From Iran’s Between Dreams and Hope to Argentina’s The Currents to Canada’s Meadowlarks, here are the best acquisition titles (films still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and/or the UK) at TIFF 2025.
Click here to find all of our TIFF 2025 coverage.
Discover one film you didn’t know you needed:
Not in the zeitgeist. Not pushed by streamers.
But still easy to find — and worth sitting with.
And a guide to help you do just that.
Every year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), I go on the hunt for the festival’s hidden gems — the films that don’t necessarily have major stars and haven’t already made a big splash on the festival circuit. While many films that play at TIFF have already secured distribution, here you’ll find the best films I’ve seen at the festival so far that are still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and/or the UK, and thus are in danger of not becoming available to wider audiences. Without a distributor, most films will never become available on VOD, and may never again screen in cinemas in Canada, the US, and/or the UK outside of a festival context.
We don’t want that to happen! These films deserve your attention. This list aims to draw attention to excellent films that might not get coverage elsewhere. If you’re at TIFF (or heading to another festival this fall), these are films that you’ll want to prioritize because this may be your only chance ever to see the films (and even more likely, the only chance to see them on a big screen). At the same time, by drawing audiences, press, and industry to these screenings, we hope to help generate buzz around the films that could lead to a distribution deal.
It can happen! Our enthusiasm for films has landed them distribution deals in the past. For a sense of how well our picks have fared in the past, check out our 2021 “Where Are They Now?” piece about every film that made our list from 2016-2019 inclusive. You can also check out our 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 lists — many films are still seeking distribution.
Below is our list of the best TIFF films still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, the UK, or all three. This list will be updated throughout the festival as I see more films and embargoes lift.
Aki (Darlene Naponse, Canada)
Melding the activist sensibilities and attention to the land of Falls Around Her with the more overtly experimental approach of Stellar, Naponse’s first foray into documentary is a thrilling look at a year in the life of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (shot over four). Almost completely wordless, Aki tracks how the changing seasons affect the land and the people on it. Snow falls on trees, water freezes, and then slowly melts and drips. The rustling leaves of fall turn into the quiet snow-covered terrain of winter. People collect sap from trees, children trade hockey for basketball, hunt rabbits, weave baskets, and make drums.
Naponse focuses on the micro — like the reflections in a single drop of sap leaving a tree — and the macro — like how every living thing is part of an ecosystem, moved by wind, rain, snow, and sunlight. There are moments of utter beauty deep in the reserve, and then drone shots of how colonialism (and mining) have destroyed the landscapes further. The sound of a train arriving has never felt so violent because of how it interrupts the peace of the land. People and the wildlife have adapted to it: bears use concrete walls to scratch themselves and go dumpster diving while birds learn to navigate around the smokestacks.
Aki is a creative nonfiction documentary meant for the big screen, so attentive to each image which it asks us to sit with and watch for minutes. The sound design by Steve Munro gives us a glimpse at feet on snow, ice cracking, wildlife beneath the ice, and more, while the score lends the film a real majesty. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous!
Aki is still seeking distribution in US and UK. Naponse’s previous films are hard to find outside of Canada so see this if it comes to a festival near you!
Between Dreams and Hope (Farnoosh Samadi, Iran)
The second feature from Iranian filmmaker Farnoosh Samadi (180 Degree Rule) follows a trans man, Azad (Fereshteh Hosseini), and his girlfriend, Nora (Sadaf Asgari), as they attempt to bring their dreams of marriage to life by getting Azad access to gender-affirming care. But bureaucratic red tape that puts the patriarchy in charge of their fate, including Azad’s violent, estranged father, threatens to get in the way. Samadi has a knack for portraying the dehumanizing process of dealing with unfair bureaucratic systems without ever dehumanizing her characters, thereby granting them the dignity that the system denies.
Between Dreams and Hope is still seeking distribution in Canada, US, and UK.
