October 6, 2026

One question and 28 performers featured in this year’s TIFF films

By Nirris Nagendrarajah

I’m fascinated by actors and why they do what they do, despite the fact that they’re harder to reach, or to have a lengthy conversation with. As this year’s Telefilm Canada Emerging Critic, I wanted to make use of the TFCA’s accreditation to the Toronto International Film Festival and create something poetic and unique. I happened upon a Libération supplement, from 1989, in which critic Serge Daney and director Louis Skorecki asked 700 filmmakers around the world, “Why do you film?” Sometimes, when preparing for an interview, it feels like you’re forcing yourself to be curious, when all you want is to ask one question. “Why do you act?” emerged for me as that question, and I soon learned that no response was the same.

In the same breath, I wanted to learn more about the industry through the festival and be in contact with as many publicists as possible, to discern the artists from the talents. It would be a lie to say everyone was enthusiastic, responsive, or nice, but, one after the other, those who saw the vision of a piece that furthered the survey into a system of stars and their significations emerged. A trinity between critic, publicist, and actor became vital, restoring my hope in exchanges that can be very dismissive and belittling. This piece is a testament to every person involved in creating this collective document, this shimmering chorus. It seeks the outline of a definition for a thing that cannot be defined.

I contacted 100 actors, with a modest desire for 24 entries, which I’m grateful to have superseded. Every entry was edited by me, and the order is intentional to be read straight through. In some cases, the format of the responses reflects the way in which they were received in cases where actors embraced the poetic. I read them on the subway, in the rush line, at the cinema, at night drifting to sleep. They spoke to me. Of everything I’ve created this year, this was the most satisfying to produce, a document I couldn’t wait to return to. There was never any dread; just a lot of emails to send and respond to.

Most of all, this piece reminded me of why I wanted to be a critic to begin with: to do whatever I could to offer slivers of beauty to you, dear reader, and learn about why, and how, one lives.

And action:

Breton Lalama

as CJ in Driftwood

There was another option?

Lázaro G. Rodríguez

as Lázaro in Everything Else Is Noise

When giving our first kiss, many of us, having seen endless portrayals of a first kiss, already knew what to do and how we were meant to feel. And so it goes with so many experiences—with nearly all of them. To act is to rehearse a different way of living, to claim another world is possible.

I act to change the world.

Paulina García

as Abuela in Love Is the Monster

Acting, for me, is grounding. It is my different way of making love and making war. It is a way to give birth and nourish many times, in many ways.

Géssica Généus

as Marie Madeleine in Marie Madeleine

I can ask for one more take. Let’s do this better. Let it be truer. Let me find the emotion that is right. Life doesn’t always allow for second chances. Especially when we need it the most.

Ella Balentine

as Sam in Back in Black

In my life, it seems, I am unsure of how to do anything. Or at least many things.

There is always a lingering uncertainty that doesn’t seem to go away. Somehow, it’s only when I’m acting that I feel I’m doing something very right.

Larissa Corriveau

as Mira in Nobody’s Violence

I act to appear in everything others don’t know about me.

To resist the dictatorship of transparency,

to cultivate contradiction, mystery, ambiguity.

Acting is an attempt to dissolve the ego,

a gesture to upstage the bleak daily spectacle of our intimacy.

It’s an exercise in freedom, an expression of curiosity,

like getting lost in a forest with nothing but intuition to find my way forward.

Looking for the right breath, throwing myself outside of myself.

I act to forget and forgive, to admit that I love losing touch with reality.

Acting is kissing strangers and pretending to be in love with each of them for eternity.

It’s creating intimacy between beings, no matter how far apart we may be.

It’s breaking apart predictable connections, searching for something more insolite.

There are no characters. There are parallel lives, inhabited by an infinity of states of being.

To act is the greatest high ever,

the most useless and beautiful thing I know.

Catalina Saavedra

as Catalina in Double Freedom

Because it’s a pleasant sensation to be able to be another, agreeably decompressing the eternal monotony of being myself all my life.

Matt Barats

as Matt Barats in Anchors Aweigh

Because me and my character actor friends know how to ad-lib lines on set to make the production team smirk and loosen up. It may not make the final cut, but hopefully we shine a ray of light into the dark strange lives of the film crew.

Mohammad Ali Hasmi

as Danny in The Lion Does Not Concern Himself

Because it’s the ultimate act of empathy and freedom. When you embody the views of someone other than yourself it frees you of certain prejudices, and we need that power of empathy now more than ever, in these difficult times.

Lawrence Maleka

as Lwando in Future Tense

To find and showcase the best and worst of humanity, or the essence of it, at least. I do film because I believe in time travel. I’ve found that it’s the best way to capture and showcase the past, and to offer what’s possible for the future.

Éanna Hardwicke

as Beau in Ancestors

I act because it feels great. It makes me feel invigorated, connected to the human beings around me, to the ground beneath me.

There is a change that happens when you speak someone else’s words or enter a psyche not your own. You go through a temporary transformation, getting to feel vividly—and viscerally—what it’s like to be in another’s shoes for a few hours.

