Every year come September, Hollywood temporarily relocates to the most exotic, far-flung locale you can think of: Canada, of course! A-list stars, frantic publicists, and deal-hungry studio execs hijack Toronto’s sprawling network of cinemas, luxury bars, hotels, and fine-dining establishments. But all that behind-the-scenes hoopla should never eclipse the main event: the films, nearly 400 of them, many of which go on to Oscar glory. We could have compiled a list of all the bigwig master directors screening their latest offerings at TIFF — Werner Herzog (Salt and Fire, Into the Inferno), Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), Pedro Almodóvar (Julieta), Oliver Stone (Snowden), Jim Jarmusch (Patterson), and Terrence Malick (Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey) — but we’d much rather point you in the direction of a futuristic cannibal romance, a Nollywood slacker comedy, and a Syrian radio DJ turned documentarian. Keep an eye out for these 15 gems.
1. American Honey
British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Red Road) was awarded her third(!) Jury Prize at Cannes for this nearly three-hour-long debaucherous road trip through the American Midwest, acquainting us with a gang of disenfranchised teen misfits who sell fraudulent door-to-door magazine subscriptions. The sun-dappled story hinges on the potent chemistry between magnetic newcomer Sasha Lane (cast while on spring break with her friends) and Shia LaBoeuf, who sports a braided rat tail and seduces pretty young dumpster-divers at the Walmart checkout aisle while dancing to Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” Count us in.
2. The Bad Batch
Billed as a post-apocalyptic cannibal romance set in a West Texas wasteland, Ana Lily Amirpour’s long-awaited follow-up to her gorgeously gloomy Iranian vampire western (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) boasts a truly bonkers ensemble cast of actors, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Suki Waterhouse, and Giovanni Ribisi among them. The dystopian fairytale finds a young girl developing fuzzy feelings for one of her former cannibal captors, after losing an arm and leg… Expect lots of stylized meat-munching, incisive social commentary, and a kick-ass soundtrack.
3. Green White Green
Nigeria’s bustling film industry — the third highest-grossing in the world — is in the spotlight at this year’s festival, but this scrappy, Lagos-set slacker comedy has more in common with early-career Spike Lee joints than with the melodramatic love triangles and occult-heavy adultery that Nollywood viewers just can’t get enough of. In Abba Makama’s boisterous and satirical coming-of-age story, three aspiring artist-buddies on the cusp of adulthood decide to make a short film inspired by the history of Nigeria instead of their regular diet of video games and impromptu insult matches (called “yab-offs”).
4. The Human Surge
First reviews coming out of Locarno were straight-up laudatory for Argentinean director Eduardo Williams’ gritty, atmospheric triptych about unemployed youths seeking escape from their meandering grind. Indiewire even called it “the most ambitious debut of the year.” Its observational structure makes no tangible plot promises, but takes us from the cybersex antics of Exe and his buddies in a Buenos Aires flat to the similar webcam exhibitionism of another gang of aimless friends in Mozambique, to a woman in the Filipino jungle with a miserable job assembling electronics. It’s an innovative meditation on globalized labour and leisure, on hyper-connectivity and disorientation, in which life appears eerily the same from one country to the next.
5. India in a Day
Co-produced by Ridley Scott, directed by Canadian Richie Mehta and powered by Google, this is India’s largest-ever crowdsourced documentary and a fascinatingly intimate glimpse into modern India. Whittled down from 8,000+ clips shot by ordinary Indians on the October 10, 2015, the lyrical India in a Day takes us from dawn to dusk, from rural quietude to urban bustle, with a range of characters letting us in on their joys and woes, faith and families, and how technology is dramatically reshaping their lives. No played-out Taj Mahal snapshots to be found here; the focus is on the universal experience of being alive.
6. The Journey Is the Destination
A story that’s sadly all too commonplace in the realm of conflict photojournalism: Dan Eldon was a bright, British-born, Kenyan-raised artist and activist whose work documenting the mounting violence and famine in parts of Africa had already been published by Reuters, Time, and Newsweek when he met a tragic demise at 22, at the hands of an angry mob in Somalia. Director Bronwen Hughes adapts the titular publication — an impressive scrapbook-like pastiche of sketches, writings, and photographs that Eldon’s mother collaged from her son’s 17 journals — into a feature starring Ben Schnetzer (Goat) that celebrates the self-taught photojournalist’s fearlessness, compassion, and exuberant spirit.
7. La La Land
Who better to tackle an old-fashioned Ryan Gosling-Emma Stone musical extravaganza than the man whose last two features were the gritty, tap-dancing black-and-white musical Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) and the petrifying jazz-band-from-hell thriller Whiplash (2014). Damien Chazelle’s color-saturated nod to the golden age of cinema reunites Gosling with Stone for their third on-screen collab, this one about an aspiring jazz pianist and an L.A. actress who fall in love while singing and dancing about their Tinseltown dreams. The trailer has all the trappings of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with some dazzling romantic chemistry. Plus, Gosling’s got pipes.
