Venice may have the glamorous premieres on the Lido and Telluride may have the moneyed mountain town feel, but the Toronto International Film Festival, with its wider selection and swelling lines for rush tickets, is the people’s princess. Winners of the festival’s People’s Choice Award are all but guaranteed to get a Best Picture nomination, if not a win, although history doesn’t always remember them fondly (looking at you, Green Book). It’s where frontrunners are forged and villains are made. Awards were certainly on festival-goers’ minds as American studios trotted out their heaviest hitters, including Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut (A24) and Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine (Searchlight Pictures), alongside acclaimed international pictures picking up steam, like Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden and Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care.
But TIFF also cut the ribbon on its first-ever market this year, reminding us that, behind all the queues and red carpet cameras are execs inking deals for the next year’s biggest features. The success of Obsession loomed large, but over the first seven days of the festival, only three films were reported to have been acquired: River, a slasher sold to Blumhouse; Rapinoe, a documentary about the superstar U.S. women’s soccer player; and Sunburn, a Toronto hangout comedy by Serville Poblete. Still, many more are on the table, including Werner Herzog’s oddball twin tale, Bucking Fastard; Anna Biller’s The Love Witch follow-up, The Face of Horror; the Naomi Watts-led journalism thriller The Housewife; and the Chase Infiniti-starring collegiate math romance The Julia Set.
By the time I departed the festival late Monday evening, I had more than a few premieres under my belt, including one directed by Chris Rock, a cringe-inducing social horror movie, and a biopic about the making of a Best Picture winner. There were still a few wild cards yet to appear, most notably the truly bonkers-looking Alpha Gang, pitting A-listers against aliens, and La bola negra, which I, thankfully, have already seen and can attest to being worth the hype. Below, catch the highlights (and the nadirs) from the first week of the festival.
Best Needle Drops: Club Kid
Club Kid is one of those rare movies that feels truly of-the-moment. A story about a GHB-gulping Bushwick party boy, Peter, who suddenly has to step up when he discovers he’s a dad certainly has the potential to skew too saccharine or too caustic, but Club Kid threads the needle.
There’s some New York party scene stunt casting here; Jordan Firstman has dubbed real-world figures like Alaska Riley, Miss Benny, Linux, Ludwig Hurtado, and more the inheritors of the Limelight’s legacy. As a second coming-of-age story, though, the movie is immune to its own hype, constantly gesturing to the lives lived on the periphery of the party gworl circuit, from Uber drivers murmuring in Arabic on the phone to social workers with neck tattoos.
Any viewers who are of raver experience will be thrilled with how much time is dedicated to music itself. Expect an immediate 2016 pop girlie throwback from the jump and a much more recent singalong at a piano at the halfway mark. A shared playlist between Peter and his son (the height of intimacy!) touches on everything from Cocteau Twins to Slipknot to Arthur Russell. But, of course, the movie is most attuned to the rhythms of a DJ set, shifting from house and trance to garage and bass and back again, relishing in every peak and valley even as Peter finds himself drifting away from the dance floor.
Most Oscar-Worthy Monologue: The Debut
Julianne Moore? As a repressed housewife? Groundbreaking. It’s true that she and Paul Giamatti may be playing to type as a first-time regional theater thespian and her middle-aged bloviating director, but as with all of Eisenberg’s tender and nuanced outings behind the camera, it’s all in the details. Case in point? At the premiere, everyone was handed a playbill for the regional theater production that the characters stage in the movie, complete with advertisements for local shops. The real standout though is a mid-film tête-à-tête between the two leads, which climaxes in a howling monologue from Moore so powerful that the premiere audience broke out into spontaneous cheers and applause.
Best Comedian Glow Up: Trash Mountain
Caleb Hearon showed up for approximately 0.2 seconds in The Devil Wears Prada 2 back in May, but in this winsome indie dramedy, the comedian and podcaster steps boldly into the lead role. Hearon stars as a city-dweller returning to his rural hometown after his father dies and reckoning with his awkward teen years in the closet. If you’ve got a Little Miss Sunshine soft spot, this one is for you, complete with 2000s indie darling Zooey Deschanel playing Hearon’s sister and a fleeting affair with a charming townie (Jaboukie Young-White). The story is loosely autobiographical for Hearon, who also wrote the script, and although the genre territory may feel fairly well-trodden, he makes a serious case for himself to play a role other than sassy gay assistant. Casting directors take note!