Couture (Alice Winocour, France)
Alice Winocour’s Couture is set backstage in the world of high fashion during Paris Fashion Week, and tells the story of how women’s bodies are shaped, traumatized, and commodified by fashion and commerce. The film tells three intersecting stories of women who are somewhat outsiders to the fashion world: Maxine (Angelina Jolie), an American film director making a video for fashion week; Ada, an 18-year-old South Sudanese model making her Fashion Week debut; and Angèle, a Parisian makeup designer and veteran of the event. The film’s original title, Stitches, more closely resembles the French title (Coutures), which is a double entendre for high fashion and seams. Because the film juxtaposes how women’s bodies are dealt with both in fashion and in medicine (and surgery, hence the other stitches).
Listen to my in-depth podcast on Couture, which connects it to Winocour’s larger body of work.
Couture is still seeking distribution in Canada, US, and UK. Presumably, having Jolie as a producer will eventually lead to a distribution deal!
The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler, Argentina)
The third feature from Argentine filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler (Back to Stay) is a dreamy glimpse into the psyche of a woman who might just be ready to escape her domestic life. It’s full of psychologically rich spaces: dark corridors, billowing curtains, and, of course, currents — the watery kind, but also the emotional ones. Often lingering on the line between dreams and reality, the film hews closely to the protagonist’s perspective, and even when it notably leaves her side, we still wonder if what we’re seeing is what she might imagine. Full of long takes and many questions, Mumenthaler’s The Currents is ultimately a film about the importance of relationships between women.
The Currents is still seeking distribution in Canada, US, and UK. None of Mumenthaler’s films to date are available in these territories.
Franz (Agnieszka Holland, Czech Republic/Germany/Poland )
Agnieszka Holland’s Franz is an unconventional biopic for an unconventional writer that acknowledges that Franz Kafka’s legacy extends not just to what he wrote, but also to how he has been interpreted. To that end, many key figures in his life give direct addresses to the camera, about a decade after his death, to narrate their interpretations of the events of his life, sometimes with contradictory accounts. It also allows Holland to connect Kafka’s writings to his prescience about the rise of totalitarianism and Nazism, which would affect his Jewish family after his death. Franz is a very Gothic story — you can always feel the walls and ceilings boxing Franz in — which makes it also feel like Franz’s story seen through his lens on the world.
Franz is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
The Fence (Claire Denis, France)
Adapting Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play Black Battles with Dogs for the screen, The Fence is a rumination on masculinity, power, and colonialism on one particularly fraught night. A worker has died on a construction site in Africa, overseen by Horn (Matt Dillon) and engineer Cal (Tom Blyth). The dead man’s brother (Isaach De Bankolé) comes to collect the body, suspecting foul play, and waits at the titular fence until daybreak for the body to be delivered. That same evening, Horn’s young wife (Mia McKenna-Bruce) arrives from England. Tensions rise, secrets are kept and unfolded, and the white men are in a complicated game of exploitation, perhaps even of each other.
Blyth and McKenna-Bruce are key standouts in this very strong and seasoned cast. Blyth is chillingly charismatic as the entitled British transplant who believes domination is his birthright, and McKenna-Bruce brings a steely vulnerability (and her own white entitlement) to the mix. Also, everyone is wearing Saint Laurent (so chic!), because if you’re going to be miserable in the middle of dusty Africa, you might as well do it in style.
The Fence is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Lovely Day (Philippe Falardeau, Canada)
Philippe Falardeau’s Lovely Day, an unapologetically Montreal film — in which Orange Julep and the Biodome play significant visual roles — is set during the ‘lovely day’ of Alain’s wedding. Alain has Crohn’s disease and an anxiety disorder, perhaps from the chronic illness and perhaps from the emotional roller-coaster that was living with his parents before and after their divorce. So as Alain’s anxiety spirals and his gut complains, the film flashes back to key moments in his childhood, with his parents, friends, and unrequited crush, to explain how he got here today.
Light on its feet like Falardeau’s best films, Lovely Day gently navigates the echoing trauma of immigration, the challenges of managing a broken family, and how wedding days are as much about the people around you as they are about the person you’re marrying. The film’s French title, Milles secrets milles dangers, taken from a medical textbook, hints at its interest in Alain’s embodied experience of living with chronic disease, which is an endless series of secrets and dangers.