8. Manchester by the Sea
Two of the film world’s most criminally underrated entities — director Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count On Me, Margaret) and actor Casey Affleck — coming together for a wistful family drama that’s already being touted as the clear Oscar frontrunner? Fact. The singular storyteller chronicles the travails of a dejected Boston area janitor (Affleck) forced to return to his hometown and become a surrogate dad to his big-man-on-campus teen nephew after the unexpected death of his brother. Matt Damon apparently gave the part to Casey “in a fit of generosity” after having initially been slated to take it on. Pleased as punch, we are.
9. Moonlight
After injecting a refreshing dose of race and class diversity to the uniformly Caucasian indie-hipster-romance genre with his delightful debut, Medicine for Melancholy, filmmaker Barry Jenkins’ long awaited follow-up is finally here — with a stunning trailer to boot. Based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight recounts the coming-of-age of Chiron, a young Black man navigating an increasingly broken home and the dangers of the Miami drug trade in the 1980s, while also wrestling with his repressed sexuality. In a powerful three-part narrative (following Chiron’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood), Jenkins paints an achingly beautiful and profoundly universal portrait of African-American masculinity. The film also marks Janelle Monáe’s feature film debut.
10. My Entire High School Is Sinking into the Sea
Like French cartoonists Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and Joann Sfar before him, acclaimed graphic novelist Dash Shaw (Bottomless Belly Button) takes a stab at bringing one of his hand-drawn beauts from the page to the big screen in dreamlike animation and gouache-painted celluloid. Described as “John Hughes fused with The Poseidon Adventure,” his surreal and strange high school survival saga features mounting jealousy between two besties, a massive earthquake, baby sharks, allegations of erectile dysfunction, and the voices of Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, and Maya Rudolph. Oh, and Susan Sarandon as Lorraine the Lunch Lady. Best excuse to revisit your sophomore year.
11. Nocturama
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, and Nice attacks, Nocturama is immediately incendiary stuff from one of France’s most unorthodox auteurs, Bertrand Bonello. Why? Well, the film tracks a group of multiracial, radicalized youths who hide out overnight in a luxurious shopping mall after carrying out terrorist attacks across Paris. There’s also the fact that Bonello doesn’t point to religious extremism or provide any motivation for his characters’ indignation and rage against the République. A project originally conceived in 2010, years before a handful of terrorists would batter the country’s morale, it’ll be interesting to see what viewers can glean from it.
12. Nocturnal Animals
Fashion maven Tom Ford, who impressed with his 2009 debut A Single Man, full of 1960s repression and designer-approved longing, adapts another novel (Austin Wright’s Tony and Susan) for his second auspicious foray into the film world. A slow burning story-within-a-story about past demons that come creeping back, Nocturnal finds a prolific L.A. gallery owner (Amy Adams) engrossed by a thriller novel she received by mail, penned by her estranged ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). As she isolates herself from her frequently MIA husband (Armie Hammer), she plows through the troubling page-turner and worries about how things will — for the fictitious hapless family, and for her.
13. Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves
Quebec filmmakers Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie crack the three-hour mark with their highly anticipated docu-fiction hybrid about the Maple Spring — a May 1968-esque wave of student protests that rocked Montréal in 2012, exacerbating latent tensions between police, politicians, and a generation of youths that felt slighted. The creative duo fast-forwards five years in time to imagine a failed revolution, and a tumultuous terrorist group determined to really cause ruckus. Shrewdly stylized and poetically paced, this timely meditation on political engagement and radical rhetoric will get you all riled up and hitting the pavement all over again.
14. Two Lovers and a Bear
Kim Nguyen (director of the Oscar-nominated War Witch) conjures up an eerie arctic romance with a touch of magical realism — and a talking polar bear. In this snow-white psychological drama, the titular pair of brooding lovers — Lucy (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black) and Roman (Dane DeHaan) — has relocated to Canada’s inhospitable über-North (Iqaluit, Nunavut) to shake away demons, seek refuge, and postpone the inevitable. But when ghosts from Lucy’s past come a-knockin’, all their latent traumas and emotional baggage make a mysterious mess of things.
15. The War Show
Syrian radio host-turned-director Obaidah Zytoon could never have imagined things would take such a tragic and harrowing turn when she first took to the streets with her group of artist and activist friends. She began documenting their cautiously hopeful experiences in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring. In a year that will see numerous Syrian-themed docs hit the festival circuit, The War Show is particularly devastating and unforgettable as Zytoon’s first-hand video diary chronicles the descent of a country from marches of freedom into civil war and violent repression. The film acquaints us with Zytoon’s inner circle — a heavy metal devotee, a poet, a dentistry student — before Assad’s regime begins to arrest, torture, and murder some of them. Required viewing.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 8-18, 2016.
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Text Michael-Oliver Harding