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2018 Toronto International Film Festival - “A Star Is Born” Premiere - Arrivals

TIFF 2019: Toronto International Film Festival news and movie reviews

The race toward the 2020 Oscars kicks off right after Labor Day in Toronto.

Contributors: Alissa Wilkinson

The glitterati of Hollywood and global cinema — plus hundreds of thousands of moviegoers and members of the press — return to Toronto from September 5 to 15 for one of the biggest annual events on the movie calendar: the Toronto International Film Festival, which most people call by its acronym, TIFF.

TIFF marks the unofficial kick-off to the “prestige movie season.” And since its launch in 1976, the 10-day festival has become one of the largest and most prestigious in the world, propelling emerging filmmakers onto the international scene and awards hopefuls toward the big fall movie season.

Keeping an eye on what’s buzzy at TIFF may tell you a lot about what performances and movies will be part of awards chatter later in the year — movies like Jojo Rabbit, Just Mercy, Marriage Story, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Judy, and Joker. And the festival’s timing positions it as the de facto opening of awards season, a marathon of mostly serious dramas that lasts about five months, until the Oscars finally wrap it all up on February 9.

16 Total Updates Since
May 20, 2019, 4:40pm EDT
  • November 27, 2019

    Knives Out is a delightful Agatha Christie-style whodunnit made for 2019 America

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, and more star in the latest caper from Rian Johnson.

  • September 18, 2019

    5 great movies from TIFF that flew under the radar

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    Not every movie at the Toronto International Film Festival is big and buzzy. Here are five you’ll want to know about.

  • September 13, 2019

    The ferocious, chilling Parasite is an essential thrill ride about social inequality

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    Snowpiercer and The Host director Bong Joon-ho reaches the peak of his game with a new must-see horror masterpiece.

  • September 13, 2019

    Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are devastating in the brilliant, brutal Marriage Story

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    Noah Baumbach’s outstanding new film turns divorce into a reminder of love’s many shades.

  • September 13, 2019

    Greed, torture, immigration, and the death penalty: how 6 new movies explain America

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    If movies reflect what a culture fears, this year’s TIFF was a hotbed of anxieties.

  • September 11, 2019

    The Goldfinch shows the perils of being too faithful to the book

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    A lackluster adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning novel is unlikely to please even the book’s biggest fans.

  • September 10, 2019

    The Joker never needed an origin story, but especially not this one

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    Joker aims to give the infamous supervillain a shocking stand-alone backstory. It’s not nearly as edgy as it thinks.

  • September 9, 2019

    Jojo Rabbit, a coming-of-age story about a boy and his best friend Hitler, is both hilarious and grim

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    Taika Waititi’s "anti-hate satire," set in Nazi Germany, knows that hate is no laughing matter.

  • September 9, 2019

    A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is not a Mister Rogers biopic. It’s weirder, and better.

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    A perfectly cast Tom Hanks stars in what feels like a feature-length episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, but for grown-ups.

  • September 8, 2019

    Just Mercy is a powerful argument against the death penalty

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    The film — based on Bryan Stevenson’s book and starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx — is flawed but vital.

  • September 8, 2019

    Hustlers director Lorene Scafaria on making a movie about strippers “from the neck up”

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    "I was excited to look at these women in ways we aren’t used to looking at them."

  • September 7, 2019

    Shia LaBeouf plays his own father in Honey Boy. He’s phenomenal.

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    LaBeouf wrote the film based on his own troubled childhood. It’s an exercise in extreme empathy and a must-see.

  • September 6, 2019

    Waves is a standout family drama with the rare authentic redemption story

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    The director of It Comes at Night and Krisha returns with a bruising, beautiful story of hard-won grace.

  • September 4, 2019

    Why TIFF matters, and 4 other things to know about the Toronto International Film Festival

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    The festival is a bellwether for what will happen at the movies for the next six months.

  • May 21, 2019

    The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, is easily one of the wildest films of the year

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    From the director of The Witch comes a psychosexual drama, a pitch-black comedy, and a tale of two men driving each other nuts.

  • May 20, 2019

    Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life is not a typical World War II drama

    By Alissa Wilkinson

    The latest from the director of The Tree of Life deconstructs religion and nationalism by looking at someone who refused to fight.

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