Alex Heeney picks 15 must-see films at TIFF 2024 (sight unseen) from filmmakers she loves.
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This year’s Toronto International Film Festival will be my 22nd, meaning I’ve been attending the festival for more than half my life. Since the beginning, I’ve always sought to mix my schedule with much-anticipated films from auteurs I love and under-the-radar films that could prove to be significant discoveries.
Sight unseen, this list focuses on films by major auteurs and filmmakers that should be major (but haven’t entirely broken out) and whose work I’ve previously really enjoyed. I’m only including films I haven’t seen at previous festivals. That means I’m leaving off several excellent films from other festivals that I would highly recommend: Pepe, All We Imagine As Light, and No Other Land.
You may notice that I haven’t quite reached gender parity on this list. Unfortunately, that’s partly because the festival only programmed a few films by established women directors. Most of the festival’s films by women are first or second features. It’s still very hard for women to get a second or third feature made.
Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK)
According to the TIFF website, Hard Truths is a darkly funny family drama about an easily offended ornery woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who lashes out at everyone around her.
Why I can’t wait to see it
I loved Mike Leigh’s last film, Peterloo (2018). In fact, I ended up writing a whole book about it, Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh Collaboration. Six years later, we finally have a new film from Leigh, which finds him re-teaming with his Secrets & Lies (1996) star Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Mike Leigh has never made a bad film. I jibe with about 90% of his films, which is a high batting average (apologies to Mr. Turner) and am still glad to have seen the rest. So Hard Truths feels like a sure thing.
Hard Truths has a Canadian and US distributor, which will release the film in early 2025.
The Girl With the Needle (Magnus von Horn, Denmark)
Set in post-WW1 Copenhagen, The Girl with a Needle follows a young factory worker woman who meets a charismatic woman running a secret adoption agency for mothers with unwanted children. The titular needle appears to refer to an old and ill-advised abortion method that the protagonist attempts.
When we talked to von Horn in 2021, he described The Girl with the Needle as “a horror costume drama. It’s about a young woman who gets pregnant with the wrong guy. I always wanted to make a horror film, not in the way of genre horror; I think you can make a horror film [that is also] a drama.”
Why I can’t wait to see it
I’ve been a fan of Danish writer-director Magnus von Horn’s work since his sensitive feature debut, The Here After (2015), which has incredible mise en scène and empathy for its complicated and often unlikable teenage protagonist. His follow-up film, Sweat (2020), about a social media influencer struggling with the pressures of constantly performing, is even better. We podcasted on both films in episode 101 because von Horn is, in my opinion, an important emerging talent.
Given we recently put out a podcast season on abortion on film, I can’t wait to see von Horn’s addition to the canon. The film also stars the incredible Trine Dyrholm, who was absolutely fantastic in Queen of Hearts (2019), which Catherine Breillat recently remade as Last Summer at last year’s TIFF.
Mubi will release The Girl With The Needle in North America, and I expect a run at the Lightbox
Queer (Luca Guadagnino, Italy/USA)
Justin Kuritzkes (Challengers) adapts William S. Burroughs’ novel about an American ex-pat in post-war Mexico City who frequents gay bars, wanders the streets, and tries to entice a young bi-curious Oklahoman on a quest to the Amazon.
Why I can’t wait to see it
Every Luca Guadagnino movie is an event at Seventh Row. We wrote a special issue on A Bigger Splash and a book on Call Me by Your Name. Guadagnino’s Challengers is already on my list of the best films of 2024 so far. Reteaming with cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who also shot Call Me by Your Name and Challengers), it’s sure to be a film for the senses even if ith as other flaws. I’m also looking forward to Daniel Craig in his post-Bond era, returning to character actor mode.
I am also curious to see the evolution of Guadagnino’s collaborations with his Challengers team: screenwriter Kuritzkes (whose promising Challengers screenplay read like a first draft that needed significant work), costume designer Jonathan Anderson (better known as the man behind Loewe, which puts up-and-coming celebrities in often awful clothing), and editor Marco Costa (whose work on Guadagnino’s last three fiction projects has been a bit shaggy for my personal tastes). It’s not that their work on Challengers wasn’t good. I just had mixed feelings about it (especially compared with Guadagnino’s earlier collaborators). I talked about these collaborators on our Challengers podcast. Nevertheless, I’ll be queuing to see this one!
