Eight Movies I want to See at TIFF 2026

I’m sitting in Logan Airport preparing to hop on a Porter Air flight across Lake, uh, America for the Toronto International Film Festival, my 25th time or so attending. (Porter Air flies into Billy Bishop Airport in downtown Toronto, and I’ve long since stopped trying to train my brain out of thinking of it as “Billy Porter Airport.”) I used to cover the festival for the Boston Globe; now I cover it for you, dear readers, and for myself and from the sheer muscle memory of it. In the heady days of my youth, I would come to TIFF and see five or six movies a day for six days; then I'd come home with a head full of pudding and sleep for a week. Older and possibly wiser now, I’ve slowed the pace down to a reasonable 3 to 5 a day (sometimes even 2! Don’t tell my non-existent editor). As always, the offerings at TIFF represent a slice of what will be talked about for the rest of the Oscar silly season – other worthies will be screening at one of the other Big Four fall fests, Venice, Telluride or New York – and I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen something in Toronto that has upended my Best Of list for a given year. Here’s some of what I’ve looking forward to in 2026, provided that the Canadians aren’t so rightfully pissed that they turn us all away at the border.

“A Talent for Murder” Imagine one of those chilly Patricia Highsmith novels of homicidal bad behavior, only with Patricia Highsmith in it. Played by Helen Mirren. Legendary rock photographer-turned-director Anton Corbijn (“Control,” “A Most Wanted Man”) directs a twisty what-if drama about a smooth young publisher (Alden Ehrenreich) arriving in Highsmith’s late-life Swiss retreat, where he tries to cajole the cantankerous (I'm being kind) author into penning one last Tom Ripley novel. Things get a little bloody. I’m in for Corbijn and Mirren, but there’s buzz building as well for Ehrenreich’s performance, a possible breakthrough for a much-underrated actor. (In theaters October 23)

“Prima Facie” – Jodie Comer won raves and a Tony in the London/Broadway production of Suzie Miller’s one-woman drama about a British barrister who specializes in defending men accused of sexual assault and whose world turns upside down when she herself is assaulted. For the big-screen adaptation/expansion, scripted by Miller and directed by Susanna White (BBC’s “Jane Eyre”), Cynthia Erivo shakes off the green make-up and dons a white powdered wig. The actress has needed a juicy dramatic role to remind us that she’s much more than “Wicked,” and this should be it. (Release TBA)

“I Play Rocky” – It’s mid-1970s Hollywood, and some kid, a nobody, is shopping his self-penned screenplay about a yutz from Philadelphia who gets one shot at boxing glory. The studio execs are interested until the kid – whose name is Sylvester Stallone – insists that he star in the film as well. We know how it all turned out, but the latest from director Peter Farrelly (“Green Book”) takes us back to when Stallone’s gamble was more daring than anything Rocky faced. Anthony Ippolito has been cast in the lead role; he previously played Al Pacino in the making-of-“The Godfather” miniseries “The Offer,” so obviously De Niro is up next. (In theaters November 6.)

“Union Town” – Documentarian Barbara Kopple won a well-deserved Oscar for 1976’s groundbreaking “Harlan County, USA,” about a brutal Kentucky miner’s strike. She won another for “American Dream” (1990), which put viewers inside a Hormel meat factory strike. At 80, Kopple returns with her third film in what is now a crucial trilogy of the American working class. The town of the title is New York City, and Kopple brings her cameras to bear on workers in the gig economy at UPS, Amazon, DoorDash and GrubHub as they fight for contracts, representation and respect. Is a third Best Documentary award in the offing? If it gets people to see the movie, great. (Theatrical release TBA.)

“Wild Horse Nine”  – Martin McDonagh, the award-winning bad-boy writer-director of “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” appears to be revisiting the vibe of his early cult favorite “In Bruges” with this puckish story of two rogue CIA agents on leave (kind of) on Easter Island during the mid-1950s. No idea what it’s about other than a skewed take on American interventionism, but it stars Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich along with Tom Waits and Parker Posey, and that’s good enough for me. (Especially when Malkovich’s performance is being already being touted as a slam-dunk Oscar nominee.) (In theaters November 6.)

“Minotaur” – A Grand Prix winner at Cannes, this marks the reappearance after nine years – and flight into exile – of visionary Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose earlier films “The Return” (2003) and “Leviathan” (2014) are two of the finest cinematic works of the (not-so) new millennium. The new movie is a loose remake of Claude Chabrol’s “La Femme Infidèle” (1969) that by all accounts replaces the original’s French sangfroid with damning Slavic social criticism and some pointed observations on the invasion of Ukraine. No wonder he had to flee the country. (In theaters November 20.)

“Alpha Gang” – The Zellner brothers strike again. Writer-directors Nathan and David Zellner have given us a comedy-drama about a Japanese woman searching for a buried fortune that doesn’t exist (“Kumiko the Treasure Hunter”), a po-faced nature documentary about a family of Bigfoots (“Sasquatch Sunset”) and many other oddities that sound conceptually silly yet somehow hit you where you live. For this tale of aliens invading earth and finding … not what they expect… the Zellners have rounded up a fine, strange cast of Cate Blanchett, Dave Bautista, Léa Seydoux and Lily-Rose Depp. Attention must be paid. (In theaters TBA.)

“Bucking Fastard” – Who knew when our collective doors were blown off by “Aguirre: Wrath of God” in 1972 that Werner Herzog would still be with us over a half century later, as drolly, bleakly surreal as ever, and a bona fide pop culture star, to boot. Taking a break from non-fiction, the director has drafted sisters Kate and Rooney Mara to play siblings with an eerie bond: They dress and speak as one and – oh dear – fall in love as one with an unsuspecting Orlando Bloom. Now that David Lynch has gone to that great coffeehouse in the sky, Herzog remains perhaps the one filmmaker most in touch with the landscape of dreams and themes beyond the power of words. Which, if you ask me, is why the movies were invented in the first place. (In theaters TBA.)

Also at TIFF 2026: New films by Pedro Almodóvar, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”), Siân Heder (“Coda”), Florian Zeller (“The Father”), Wayne Wang, Courteney Cox, Chris Rock, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrew Haigh (“All of Us Strangers”), Takeshi Miike, Cristian Mungiu, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Boyle, Rachel Morrison, Lee Chang-dong, Mike Leigh, Jesse Eisenberg, Ira Sachs, Alex Gibney, Anna Biller (“The Love Witch”) and many more. Stay tuned for festival reports in the coming days.

Care to comment? Please do.

You can read the Watch List for free (much of it), but I don't do it for free. Becoming a paid subscriber helps me keep providing you with good movies to see, cultural commentary, subscriber-only extras and various thoughts to chew on. Plus you can talk back and give me what-for.