Achievement in Ethical Dubiousness: Everest: The Other Side
“Because it’s there.” That was mountaineer George Mallory’s justification for his arduous journey to summit Mount Everest, one that would cost him his life. This attitude has become a central fixation for documentarians (and former partners) Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who won an Oscar for their 2018 documentary Free Solo about a boundary-pushing rock climber who scaled mountain faces with no protection.
Everest: The Other Side sees Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi follow daredevil Jim Morrison (no relation) and his late partner, Hilaree Nelson, who endeavor to scale Everest’s more treacherous route up and ski down the sheer mountain face. As with Free Solo, a fair amount of time is spent on why someone might want to risk their lives like this, especially when they have loved ones at home. The question is only compounded as the filmmakers opt to follow their subjects wherever their quest may lead, despite the fact that they themselves have two children at home. And then the audience sees those stunning mountain vistas. The rest is for you to decide.
Biggest Letdown: Misty Green
Chris Rock taking a prestige turn with A24 as a way to uplift an undercelebrated Black actress? Misty Green had a promising setup, but it was quickly apparent that the entertainment industry tragicomedy starring Rosalind Eleazar was a nonstarter, save for Eleazar’s performance, which truly is as good as they say. Rock’s directorial career runs the gamut from Geraldine Ferraro-inspired political satire (really) to an Éric Rohmer adaptation (yes, really). So perhaps it’s not so surprising that Misty Green lacks some of the precision and thematic heft that it promises. Eleazar stars as a capital-D Difficult actress whose once-promising career on a TV show that ran after Scandal has all but dried up. She’s now singing Radiohead covers at a hotel bar to stay afloat. Adam Driver, as a greasy quasi-pimp, and Anna Kendrick, as Misty’s bestie obsessed with fetishizing Black men, only contribute to a plot that feels both overstuffed and under-realized. But the biggest letdown of all? Not giving Daniel Kaluuya, who plays Misty’s half-brother, enough to do in his first onscreen appearance since 2022’s Nope.
Best Advice: “Less semen, more emotion”
In yet another step in Seth Rogen’s slow ascent from stoner schlub to salt-and-pepper stud, the gravel-voiced comedian was honored with the Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award at the festival. Is a career achievement award a bit too premature considering Rogen is only 44? Perhaps, but it’s worth acknowledging that he’s reached the upper echelon of Hollywood performers and even, dare we say, did it with a little gravitas. Rogen has two films at TIFF: Babies, which his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, wrote and directed and he starred in, and the animated movie Tangles, which he produced.
In a talk with Geoff Macnaughton, TIFF’s vice president of market programming, Rogen revealed the career advice that’s been his guiding light. “At one time, when we were shooting Knocked Up, we would improvise a lot, and we were improvising and Judd screamed from the other room, ‘Less semen, more emotion!’” said Rogen. “And honestly, as I’ve gone on to make films, it’s amazing how much I come back to ‘Less semen, more emotion.’”
Biggest Discourse Generator: Everybody Wants to Fuck Me
Jonathan Schey’s debut feature film began, as no other film has, when his friend Mary Beth Barone, as part of her stand-up comedy routine, projected his dating app profile on a large screen and proceeded to drag his ass in front of an audience of strangers. Everybody Wants to Fuck Me takes as its subject the pseudo-nice guy, the crypto fuckboy, performing sensitivity but ghosting the next day. Then, in a turn, its protagonist discovers that every woman he’s alone with actually does want to sleep with him—and perhaps ravenously so.
As with Barone’s ribbing, Everybody Wants to Fuck Me seems tailor made to get audiences debating the state of modern romance. The movie is firmly rooted in the impulsive male id, one that casts women first as sirens and then as screaming maenads. Whether that is to its benefit or detriment is up to the online court of public opinion.
Victory Lap of the Season: Obsession
When Obsession first premiered last year at TIFF in the festival’s Midnight Madness section, it didn’t play to much fanfare. Focus Features scooped it up two days later for about $15 million before releasing it in May this year to the tune of over $500 million worldwide, making it the film festival’s biggest success story. Director Curry Barker inked an eight-figure deal with Universal and Blumhouse (what were you doing at 26 years old?) while star Inde Navarrette just got cast as Rogue in the new Marvel X-Men franchise.
One year later, Barker and Navarrette were back at TIFF to bask in all that glory. They broke down everything down from the movie’s casting process to watching it all take off. Navarrette is happy to see the memes of her character proliferate across social media à la Mia Goth in Pearl, while Barker was a little more humbled and pensive. “[It’s started] to feel like it’s not mine anymore,” said Barker, referring to the movie’s afterlife on the Internet. “It’s not mine anymore.”
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