Queer is still seeking a US/Canada/UK distributor. That said, tickets are already going for $350 to the premiere so I suspect it’ll be snatched up right quick .
The End (Joshua Oppenheimer, USA)
Best known as a documentary filmmaker, Joshua Oppenheimer has now made an apocalyptic musical starring Seventh Row favourites Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, and Stephen Graham. According to Wikipedia, “a wealthy family lives in an underground bunker two decades after the end of the world, which they directly contributed to.”
Why I can’t wait to see it
Joshua Oppenheimer is best known as the director of the documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence (which made our list of our 50 favourite films of the 2010s). He now takes his interest in people’s complicity in atrocities to the fiction realm….in a musical?! I’m already curious about what that could look like! When I talked to Oppenheimer about The Look of Silence, he told me about his approach to its ‘magic realist’ sound design. Given his sensitivity to sound, I can’t wait to see what he does with the canvas of a musical. And it’s been almost a decade since George MacKay took to the screen to sing in Sunshine on Leith.
Elevation Pictures (Canada) and Bleecker Street (US) will release the film theatrically in 2024 or 2025.
Bird (Andrea Arnold, UK)
Andrea Arnold returns to fiction filmmaking for the first time since American Honey (2016) with this story of a father (Barry Keoghan) and his twelve-year-old daughter who, according to TIFF, “must seek attention and adventure elsewhere”.
Why I can’t wait to see it
Arnold is a major auteur and thoughtful visual stylist, whose films linger for years after, even if you don’t like them much! I didn’t connect to American Honey at the time (I liked it more than our critic Elena Lazic, but not by much), but it’s still branded in my mind more strongly than most films I saw in 2016, especially Sasha Lane’s performance. Shot by the great cinematograpehr Robbie Ryan, it’s a must-see on the big screen.
Among Arnold’s other collaborators whose work I’m excited for is friend of Seventh Row editor Joe Bini (who also did American Honey). You can read about his thoughts on editing in our books on You Were Never Really Here (where he compares Ramsay to Arnold) and Subjective Realities: The Art of Creative Nonfiction. Plus, I will watch basically anything with Barry Keoghan (whom I’ve been following closely ever since ‘71, and even interviewed in 2016, when I couldn’t have imagined he’d now be Oscar-nominated) and Franz Rogowski (always worth seeing in basically anything).
Mubi will release the film in North America later this year.
The Return (Uberto Pasolini, UK)
Writer-director Uberto Pasolini (Nowhere Special) adapts Homer’s The Odyssey for the screen with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.
Why I can’t wait to see it
An Engish Patient reunion in 2024? Directed by Uberto Pasolini, who already made one of the best films of the year (Nowhere Special)? Enough said! Pasolini got a career-best performance out of James Norton in Nowhere Special, a sensitive, heartbreaking film where he avoids sentimentality at about every turn. So I’d be down for whatever he made next…but give me Ralph Fiennes, too?!
The Return will receive a theatrical release in Canada and the US, date TBA.
Can I Get A Witness? (Ann-Marie Fleming, Canada)
According to the TIFF website, “Keira Jang, Joel Oulette, and Sandra Oh star in this introspective live-action and animated feature set in the near future when technology and travel are almost completely banned, and nobody is allowed to live past age 50.”
Why I can’t wait to see it
Director Ann-Marie Fleming’s animated feature Window Horses about a Chinese-Iranian-Canadian poet navigating her cultural identity was a highlight not just of the TIFF 2016 but the year. Even though it has a Canadian distributor, it’s likely to have a short theatrical release and may not be released outside of Canada. Plus, it stars the always reliable Sandra Oh, and one of Seventh Row’s handpicked TIFF emerging actors of 2020, Joel Ouelette (who was so fantastic in Trickster and Monkey Beach).
