6 days ago
Toronto Film Festival expands lineup with Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, plus Keanu Reeves, Sydney Sweeney, and more awards contenders
Days after announcing its gala world premieres, the Toronto International Film Festival has just expanded its lineup with a slate of new films featuring A-listers and Oscar winners. On Monday, the festival announced the highly anticipated debuts of movies starring Keanu Reeves, Vince Vaughn, Seth Rogen, Saoirse Ronan, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino, underscoring the festival's reputation as a crucial spring board for award-season contenders.
TUNER
The film, starring Hoffman and Leo Woodall, is directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher (Navalny) in his feature debut. It follows a former piano prodigy (Woodall) who, down on his luck, uses his extraordinary auditory skills to help a found family figure (Hoffman). The cast also includes Havana Rose Liu and Lior Raz.
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CHRISTY
Sydney Sweeney stars as trailblazing professional boxer Christy Martin in this drama directed by David Michôd. Based on a true story, the film chronicles Martin's meteoric rise in the world of women's boxing and the relationship with her trainer and husband, Jim, portrayed by Ben Foster.
ADULTHOOD
Director Alex Winter helms this dark comedy starring Josh Gad, Kaya Scodelario, Billie Lourd, Anthony Carrigan, and Winter himself. The film follows a brother and sister who uncover a long-buried corpse in their parents' basement, drawing them back to the hometown they once fled and into a twisted rabbit hole of crime and murder.
BAD APPLE
Ronan stars as Maria, a teacher trying to inspire a class of 10-year-olds. But one disruptive student throws everything into chaos. With her job on the line and the child's behavior getting worse, Maria makes a series of poor choices ending with her locking the student inside her home and then scrambling to fix the situation. The film directed by Jonatan Etzler also stars Eddie Waller, Nia Brown, Jacob Anderson, Rakie Ayola, Robert Emms and Sean Gilder.
EASY'S WALTZ
A middle-aged Las Vegas lounge singer (Vaughn) gets an unexpected shot at a second act when he catches the eye of a legendary entertainment manager at The Wynn (Pacino). But just as his comeback begins to take shape, his troubled brother (Simon Rex) threatens to derail everything. The film, directed by True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, also stars Kate Mara, Cobie Smulders, Shania Twain, Tim Simons, Fred Melamed, Sophia Ali, and Mary Steenburgen.
GOOD FORTUNE
Aziz Ansari steps behind the camera for his directorial debut, starring as Arj, a struggling gig worker who crosses paths with a tech billionaire (Seth Rogen) thanks to the intervention of Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) awell-intentioned, slightly clumsy angel with a cosmic plan. Gabriel offers Arj a surreal opportunity: swap lives with the mogul and find out if having it all really means having it better. The ensemble cast also features Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Sherry Cola.
These films will join previously announced projects including Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third installment in Rian Johnson's mystery series starring Daniel Craig, Glenn Close, Josh O'Connor, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, and Kerry Washington; Rental Family, starring Oscar winner Brendan Fraser as a struggling American actor hired by a Japanese "rental family" company to pretend to be part of strangers' lives; Roofman, starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in this Derek Cianfrance film about a real-life ex-Army officer-turned-criminal who hides from authorities in the walls of a Toys R Us; Hamnet, a historical indie drama based on Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel about Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) grieving the death of their son, Hamnet, and directed by Nomadland Best Picture winner Chloé Zhao; and The Choral, set against the backdrop of WWI, the film stars Ralph Fiennes as a choir director mentoring a group of enlisted British teens in the Nicholas Hytner film.
See the full slate of 50th TIFF selections below.
