversations with its gambit of extreme awkwardness. Much in the fashion of After the Hunt, The Drama could and should spark some heated post-screening discussions. As with the Julia Roberts drama, it’s not going to satisfy audiences who want the contemporary issues spoon-fed to them. Sure, it could tackle hot-button topics like gun violence in America or racial inequity more explicitly, but it’s not about those issues,” says Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “The film treads condescension by refusing to give audiences anything to work with cleanly, but audiences willing to dig into the greater questions invited by its rich psychological warfare are in for a treat.”

Fantasy Life (dir. Matthew Shear)

“What passes for a climax is a dinner featuring all the above characters that goes from civil to cringe at record speed. It puts punctuation on the story of Sam and Dianne, though the film still has some meandering to do before the credits roll,” observes Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “For a movie that lazily spins its wheels, Fantasy Life is oddly amiable. The only wholly dislikable character is David, and he’s so great at being dislikable, you almost like him for it.”

My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow (dir. Julia Loktev)

“The entire film unfolds under a foreboding shadow. ‘The world you are about to see no longer exists,’ director Loktev tells us in voiceover in the film’s opening minutes. This is a film of Russia’s ‘before times,’ before the 2022 Ukraine invasion, before the independent press was shut down,” writes Liam Lacey at Original Cin. “Loktev’s gateway into the world of Russian independent journalism world was through her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host for the independent and now-defunct television channel TV Rain.”

“An extraordinary capsule of the efforts of independent journalists to safeguard the truth in Loktev’s native Russia,” says Pat Mullen at POV Magazine, who speaks with Loktev about capturing history in the making. “When Russia invaded Ukraine, the journalists that I was filming were fiercely opposed to it. They were mortified, horrified, ashamed. They somehow felt guilty that they didn’t stop it, even though there weren’t enough of them. They all tried to keep reporting. The task at that point was to live another day to keep offering Russians an alternative to propaganda. Meanwhile, the Russian government was making it increasingly impossible to report. Every day there were new restrictions,” says Loktev.

Palestine 36 (dir. Annemarie Jacir)

“Palestine 36 highlights Palestinian suffering and British brutality, while downplaying Jewish experiences, internal divisions, and key historical figures, especially the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Hussein,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.  “This is the standing flaw of the otherwise well-shot epic that might be the reason the film failed to make the final 5 Best International Academy Award nomination list.”

“Palestine ‘36 is at its most moving in the scenes of archival footage, and most provocative as an illustration of how England’s imperial tactics of pitting national groups against each other and terrorizing civilians (characters refer to similar approaches India and Ireland) became the template for Israeli’s ongoing military domination of the Palestinian territories,” notes Liam Lacey at Original Cin. “The argument is unlikely to change fixed hearts and minds, but it is difficult to ignore how familiar it seems.”

Silver Screamers (dir. Sean Cisterna)

“The real beauty of Silver Screamers, though, is watching the crew (who are accompanied by young ‘mentors’) dive into the job, greeting each day with a duty and, frankly, a reason to get out of bed or off the chair,” writes Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “If age is often a state of feeling one has nothing to contribute, the crew of The Rug are energized by their mission. The scenes of them adding to the soundtrack as human foley mixers (including munching sounds of the carnivorous carpet) are a joy to watch.”

“Silver Screamers finds a novel premise for a documentary. Instead of identifying a story and going out into the field to shoot it, Cisterna creates an opportunity through available funding and centres a documentary on that process. On one hand, one could see it as a kind of vulgar exercise, like making a Marvel movie to fund an art film. On the other, it could be an innovative approach through which the greater story reveals itself,” says Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “The film thankfully proves to be the latter. Hagsploitation, this is not. Instead, as Cisterna’s team pairs the seniors with young mentors, Silver Screamers provides a quirky tale of second chances.”

Speechless (dir. Ric Esther Bienstock)

“Many films have tried to tackle the culture wars, but Speechless sets the bar for including all parties in meaningful ways,” writes Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “The documentary smartly understands that a willingness to engage in these conversation offers the only escape plan from the escalating pressure cooker in which we all find ourselves. It’s an early contender for doc of the year–and one that demands discussion.”

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (dir. Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic)

“At a glance, the film’s a dream come true for any Mario Bros. fans. Seeing these characters and their worlds brought to life with pixel-perfect fidelity is worth the price of admission. There’s no denying directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic custom-tailored the film to delight the diehards,” writes Victor Stiff at Exclaim!. “Galaxy comes loaded with deep-cut references that will make Gen Xers and elder millennials feel truly seen. Yet even newcomers who’ve never picked up a NES controller can still jump into the story and appreciate most of the sight gags without needing Wikipedia deep dives into 40 years of Nintendo lore.”

The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson (dir. Marina Zenovich)

“It focuses not just on the crime, but on who Wilson was and the emotional aftermath for those close to her,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The film works as a real life drama with the murder and investigation slowly moving in, as the tension mounts, creating a good spaced true crime drama.  The film would be more entertaining if one did not know the events of the crime.”

What Does that Nature Say to You? (dir. Hong Sang-Soo)

“The film unravels in unnamed chapters, 1, 2, 3 and so on, offering different stages if the evening,” writes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The film, as in all of director Hong’s other films is a slow burn of a film.  The pleasure to be obtained are often in the observations that the audience makes and not from any action scenes.  Patience is a virtue and is definitely required here to appreciate Hong’s film.”