Mongrel Media will release Can I Get a Witness? in Canada, though there is no guarantee of a theatrical one. The film is still seeking a distributor in other territories.
The Salt Path (Marianne Elliott, UK)
From the TIFF website: “After losing their home and livelihood, a middle-aged couple -Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs] impulsively set out on a 630-mile walk along the southwest English coast, a walk complicated to no small degree by the recent diagnosis of a terminal neurodegenerative disease.” It’s based on the best-selling novel.
Why I can’t wait to see The Salt Path
I would follow Marianne Elliott thanks to her epic, brilliant National Theatre revival of Angels in America on stage. (A recording of the production is available on NT at Home and is a must-see.) Perhaps best known as the director of The Curious Incident of the Dog (a gorgeously directed production of a problematic play) and War Horse, both at the National Theatre, she’s a major directorial talent in theatre. More recently, she gender-flipped Company, which won multiple Olivier Awards, including one for Jonathan Bailey.
The Salt Path marks Elliot’s feature debut, and debuting first features from major theatre directors is a time-honoured TIFF tradition (see also Dominic Cooke’s On Chesil Beach, Benedict Andrews’ Una). With cinematography by Hélène Louvart (who also shot this year’s gorgeous La Chimera) and a fantastic cast, I’m sure it will be worth seeing even if it doesn’t live up to Elliott’s theatre work.
The Salt Path is still seeking a distributor in North America and the UK
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, Zambia/UK)
From the Cannes website: “On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family, in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.”
Why I can’t wait to see it
After the success of her feature debut, I Am Not a Witch (2017), A24 snatched up the chance to work with Nyoni on her second feature. I Am Not a Witch was a darkly funny, surreal Zambian-set fairy tale that drops you into a world and asks you to catch up and discover it like so many of the best films. From her first feature, Nyoni’s stylized aesthetic and unconventional (by Western standards) humour marked her as a director to watch.
A24 has distribution rights for the film in Canada and the US. It will be rolling out to cinemas in the US in December. There’s no guarantee for A24 titles in Canada these days (see Earth Mama and Janet Planet).
Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
From the TIFF website, “The latest feature from Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes, which earned him the Best Director prize at Cannes, Grand Tour is a delirious, romantic, wildly ambitious travelogue that toggles eras, cultures, and styles.”
Why I can’t wait to see Grand Tour
Miguel Gomes has somehow remained one of arthouse cinema’s best-kept secrets despite being one of the most inventive and often funniest auteurs out there. His fantastic film Tabu (2012) made ripples on the arthouse circuit, but despite making many top 10 lists has not had the legacy it deserves. His magnum opus, the six-part six-hour Arabian Nights is an inventive, frustrating, funny, and totally original film. (There’s a great essay on the film’s creative nonfiction elements by Brandon Nowalk in our ebook Subjective Realities.) Expect a visually stunning, offbeat, sometimes funny film like nothing else you’ve ever seen.
Mubi will release a Grand Tour in North America in 2024 or 2025. Expect a theatrical roll-out that will include the Ligthbox.
The Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsangari)
The TIFF website describes The Harvest as a period piece that is a “haunting allegory about xenophobic anxiety and unchecked capitalism.”
Why I can’t wait to see The Harvest
The last time Tsangari was at TIFF was in 2015 with the black comedy Chevalier, which eviscerates a group of men vacationing on a yacht for their fragile masculinity. (You can read my TIFF interview with Tsangari about the film..)
More recently, Tsangari directed the excellent miniseries about a romantic triad, Trigonometry (also starring Labed), for the BBC. The film finds Tsangari returning to her interest in masculinity, which is exciting. It also stars Harry Melling (yes, Dudley Dursley), one of the most exciting character actors on the rise.
The Harvest is still seeking a distributor in North America.
An Unfinished Film (Lou Ye, China)
According to the TIFF website, “Lou Ye recalls the days of the Chinese lockdown through a hybrid of documentary, web videos from the COVID era, and fragments from his past films.” The film is a powerful drama [which recognizes] a nation’s collective trauma.”