2025 Galas (in alphabetical order):
A Private Life | Rebecca Zlotowski | FranceNorth American Premiere
Adulthood | Alex Winter | USAWorld Premiere
Driver's Ed | Bobby Farrelly | USAWorld Premiere
Eleanor the Great | Scarlett Johansson | USANorth American Premiere
Eternity | David Freyne | USAWorld Premiere
Fuze | David Mackenzie | Premiere
Glenrothan | Brian Cox | Premiere
Good Fortune | Aziz Ansari | USAWorld Premiere
Hamnet | Chloé Zhao | Premiere
Homebound | Neeraj Ghaywan | IndiaNorth American Premiere
John Candy: I Like Me | Colin Hanks | USAWorld Premiere
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery | Ally Pankiw | CanadaWorld Premiere | USA
Nuremberg | James Vanderbilt | USAWorld Premiere
Palestine 36 | Annemarie Jacir | Palestine/U.K./France/Denmark/Qatar/Saudi Arabia/JordanWorld Premiere
Peak Everything | Anne Émond | Canada | Closing Night GalaToronto Premiere
Roofman | Derek Cianfrance | USAWorld Premiere
She Has No Name | Peter Ho-Sun Chan | Hong Kong/ChinaNorth American Premiere
Sholay | Ramesh Sippy | India | 50th Anniversary RestorationNorth American Premiere
Swiped | Rachel Lee Goldenberg | USAWorld Premiere
The Choral | Nicholas Hytner | Premiere
Two Pianos | Arnaud Desplechin | FranceWorld Premiere
2025 Special Presentations (in alphabetical order):
A Pale View of Hills | Kei Ishikawa | Japan/U.K./PolandNorth American Premiere
A Poet | Simón Mesa Soto | Colombia/Germany/SwedenNorth American Premiere
Bad Apples | Jonatan Etzler | Premiere
Ballad of a Small Player | Edward Berger | Premiere
California Schemin' | James McAvoy | U.K./USAWorld Premiere
Calle Malaga | Maryam Touzani | Morocco/France/Spain/Germany/BelgiumNorth American Premiere
Charlie Harper | Tom Dean, Mac Eldridge | USAWorld Premiere
Christy | David Michôd | USAWorld Premiere
Couture | Alice Winocour | USA/FranceWorld Premiere
Dead Man's Wire | Gus Van Sant | USANorth American Premiere
Degrassi: Whatever It Takes | Lisa Rideout | CanadaWorld Premiere
Easy's Waltz | Nic Pizzolatto | USAWorld Premiere
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert | Baz Luhrmann | Australia/USAWorld Premiere
Eternal Return | Yaniv Raz | U.K./USAWorld Premiere
Frankenstein | Guillermo del Toro | USANorth American Premiere
Franz | Agnieszka Holland | Czech Republic/Germany/PolandWorld Premiere
Good News | Byun Sung-hyun | South KoreaWorld Premiere
Hedda | Nia DaCosta | USAWorld Premiere
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You | Mary Bronstein | USACanadian Premiere
It Was Just an Accident | Jafar Panahi | Iran/France/LuxembourgCanadian Premiere
It Would Be Night in Caracas | Mariana Rondón, Marité Ugás | MexicoWorld Premiere
Kokuho | Lee Sang-il | JapanNorth American Premiere
Ky Nam Inn | Leon Le | VietnamWorld Premiere
Lovely Day | Philippe Falardeau | CanadaWorld Premiere
Meadowlarks | Tasha Hubbard | CanadaWorld Premiere
Mile End Kicks | Chandler Levack | CanadaWorld Premiere
Monkey in a Cage | Anurag Kashyap | IndiaWorld Premiere
Nouvelle Vague | Richard Linklater | FranceCanadian Premiere
Poetic License | Maude Apatow | USAWorld Premiere
Primavera | Damiano Michieletto | Italy/FranceWorld Premiere
Project Y | Lee Hwan | South KoreaWorld Premiere
Rental Family | Hikari | USA/JapanWorld Premiere
Rose of Nevada | Mark Jenkin | American Premiere
Sacrifice | Romain Gavras | U.K./GreeceWorld Premiere
Scarlet | Mamoru Hosoda | JapanNorth American Premiere
Sentimental Value | Joachim Trier | Norway/France/Denmark/Germany/Sweden/ Premiere
Silent Friend | Ildikó Enyedi | Germany/Hungary/FranceNorth American Premiere
Sirāt | Óliver Laxe | France/SpainNorth American Premiere
Sound of Falling | Mascha Schilinski | GermanyNorth American Premiere
Steal Away | Clement Virgo | Canada/BelgiumWorld Premiere
The Captive | Alejandro Amenábar | Spain/ItalyWorld Premiere
The Christophers | Steven Soderbergh | Premiere
The Lost Bus | Paul Greengrass | USAWorld Premiere
The Secret Agent | Kleber Mendonça Filho | Brazil/France/Netherlands/GermanyCanadian Premiere
The Smashing Machine | Benny Safdie | USANorth American Premiere
The Testament of Ann Lee | Mona Fastvold | American Premiere | Presented in 70mm
The Ugly | Yeon Sang-ho | South KoreaWorld Premiere
Three Goodbyes | Isabel Coixet | Italy/SpainWorld Premiere
Train Dreams | Clint Bentley | USAInternational Premiere
Tuner | Daniel Roher | USACanadian Premiere
Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) | Zacharias Kunuk | CanadaNorth American Premiere
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | Rian Johnson | USAWorld Premiere
You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution... | Nick Davis | USAWorld Premiere
The 50th Toronto International Film Festival will take place Sept. 4–14.
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