If you are lucky enough to get to act for a living, you get to explore not only every kind of emotion, thought, sensation in the human condition, but also every facet of your own inner world and hopefully—more often than not—in a way that chimes with someone watching, making them feel enlivened, thrilled, seen.

Pushpa Thing Lama

as Pirati in Elephants in the Fog

Art, literature, and cinema are mediums that can challenge the deep-rooted social ills and prejudices within society and, in doing so, play a role in changing the way society sees things. It was also with a sense of responsibility to help change that perspective that I chose acting as my profession. I believe, and I have faith, that this will surely help bridge the gaps of discrimination within our community through this film, through my acting, and through this work. That is why I act.

Mandeep Sodhi

as Harvinder “Harvey” Singh in Strong Son

I’m curious about people. Every character gives me an opportunity to step outside myself and become acquainted with someone else’s truth, fears, desires, contradictions, and choices. I want to find the human being underneath a character’s behaviour. I also believe that acting can create empathy.

For a brief period of time, an audience gets to walk in someone else’s shoes and—hopefully—come to understand a person they might otherwise never have encountered. Somewhere in that process, I usually discover something about myself. I act to better understand this entire human experience.

Romana Maggiora Vergano

as Sofia in Idda & Alice in The Spiral

For me, acting is an attempt to react honestly to fictional circumstances. It’s a very serious game. It’s an opportunity to take on the identity of a stranger for a limited time and allow myself to make choices that I probably wouldn’t make in my daily life with the promise that there will be no repercussions, or lasting consequences. It’s the freedom to step into a creative and safe space.

I act because it’s the only ‘space’ that forces me to truly be in the present, listening to others and to myself. The future and the past, guilt and responsibility, cease to exist and no longer haunt me. Acting means practising not-knowing, letting yourself be surprised, and marvelling.

I act to nurture empathy, and let it resonate throughout the world.

Amber Midthunder

as Jessie in How We Stand

I act because it brings me life.

I have never found an avenue of expression, inspiration and catharsis as much as storytelling. I hope to be able to help open up doors for my people and those coming after me the same way the generations before me did. Because of acting I have met the most incredible people, and travelled around the world.

Acting is a part of who I am.

Francis C. Edemobi

as Jordan in Voices

We spend a lot of our lives very quickly deciding who people are. Acting asks me to do the opposite. I have to stay with someone long enough to understand why they love the way they love, or hurt people, what they’re afraid of, and don’t know how to say.

I usually find pieces of myself I didn’t know were there when I begin and that’s what I love most about acting: for a little while, I get to live somebody else’s life, and hopefully make another person feel a little less alone in theirs.

Vidhya Subramanian

as Vidhya in Till the Milk Runs Dry

I am no stranger to the process of embodying characters that are not me, to put on a mask that, despite my initial reluctance, I must come to completely own. I’ve always been intrigued by the crossroads where the self and character converge and diverge. Acting brings a palpability to those crossroads as well as my connection to the character I play.

As a Bharatanatyam dancer, I use gesture, expression and body to manoeuvre through a movement, communicate a narrative, but it is ultimately about the distilling of these usages to a particular nuance, a moment that’ll allow me to fly.

On a film set, the immediacy of a camera and the word “action” flip a switch much faster than the luxury of gradually owning a character on stage. The camera is a gorgeous thing that takes me out of my comfort zone. With no time to recognize or register the adrenaline rush, it is simply a “do” moment. This gets you out of your head. You simply hope and trust your instinct kicks in. This is beautiful.

On the one hand, acting for the camera expands the body with dialogue, costume, props and the other performers. On the other hand, it imposes seeming limitations: the face cannot over-emote; gestures must be limited; the body language minimal. In acting, it becomes about how much I can say with just a lift of an eyebrow versus how that eyebrow can aid my face, hands and body in a movement or the portrayal of a character in dance. It becomes about the contrast between the imaginary other character in dance who will do whatever I tell them to versus the other actor, in-the-flesh, who I now have to listen to, respond to and mould my character as much as I do. These deeply felt qualities are exactly what I’m hoping for. It is a creative challenge for me, but I revel in challenges.

Vivian Sung

as Du Li An in The Age of Goodbyes

What I love about acting is getting to live so many lives I’ll never get to live. Every character opens up a different way of seeing the world: to love, to lose, to make different choices, to be someone else for a while. And somehow, the closer I get to a character, the more I understand myself. Parts of me show up that I didn’t know were there. Things become possible that I might never have tried in my own life. For me, that’s where freedom comes from.

Acting reminds me that I don’t have to be just one version of myself. And the more I understand that, the freer I feel in my own life.

Joshua Obra

as Shay in Sunburn

Acting is the only job I’ve ever truly earned.

I remember, when I was working in construction, I realized I had reached one of the lowest points in my life. I woke up every morning already hating the idea of going to work. I kept telling myself I needed to stay because I needed the money. Then, one day, I walked off the site and made a promise to myself: I never wanted to do something solely for money if the price of it was sacrificing my happiness.

I act because it makes me feel awake. I get to step into lives that aren’t mine, understand people I might never otherwise understand, and tell stories that can make someone feel seen. There’s something about being in front of a camera or on the stage—of having to be completely present—that I haven’t found anywhere else. It’s the work that I’ve chosen to keep earning.