Why I can’t wait to see An Unfinished Film
Considering that the COVID-19 pandemic has been the defining event of the decade, there are still precious few films that address what life was (and is) like with this massive social-shifting event. We previously took stock of these films on the podcast in early 2022.
I’ve loved several of the films that tried, including Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, The Tsugua Diaries (co-directed by Miguel Gomes), COMA, and past TIFF Midnight Madness title Sick. A few documentaries have documented different aspects of the pandemic (e.g., My Place Is Here,76 Days), but this still feels like a nascent area for filmmaking. I look forward to this latest addition.
Plus, as a fan of hybrid documentaries (I co-edited and co-authored a book on creative nonfiction), I’m game.
Film Movement will release An Unfinished Film in Canada, which almost guarantees no theatrical release in Toronto.
Seeds (Kaniehtiio Horn, Canada)
Mohawk actress Kaniehtiio Horn stars in her directorial debut, which the TIFF website describes as a “campy revenge thriller” that addresses Kanienʼkehá:ka food sovereignty.
Why I can’t wait to see Seeds
I’ve watched Kaniehtiio Horn steal scenes in supporting roles for years, from Jeff Barnaby’s short The Colony to Sugar Daddy to Alice Darling. Last year, she appeared in Eva Thomas’s excellent short Redlights. So I’m excited to see what this hugely talented actor can do behind the camera, and TIFF is a great place to discover emerging Indigenous talent.
Seeds has a Canadian distributor (Level Film) but is still seeking international distribution.
They Will Be Dust (Carlos Marqués-Marcet, Switzerland/Spain/Italy)
The film follows a long-term couple (Ángela Molina and the always excellent Alfredo Castro) seeking assisted suicide together in Switzerland. From the TIFF website: “Unequal parts contemporary dance-musical and taut ensemble drama with a theatrical — at times almost comical — intensity, They Will Be Dust reaches for the raw emotional core of humanity in all its inherent messiness.”
Why I can’t wait to see They Will Be Dust
I loved Carlos Marqués-Marcet’s 10,000 KM, one of the first films about the challenges of long-distance digital communication in a relationship. Marqués-Marcet won the Goya for best director for the film, which featured two excellent performances and a new approach to film grammar.
Like Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End, Marqués-Marcet ventures into musical territory in They Will Be Dust. The film stars Chilean character actor Alfredo Castro, who started in theatre and TV but became a staple in Chilean movies after working with Pablo Larraín in Tony Manero (2008) and Post Mortem (2010). These days, he shows up in pretty much every Chilean (and a few other Latin American) movies (Neruda, The Club, The Settlers, From Afar, Rojo), so it’s become a bit of a TIFF tradition to see his latest films at the fest.
They Will Be Dust is still seeking an international distributor.
Sweet Angel Baby (Melanie Oates, Canada)
Set in a small fishing community in Newfoundland, Sweet Angel Baby follows a woman who “sees all of her relationships put in jeopardy after her secret social media persona is exposed.”
Why I can’t wait to see it
Most Canadian films are made in and set in Ontario or Quebec, so it’s always a treat to see a film from Atlantic Canada. I’ve not seen Melanie Oates’s first feature, Body and Bones, but it comes highly recommended by our friends at the Hazel & Katniss & Harry & Starr podcast.
Sweet Angel Baby stars two major acting talents: Michaela Kurimsy and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. We’ve followed Kurimsky’s star rise since her breakout performance in Jasmin Mozaffari’s Firecrackers (2018). We picked Kurimsky for our 2020 list of the 13 most exciting emerging actors at TIFF 2020.
Writer-director-actress Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a Seventh Row favourite, having directed the amazing Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy (2021) and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019). I’ve also enjoyed watching her act in other projects, including Night Raiders (2021) and Stellar (2022). Tailfeathers is one of those actresses where you know the project is worth seeing if she’s involved.
Sweet Angel Baby is still seeking a distributor in Canada and internationally.