Lucky Lu (Lloyd Lee Choi, USA/Canada)
Lloyd Lee Choi’s Lucky Lu follows Lu JiaCheng, an NYC food deliverer from China (Chang Chen) over a couple of days, where he faces economic and domestic uncertainty when his bike gets stolen — just as his wife and daughter are about to arrive for a reunion that’s been years in the making. Rich in the sounds of New York City’s streets, the film heavily gestures toward Bicycle Thieves, but with the specificity of a dog-eat-dog world where every immigrant could become desperate enough to make even his friends a target. Expanding his TIFF 2022 short to feature length, also lensed by Norm Li (The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open), offers Lee Choi the opportunity to enrich the film’s setting and deepen Lu JiaCheng’s emotional ties.
Lucky Lu is still seeking distribution in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Meadowlarks (Tasha Hubbard, Canada)
In Meadowlarks, Tasha Hubbard adapts her documentary Birth of a Family, about her own journey of reconnecting with her siblings she was separated from in the Sixties Scoop, into a lightly fictionalized film. This chamber drama, set over the course of a long weekend, is full of star power (including the great Michael Greyeyes and Carmen Moore), as four siblings reconnect for the first time after being separated by the state fifty years ago. The specific traumas they experienced were partly a factor of their age — the eldest were in foster care while the younger were adopted out — but they all felt deeply alone, with a strong loss of community and culture, even if their adoptive families gave them material privileges. As they figure out how to collectively grieve and start looking toward the future, we do indeed see the birth of a family.
Meadowlarks is still seeking distribution in the US and UK.
Nika & Madison (Eva Thomas, Canada)
With Nika & Madison, Eva Thomas expands on her short Redlights (2023) to tell the story of the best-case scenario a twentysomething Indigenous woman, Madison (Star Slade), could hope for if faced with a Starlight Tour — where Canadian police officers drive Indigenous people to isolated locations outside of the city limits, and dump them (or worse).
When her estranged childhood friend Nika (Ellyn Jade) injures a police officer while rescuing Madison, they find out how terrifying it is to be on the wrong side of the law. With a supportive family, a supportive Chief (Gail Maurice), and even a Black cop (Amanda Brugel) from the city aware of the disproportionate injustices Indigenous people face when dealing with the law, Nika & Madison shows how terrifying the colonial justice system is, even at the best of times. Part procedural and part hangout movie, Nika & Madison is a showcase for Indigenous talent on screen and behind the camera.
Nika & Madison is still seeking distribution in the US and the UK.
Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany/France/Hungary)
Rolling into TIFF after winning multiple awards at Venice, including the FIPRESCI and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor, this ambitious, thought-provoking film does not disappoint. Set across three different timelines (1908, 1972, 2020), each shot with different technology (35 mm, 16 mm, and digital), Silent Friend tracks the lives of three people who attend a university and become enamoured with plant life on or off campus — the titular silent friend(s).
While the plants and buildings remain, the cast of characters change over the years, but all share a desire for connection — and a sense of being an outsider. Whether that’s the first woman admitted to a science program at the university in 1908, a Professor from China, or a quiet boy who can’t quite get up the nerve to tell his roommate how he feels about her. The trees witness these events, but also play a key role in the connections the people we watch make.
Supported by the Sloan Science Foundation (a sure sign that there will be woo-woo science in the film, and boy is there), the film is nevertheless brimming with ideas about human isolation and connection, the human fascination with trees and using science to understand the mysteries of the world, and how, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. (Sad to say, not a whole lot has changed in academia for women.) The film earns its lengthy 2.5 hour runtime and breezes by surprisingly quickly.
Silent Friend is still seeking distribution in the US and the UK.
Discover one film you didn’t know you needed:
Not in the zeitgeist. Not pushed by streamers.
But still easy to find — and worth sitting with.
And a guide to help you do just that.