Józef Coxaj Carrera

as Romero in Nosotros

I act because I like to believe the characters I portray are an extension of their existence over my own. When I act I feel that, in some way, I can forget about everything and focus solely on the life of the character I’m playing.

Because it demands a constant awareness between what happens with my body and my mind, I believe portraying any character is a true challenge—and if you don’t see it that way, why act at all? Specifically, for cinema, I constantly question whether I should step in and out of character every time the director calls action and cut, or stay inside the character until the shoot or the day’s call wraps. Either option is a challenge; it’s not easy. All that training and preparation in pre-production is crucial to achieving good acting work, but it’s even more important to sustain it during the shoot.

Helen Dang

as Penny in Whatcha Want

I love that acting asks me to keep discovering.

My background in movement, in dance and martial arts, has taught me to explore people without words—their presence, their weird little habits, their thought processes, their mindsets, their cultures—but acting allows me to add.

I see it as a place where I can bring all these different parts of my artistry and my Chinese-Canadian culture together to forge a life that’s intentionally crafted through the information I receive, the research I dive into, and the perspectives I choose. For me, that’s a challenging yet beautiful job. If I can make someone think or laugh, make them feel seen through the work, or to see themselves a little differently, that’s a very special thing to me.

Isabel DeRoy-Olson

as Janey in How We Stand

People always assume because I act I can also lie. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. I suppose this inability gives me the means to tell the truth at work.

Connection is something I have continued to search for throughout my life, and, when I found acting, it unearthed another way to connect with the people around me. Hopefully, in turn, it can make other people feel understood, too.

Maddy Foley

as Eve in Fivehead

Growing up stories were how I made sense of the world around me. When I was young, big emotions felt very overwhelming, and acting was my way of becoming familiar with them in a safe, controlled environment. There were performers who, in many ways, showed me what being human was going to feel like before I had the words for it myself.

As an adult, my love for performing has evolved into a much deeper love of storytelling. I love being able to experience something emotionally as an actor, on behalf of an audience, in service of a larger story. Storytelling is one of the deepest forms of human connection we have. Whether a story makes someone reflect on their own life, feel inspired, or feel seen, a great performance has the power to connect people to parts of themselves they may not even know exist.

Having known loneliness and despair at points in my own life, there is nothing more meaningful to me than the possibility that this work might make someone else feel less alone.

Kari Wong

as Paige in All That She Wants

I love the freedom that comes with exploring a character.

In a strange way, acting makes me feel like a kid again. When you’re a kid, you can pretend to be anyone without questioning whether you’re doing it “right” or worrying about how you’re being perceived. There’s a similar freedom when I step into a character. I can explore how they think, what they fear, what they love, and how they see the world, and there’s no judgment, just curiosity and play.

I don’t have to be myself for those moments, and I find that incredibly freeing.

Ong Xuan Jing

as Ah Girl in Ah Girl

I remember seeing my brother on TV and asking my mother if I can be like him too. That’s why she started to send in my portfolio for various castings.

I enjoy acting: it’s fun, and I do learn a lot through this process. This is something that I cannot learn from the classroom, and every experience is always different.

I hope this movie will be able to reach more audiences and help them understand—especially people who didn’t grow up in a complete family—that their childhood does not determine their destiny, and we can always be better if we have the right mindset. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s definitely doable.

Oustin de León

as Mario in I Am Mario

My motivation, as a non-professional actor joining this film, was to bring visibility to pregnant trans men. Many people know trans women exist, but don’t know about trans men, much less those trans men who want to carry a pregnancy. This reality needs to be known and respected; our trans stories are valid and deserve to be seen on the big screen. This film is a contribution to my community, and I loved acting to make room for this experience.

Mehrnoosh Satari

as Bahar in Head to Head

My character’s concerns were very close to my own, as well as the pain she felt.

That sense of injustice has always been with me in many aspects of my life, especially when it comes to women and their conditions worldwide. This character had that same perspective, which immediately caught my attention, and I felt very close to her.

At the same time, she had layers and complexities that, as an actress, I really enjoyed exploring. I loved the challenges of trying to understand those different aspects of the character, and discovering new ways to bring them to life.

A.C. Birch

as Tyler in Driftwood

Well the real story goes like this.

When I was nineteen, I was completely stuck on what to do with my life. It was a total coin toss between going to film school or the seminary to become a Christian missionary. I knew what drew me to missions—becoming the best and holiest Christian a person could be (and I was)—but acting and filmmaking was less clear. Probably some idea of glamour, notoriety, immortality. Likely some deeply buried instinct that I needed a way to explore and create new worlds, that this practice would be crucial to my survival.

Anyways, one day, a travelling prophet came to our church and singled me out from the crowd as someone God had a message for. The message basically boiled down to “You can be anyone you want to be,” which is pretty flimsy as far as fortune-telling goes, but for a teenage girl who had been raised in the church her whole life, this idea was pretty revolutionary.

Cut to 2026 and I’m a boy now and also an actor.

All thanks to God, I suppose.