6 MOVIES TO CATCH AT TIFF THIS WEEK

Six titles we’re making room for in our festival week.

Every September, Toronto becomes a meeting point for filmmakers, artists, actors and cinephiles from around the world. The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is one of the world’s leading film festivals, bringing together international and Canadian cinema through screenings, premieres, conversations and events across the city.

Now in its 51st edition, TIFF 2026 arrives with another packed programme spanning everything from major premieres and Gala Presentations to emerging voices in Discovery, experimental work in Wavelengths and the cult energy of Midnight Madness.

With so much to choose from, we’ve narrowed it down to six films on our radar this week.

1. GENTLE MONSTER

   Marie Kruetzer

What happens when the person you trust most suddenly becomes someone you no longer recognize?

In Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer turns an ordinary family life into an unsettling study of trust, love and the limits of what we think we know about the people closest to us. The film follows Lucy, a concert pianist who moves to the countryside with her husband and young son, only for their quiet new beginning to collapse when the police arrive at their home and her husband is arrested.

Starring Léa Seydoux, with Catherine Deneuve and Jella Haase, the film is less interested in the perpetrator than in the emotional aftermath, the silence, disbelief and impossible questions left behind. Inspired by a real case that deeply affected Kreutzer, Gentle Monster explores how quickly intimacy can turn into uncertainty, and how little we may truly know about the lives happening behind closed doors.

Premiering in Competition at Cannes 2026, this is one of the darker films to keep on your TIFF radar: intimate, unsettling and built around a question that lingers long after the screen goes dark, how well can we ever know another person?

2. HOMBRE AL AGUA

   Gael García Bernal

What begins as an act of heroism soon becomes something far more complicated.

In Hombre al agua, Gael García Bernal tells the story of Camilo, a Cuban lifeguard who saves the life of Abel, a wealthy Mexican businessman. Grateful for being rescued, Abel brings Camilo to Mexico, offering him a new life filled with opportunity, privilege and belonging, but as Camilo becomes increasingly entangled in the family’s world, what first appears to be a dream begins to reveal something much darker.

Blending comedy, drama and surreal undertones, the film becomes a fable about power, manipulation and the seductive promises of a better life. García Bernal uses Camilo’s journey to explore what happens when being rescued also means becoming trapped, and how easily gratitude can become a tool of control.

The film marks García Bernal’s third feature as a director and features an ensemble cast including Esmeralda Pimentel, Manuel García-Rulfo, Natalia Oreiro and Ricky Martin, who also serves as executive producer. After its world premiere in Venice, Hombre al agua arrives in Toronto as one of the Latin American films worth keeping on your TIFF radar.

3. CLUB KID

Jordan Firstman

What happens when a life built around parties, chaos and staying young suddenly asks you to grow up?

In Club Kid, Jordan Firstman makes his feature directorial debut as Peter, a washed-up New York club promoter whose hedonistic world is interrupted when his ten-year-old son, someone he never knew existed, unexpectedly enters his life. What follows is an unlikely coming-of-age story, except this time, the person learning how to grow up is the parent.

Starring Firstman alongside Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva and newcomer Reggie Absolom, the film moves between irreverent comedy, nightlife excess and unexpected tenderness. Beneath the parties and messiness is a story about queer identity, chosen family and the strange, sometimes painful process of becoming an adult when you thought you had already figured yourself out.

After premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Club Kid arrives at TIFF as one of this year’s films worth watching for its unapologetically messy energy and its portrait of a generation caught somewhere between freedom, self-destruction and the desire to belong.

4. WE ARE ALL STRANGERS

Anthony Chen

Sometimes becoming an adult means learning how to love the people who are still learning how to love you.

Set in contemporary Singapore, We Are All Strangers follows 21-year-old Junyang as he finds himself confronting adulthood sooner than expected. While his own relationship takes an unexpected turn, his father begins a new chapter of his own when an exuberant woman enters his life. As their worlds slowly intertwine, father and son are forced to reconsider love, responsibility and what it truly means to build a family.

Anthony Chen, known for Ilo Ilo and Wet Season, completes his “Growing Up” trilogy with a deeply human story about the bonds we inherit and the ones we choose. Premiering in Competition at the Berlinale, the 157-minute drama looks closely at the quiet weight of economic hardship, generational expectations and the sacrifices made in the name of family.

Tender without being sentimental, We Are All Strangers asks a simple but difficult question: how do we learn to belong to one another?

5. BUCKING FASTARD

Werner Herzog

Some bonds are so deep that two people begin to move through the world as one.

In Bucking Fastard, Werner Herzog returns to fiction with the strange and hypnotic story of Jean and Joan Holbrooke, sisters whose connection seems almost otherworldly. Played by real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara, they speak in unison, dress alike, fall in love with the same man and share the same dreams. When their desire for a life beyond the ordinary takes hold, the sisters embark on an increasingly surreal journey in search of an imaginary place where true love might still exist.

Inspired loosely by the real-life Yorkshire twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, whom Herzog encountered decades ago, the film transforms their unusual story into something more mythical. Herzog’s fascination with outsiders, obsession and the limits of human connection is once again at the centre, but here, it arrives wrapped in absurdity, tenderness and a touch of the uncanny.

With its dreamlike landscapes, synchronized performances and unmistakably Herzogian strangeness, Bucking Fastardfeels less like a conventional love story than a fable about belonging, solitude and two people determined to find a world that makes sense to them.

6. ALPHA GANG

David & Nathan Zellner

What if an alien invasion looked less like the end of the world, and more like the coolest biker gang in town?

In Alpha Gang, David and Nathan Zellner turn the classic alien-invasion story into a strange, stylish and unexpectedly human comedy. A group of extraterrestrials arrives on Earth disguised as a leather-clad biker gang, with one mission: conquer the planet. But their carefully calculated plan begins to fall apart when they encounter the one thing they were never prepared for, human emotion.

Led by Cate Blanchett, Riley Keough, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Chris Pine and Lily-Rose Depp, the film plays with the absurdity of outsiders discovering everything that makes humanity so difficult, and perhaps so irresistible: music, desire, friendship, art and the strange pleasure of simply being alive.

Following their delightfully bizarre Sasquatch Sunset, the Zellner brothers once again find comedy in the unfamiliar. Alpha Gang arrives at TIFF as an International Premiere and promises a collision of retro sci-fi, deadpan humour and alien chaos, proof that sometimes the strangest way to understand humanity is to look at it from the outside.